You ask me about the drape of a dress,
or if your shoes work with an outfit.
I can answer without looking.
I know it looks fine, great, even wonderful.
Sadly, we both know my sense of fashion
does nothing to augment yours.
It doesn’t matter my protestations,
you still have to FaceTime a daughter.

But when I tell you how good you look
you may not tell me I’m wrong.
You do not see yourself through my eyes.
I have great eyes when it comes to finding beauty.
I see the silver in your hair,
sparkling just on top of the gold.
Shimmering.
I see the blue of your eyes
in sun and shadow
on summer sand dunes
and trying to dig the car out
of deepening snow in the driveway.
I see the grace in the curve of your jaw.
I see your skin, pale and vulnerable
At the base of your neck.
I watch you examine a thing
held hard to the sunlight.
I see the intelligence of your investigation.
Lasers.
I see your butt.
Don’t ever argue with me about the glory of your ass.
I know a thing or two about
Glory.
I see your carriage,
its poise,
Its grace.
I see your smile,
its warmth,
its quickness,
its generosity.
Kindness.
I see your lips when you kiss me,
When you kiss your kids,
When you kiss your grand kids.
I see your youest you.
Your purpose.
Beauty.

I always forget the vines behind the shed.

Every year they get pruned a day or two later.
Their beds are cleared last.
They are planted too near each other
so they get pruned mercilessly close.

This year I had to dig last year’s bird’s nest
out of the sheltering crotch of three canes.
Then cut the canes away.
Last year’s vigilance against the birds
showed a breach on the southern border.

This arbor could be more beautiful.
Today it is only less ugly–
less neglected.
Some days that’s the best I can do.

Memory slips,
neglect rises,
diminished man survives.
There’s your headline.

Mary Oliver died today
as she so often predicted.
Eighty-three is a good age for a poet to die:
old enough to have long production,
old enough to have regarded the brackets around natural life.
She’s gone.

It is winter. Life in the Midwest is sere:
browns, grays, near whites,
frozen ridges and refrozen rime.

My natural world shows little
of birds.
Nothing
of reptiles,
of insects,
of tiny mammals.

When I die I hope it is February
in a place just as sere.
Better to fade out in a scene already faded
than to be the lone grayness
surrounded by a burst of flora and fauna,
a wasteful abundance of color
a cacophony of birdsong and pig whistles.

Transitions are easier for the living
if there isn’t too much change.
I don’t know what they are like for the dead–
probably less dramatic than we fear.

The letters we write can’t be edited down to contain an entire year.
Fonts get smaller, margins get smaller. It just doesn’t matter.
We love you.
We miss you.
We saw you and we still miss you.

We hope we hugged you last year;
If not, it is our primary goal this year.

How’s our life? Pretty great. Hope yours is too.
Steve stays retired. Hard work.
Deb stays in education. Really hard work with payoffs (just not cash).
Kids are all working.
Grandkids still convince us of the value of humanity.

Stay warm in the winter,
Cool in the summer
And chill as hell the rest of the year.

May your Christmas be perfect.
May 2019 bring moments that steal your breath.

Start out knowing you are loved.

Two young poems walked down an alley
arguing.
“You already agreed,” said one,
“that Love is what we seek.”
“Yes,” said the other. “But not the only thing.
You know, food, shelter, some other things too.”

The first poem dug his bare hands into empty pockets
And hunched his shoulders into stubborn wind.
A cold mist had begun to drift inside buttons.
“Which one first?”

“Why, the most important, of course!”
The second poem was smug.
“Then love,” said the first,
his attitude improving despite the elements.

“I was thinking shelter,” said the second.
Low, distant thunder rolled through them.
“Shelter it is, then, where we might find love.”

Donald Hall died today
as he so often had promised.
I suppose if I live to nearly ninety,
some lesser poet could mutter
the same proclamation over my span.

I do not know why poets
who, more than anyone,
should know they are going to spend
infinitely more time dead,
mutter on so about what it is like to die.

Or what it is like to watch another
Felled by this or that “itis” or “osis”
Or some other affliction ending in “ia” or “oma,”
leaving behind an honest love,
haunting all the places and things the living touch.

Donald Hall died for thirty years.
The first time I died, I was thirty-six, whining.
Poetry was no balm.
Language lost value, diminished in scope.
It was unrecorded, unremarkable.

Life is disappearance: of mothers, good and bad
into unphased dirt; of fathers who did or did not
play catch with sons; of brothers, sisters, and old dogs.
The dirt abides. The ending of the lives of poets
is the black at the end of the fade out.