2010
02.09
Thick mist blew in from the lake
dense; a funeral shroud-opaque,
Vision shrunk as stillness distilled.
Erie feelings shouted, bouncing
between awe and fear.
Looking for the my old friend –the
cherry tree; mist blinded my view.
The white cloak obscured every
thing.
Rays of sunshine stabbed through.
Light fell on the old my old friend.
now myriads of shining diamonds;
fog distilled on its branches.
Sequins glistened in the
sun; erratic branches now thrust
to the sky in bizarre symmetry.
That rough old tree was now
resplendent,
2010
02.09
We search the third floor offices
for a trap door, discover it
directly over the dean’s desk.
We prop his chair on the desk and climb
through the trap into a vacancy
littered with antique furniture,
mostly of mellow-grained oak.
How did army surplus steel
displace this sturdy elegance?
You linger at a file cabinet
stuffed with student essays almost
a hundred years old. Your face
with its pink scholarly aura
illuminates the unheated air.
As we marvel at the penmanship
a groaning from the furthest corner
frightens us. I point my flashlight
and spear a ghost hunkered over
a metal box big as a coffin.
I recognize from a portrait
the beard who founded the college.
As he fades in the dusty light
you cross the attic and lift the lid
and find the metal box filled
with unsold copies of textbooks
written by that weepy old ghost.
He published and then perished
as we all eventually do.
So what have we learned? Descending
through the trap, we agree to request
a crew to recover two oak desks
and file cabinets to adorn
our offices, and to shelve those books
in the library, where the ghost
can browse, mourning in better light.
2010
02.09
If I had a time machine, I’d go back to convince my mom to abort me. Yeah,
I could do something cool like cave in the hull of Christopher Columbus or
convince Kurt to just stay single but my life’s turned out to be a peeled
beer bottle label.
I could go back while mom and dad rolled around in the backseat of his 1987
rust white Toyota Corolla, the tape deck chewing on some *NSYNC. I would
watch my father’s brow and cheeks like a volcano and then startle him so he
seeds the upholstery. He’d yell “It’s a stain!” and not in that circle of
life way, either.
But my father was such a skeetapotamus so I’d wait a few months and then
kick mom in the stomach. Even if that didn’t work, I’d end up in jail for
awhile, long enough to meet younger me while he’s on a field trip for
at-risk youth at the county jail. I’d shake him so hard, I’d break his bad
habits like a mason jar but I didn’t listen either when I was his age.
I’d probably go back as a Jehovah’s Witness since I knew my mom was always
nice to them, even let them pitch their brand of salvation. When she opened
the copy of *The Watchtower* I left behind, she’d find a letter with some
photos (little sister wearing a steering wheel around her neck, her older
self wearing bruises like eyeshadow), three-hundred dollars.
How would I know it worked? I’d feel my skeleton crack, my stomach chew
itself from the inside, my shoulders touch my sternum and brow, like the
hand of God was crumpling me up like a wad of paper, before throwing what’s
left of me and my name somewhere forgotten.