“To mess around. To totally destroy the pieces. To build around them.”

– Jack Spicer, A Textbook of Poetry

 

Shaving in here while Jim mows the lawn out there

instead of using the snow blower. 

Or that decal on the driver’s window: looks like 

the guy’s wearing a shoulder patch. 

So I’m on the road again, 

but that doesn’t mean I’m in a parade. 

Overlooked for so long, she began to feel 

she was something of a headland––

the cold up there, the deer in their dark winter coats

plodding on to keep from nodding off. 

 

Cut to the chase: the last unseasonal incongruity. 

Leaving you with sand, time running out at the edge 

of the desert. Or maybe that’s only the tree line, 

snow blowing across your main course. 

Leaving you licking & liking lichen but still 

chewing what’s left of the scenery.

 

Campfire memories as night’s knives slice through 

tense tents: your best intentions. Icy shadows 

shiver, share stories with tentative endings. 

Wasted chances, choices, chants. And songs 

no longer belonging anywhere. 

Snow dunes, sand drifts, a beach that’s lost 

its ocean. Moonlit waves, a sea of homelessness 

thrashing in its sleep. Fluid wind forever 

changing its mind.