in december

the days, they’re shortest,
skinless, surrounding the house,
drift wood barricade.

after work, freezing

under january’s chisel,
my tracks and walnuts
planted for the squirrel
that haunts the bird feeder

cul-du-sac

among fences and heaped mortgages,
we hinder ourselves, immaterial borrowers,
siphoning bandwidth, riding orange lawn tractors,
nursing craft beers and distant smiles, shaking

here it rips in us, the close edge of commerce,
feeding desires and sleepy goals, paycheck to paycheck,
stringing us to emerge blue and above subsistence,
a fat suburban moon, removed and successful.

on new year’s day

153 miles uncoil, thick
and shunted, heaved between
the first cup of wake-up
and the salvaged green door
fitted to the farm house

it’s cold here
it’s cold there

nothing changes,
the endless flat sky,
mill of suns and
thinning mercury,
seeds counted until spring
and planting plans,
to plow and sow,
to buy a hog

and the shadow of the barn,
solid as night
and just as punctured,
pushes it all down

inert, i spent the day

watching cars, like leaves
quick and skimming between lanes,
driven by autumn

poem at the beginning

a hundred geese lift
off and slice the morning
southward. leaves fall.
a grey flurry in the half-sun.