the myth of what really happens; family

i.

what else is
there to hate-
the fried egg,
& the pan
slips out of hand, a
grandfather
rises terrible
and human, an eye lost to
cancer, "i shouldn't
have let them take it"

ia.

they
where gods as they are
and his denial
mattered little
to that remote man
that skillfully
removed each
element of
death from his physical head
but his god shrunk like a penis
in early April keeling
a dark water lake trying to
swim to the other side
but unwilling the body
also wilts

ii.

the bloom growing steady
and under shadows of 5 o'clock
love lives a drop
on the tongue
a sweet measure of the
mortality rate on
Friday afternoon
the new mother hoping to scribble
a hopeful warning
about love
about letting the unbearable
in each daughter passing the dark
note famously quiet to
the next in line

iii.

this north country is
measured
tough under dry wall screws
and counter sunk nails
the wind curls the docks
like soft eye lashes
batting love looks at you

iiia.

despite minnow traps
and plastic decoys
resting in a duffel
until fall

iv.

the gun and the hound
all night animal
closing around
one thousand
lakes and islands here
the eyes steady
the boat
the wind takes quietly
and empty of
a rower to cattails,
muskellunge, pike
and the sound of an
egret lifting in flight

merry tool, sorry shoe

so regretted: the sea gull dead
and now it
wont come at all
the sun wakes
to stones, to horse apples
to the
anachronistic speech
of the last hopeful- one
the rain
comes and we
are happy
and stuck
in its down pour, ringing
the afternoon with
its steel
cage, leaving the too old
to fix puzzles and
gossip grave friends
up and down the flower lane
and the torch
they hold blows out
upside- down the drain pipe
wash
one hundred seeds,
the street
sheds its foam and libertine
garbage, the whole earth
shutters
under claw
and the cat wakes
to stare down
another man, that dared to
walk his way at all.