Thank You For The Opportunity

But I’ve re-imagined my purpose in life
and I’m going in another direction,
neither northeast or southwest
but someplace with fewer shadows.
I was rather stunned by the antiseptic
atmosphere, the robotic recitation 
of your strategic plan.
I had a sudden vision of being trapped
in the heart of the mundane.
You scared me or I scared myself,
either way, I won’t be accepting your offer.
That tie, with the parrots, was the tip-off.
I’m liberated, if not by my unsettled
situation, by the empty hours before me, 
with birdsong. One must strive
for authenticity although that itself,
like a rogue wave,
can be a sly subversion. 


Make Me A Rothko

I do love the paint-
    ing, blues and blacks,
    the inconstancy

Separate swathes be-
    fore merging, like the brink
    of a rainstorm 

My heart in layers, too,
    revealed by contem-
    plation, slow, measured

The painting changes
    with the light, cool morn-
    ing, sullen evening

I’m attached to the colors,
    they slip into dreams, sub-
    sume my regrets

Sky of wind, like rough skin
   raked across, I, too, be-
   long to nothing else
 

The Pallid Observation of the Duo

Old people in lawn chairs
Blue-eyed infants eating peaches in the shade
The end of summer, the past become
Loose morals and abandoned rosaries
All the bits in their own cubicles
   their own atmospheres, time
   as a dizzy mistake
   before the celebration, minus the noise

Gasping in the side yard
The slurp as a distillation of sound
Winter broken in two, the future
Sins, mortal and venial plus repentance
To each a place in the sun, no
   walls, circulated air released, echoes
   of several weeks in chaos,
   anticipation, that holy moment