So Neat in Out-of-Date Cursive

It's too easy to forget who you are.
No different than pretending
someone didn't call you
the wrong name, while the grocery list
you wrote so neat in out of date cursive
is folded in your pocket,
like a note telling when you'll die,
and you're only scared to read it,
because it proves your memory 
isn't what is used to be,
leaving you
to swear as you remember
the empty salt shaker waiting for you
to get home and complain 
how you had nothing to say
on the birthday card you signed
for a co-worker.


Stamps Used to Cost Fifty Cents

His books are falling down
in price, while the shipping costs
soar like an eagle with its eyes
focused on something we can't see,
and here I am, grounded
next to another poem-
its wings broken or growing,
depending who you ask,
but I'm incapable of flight,
knowing the sky intimately
only in my dreams, where my fall
part of waking up.


Finding Ourselves

Too often we're looking for ourselves,
even though we were never lost,
and the treasure map just an old napkin
we forgot for years in a pocket
of our best clothes, while we never bought
those shovels because we couldn't afford
those plans for self-improvement 
through gardening, leaving the dirt 
to wait just a little longer for us.