Nature Aside

Sunrise out the window frame.

The bird Susan could name

& I can't — cardinal? wren? —

winds up its song again.

If I ever again found ease

how do I think would it feel?

Nature aside, nothing

here is my own. Why do I think

it should be? Better to read

Thoreau, his forty years —

from the Walden shack

to his family's attic —

he lived penniless,

rich on earth's largess.

Three Ring

Palms up the clowns rush

the children. Panicked they dash

about, scream & slap & fall.

Yawning tigers swivel on stools.

Bit in mouth an aerialist swings.

Pinpoint in the center ring

a top-hatted tuxedoed dwarf

flacks a whip, chews a cigar.

Midnight sharp the ropes ripple,

the big tent slumps to a puddle.

A fortune teller sorts her cards —

empress devil hermit moon

lovers — last comes the fool

white dog nipping her arse.

Bus Stop, One Dollar

Everyone else including the bus driver

is black. No one tells me to move to the back.

One North Charleston stop swarms

with white men — middle-aged & older —

twenty or more clog the sidewalk, some

carrying clipboards, no doubt scheming

to green the blight. Turbaned mothers

disembark with bead-sparkled daughters.

The men move apart. The bus lumbers on.

Mothers glower. Skipping singing girls

flow through the pale mist of men

as paint through chalk. No man smiles.

The colors passing leave no mark,

no grief at their leaving.

No Name

The bird singing in salt marsh

has no name, bird that sounds

da-wee-jah, repeats four times

da begins, wee climbs, jah falls

from dawn to dark — small, some red

perhaps — speeds into lush green

bird outside my window, high in a tree

sings where water shines in first light

something or someone with no name

this new place — sky water land

trees green & gold with early sun

between near water & Hobcaw Creek

(a named thing) the grass golden green

tide ripples, rails cry at dusk & dawn.

Friends

the purpose of life is not to be happy

          — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Thoreau invariably walked to the pond, saw

the deer & was happy. Emerson failed to know

his friend, in Ralph Waldo’s considered opinion

an educated smart man with no ambition

except to spend his short span of years

figuring out which Concord flora flowers

first in spring, detecting that small brown

heaps are muskrats barely awake — he found

them so dimwitted from hibernation

he could upend & inspect one

before it ran away. Thoreau stayed

home while Emerson roamed the world for pay.

O, to live in your own world, the richness of

flower, meadow, muskrat, ditch.

Beauty

I'm vacuuming a neighborhood

I often inhabit. Once a few

isolated dwellings, quiet, wooded,

now the street is strewn

with trash. The houses I vacuum

mirror outdoor space —

door frames are windows

everything's coated in yellow scum.

I charge $15 per hour. My last customer

fails to pay me before I wake up.

Her daughter watches me vacuum

to confirm I'm not corrupt.

The grandmother says she's happy

to have a home. That's beauty.

Children are colored dust.

The vacuum's bin I dump

between each home.

More beauty would be these junk-

swept streets in heavy rain.

Everyone's mattress is yellowed foam

partially covered with large pale flakes

like upside-down drops — no, petals —

the beds wear petaled capes.