Half-Finished Bridge
(from "In Confidence")

 
No important work to do today, I think,
as I lie in the hammock one last time
before storing it for winter,
just a few chores around the yard— 
deck chairs to be stacked and stashed away
and the lawn raked despite the pears
and oaks hanging on to their green.

Stamped on the pencil I’m using,
first snow falling on the half-finished bridge,
now as in Bashō’s time,
the halfway done possibly a road
to nowhere, like the wars we shouldn’t start
and the marriages we can’t finish.
But he must’ve meant that I find myself

amidst the season’s first flurries,
leaves collecting at my feet
as I rock in the wind, writing to my father
that I’m grateful he’s still alive
and there’s time to erect the rest of the trestle
and walk together to the other side,
light snow falling on our backs.




​

One Would Hope
(from "In Confidence")

that life’s final moments travel slowly,
quieting the blood and brain and leaving
time enough to hear one’s choice of music,
a plucked lute for the teenage boy driving
through a crowded street—barely entering
a Baghdad square to gather his father
from work, talking to his mother about
new friends at school or scoring the winning
goal in a soccer game—when the bursts
of bullets rang.  And for the mother
leaning on her son,  a lullaby, the one
her mother sang to her, and she to him.
For both of them, one would hope that life
was long enough to hear each other’s song.

Particle and Wave
(from "Cruising at Sixty to Seventy")

particles have no meaning as isolated entities,
but can only be understood as interconnections…
                       —Erwin Schrodinger

You and I were doing what we do best— 
throwing stones— 
this time from the side
of a country bridge into the reservoir,
each arcing under the forces
of physics until impact, the consequence
spreading in ripples, the stone
become invisible in the bottom muck,
its presence propagating
across the surface,
as our presence does
to the fabric of something less grand
than space-time. Then yours and mine
cast together, landing in different spots,
their wavelets colliding,
passing through each other,
cohering in some places, canceling in others,
the pattern richer for the two
than one…    then in our excitement,
each of us tossing a handful at once,
the pattern becoming richer still,
not still at all, moving out into the world— 
children, siblings, parents, friends,
adding up to something grand.

​

Billy and Stephen and Me
(from "Cruising at Sixty to Seventy")

                        —for Billy Collins and Stephen Dunn

Billy would tell you about the little flame
at the end of his pen while he rocks in the hammock
listening to wild turkeys rustle last autumn’s leaves
as they run toward and away from the stream.

Stephen would tell you he’s like the turkeys,
unsure whether he’s coming or going,
how that confusion has a certain beauty
which can’t be uprooted once it takes hold, and I— 

I’m the one in the hammock, reading both
on this first warm day of spring, coming from one
to the other, going back, pausing every few pages
to let the words plant themselves,

and thinking how hard it was last fall
to drill holes in each urn’s composite base
so this year’s flowers wouldn’t drown— 
likely red, white, and pink impatiens again,

because habits don’t break easily
and those flowers crave shade.  Billy would say
there’s too much shade in the world,
Stephen that we cast too much on ourselves.