The Surrealist’s Day Job

He drives his cart each morning
alongside the canals
and from stair-stepped homes
tarpaper shacks and high-rise condos
from cardboard shelters at the edge of town
they bring theirs out to him

Nothing here he can sell or trade
no real use for most of it
here in this better world of ours

He stacks it all carefully and rolls away
ringing his wee bell
wheels of his cart creaking beneath the weight

All those desires sorrows regrets

Where We Are

Monday, bills arrive
from the other side,
swaddled in small print.

Men in blindfolds
stumble again and again
against our dreams.

Even the microwave
sings to us
in our time of dejection.

In walls we hear
the cries of wire and pipe
begging their freedom.

In the Hour Between Dog and Wolf

The gallery paintings love it
when there are no people
and they’re left to be themselves,
when they don’t have to
represent, change lives, document,
or matter.

__

In the quiet meadow
you imagine troops advancing, hear
the pound of hooves on bare ground,
mud falling from the treads of tanks.

The great war has come at last.
We will all be heroes.

__

We’re still lighting candles
for those who died, he said—
on his break, outside
the church. There’s free coffee inside
should you care to join us.

__

I have six children
she said
they are all dead

their names linger
in the dark of night

they call
from other rooms
want things
need them

__

Listen
how sorrowfully
water
falls into the sink.

In the Time of a Dying Wind

The stuffed bear stands by the door
to the hall
removing its stuffing handful by handful
growing by degrees, smiling, smaller

Sadness glides in on
the same wind the hawk rode out against
when its feet found the eagle’s nest
found the eagle’s young

Out in the kitchen the teapot
speaks shrilly and will not stop
of things I don’t care to hear again

Tells me of a loneliness only horizons know

Audition

Someone in a spectacularly bad suit and worse haircut comes in and sits across from me, tells me in a terrible actor’s voice that he’s my father. Hair sprouts in tiny bouquets from nostrils and ears. He’s brought doughnuts. Cheap ones—all icing has fallen to the bottom of the box. He watches as I push the box back across the table. Out of the very bones of sadness he is building this moment.

Freshness

My wife Jill has taken to hiding things from me, often in the freezer. Leftover pizza, the house phone, Oreos, memories, the mystery of who I am. Getting started each morning is a challenge. Where are those personal goals I wrapped so carefully in foil and dated? And the canister from behind the flour, where I kept my youthful cunning?