Eight a.m.
I will not check my email yet.
Why risk bad news this early?
That’s all the news I seem to get,
And ads both crass and squirrely.
I’ll have a cup of tea first, then
Go strolling in the park,
Perhaps get home by half-past ten,
Or—why not?—wait till dark
To open up the in-box, trash
What’s sad or ill-conceived,
And hope to find one tiny stash
I’m glad to have received.
Old, Improved
Please rest assured all women I have known
improved me. Even she who said she’d had
a change of heart. And she who placed a stone
inside my chest. And she—and this was bad—
who told me she felt sorry for me. Why
betray myself like this, expose these hurts?
Because I welcome ridicule? To sigh
for sympathy at how disaster flirts
with flushed young men? Compete with sonneteers,
those lovelorn, loveless, worthless cavaliers?
No. Just to show I shed my share of tears,
all long since dried, it seems a hundred years.
Yes, dried. Evaporated. Lost to air.
And wiped away afresh when thoughts tend there.
Sprinting against Time
To slow down time, go running in the rain.
If possible start out in sunshine, no
cloud in the sky, then watch a fast freight train
of thunderheads approach, an eerie glow
about them, and spy lightning bolts that know
your number and may call it in a flash.
You would not see yours coming, nor be there
to hear the toll of thunder for you crash.
Your slow jog will become a desperate dash,
and every stride will last about an hour
of wet anxiety, with every splash
a time-lapse shot. You want to stop and cower.
But time would speed up then. You’ve got to flee,
to stretch time via relativity.