What Did It

Four years ago, maybe to the day,
Just a regular night between
Christmas and New Year's Eve,
I'd been feeling very low for very long,
After some drinks we walked out into
The cold night laughing just a couple
Of blocks down the icy sidewalk from
The next bar and you took my arm

Return

Home from a business trip
where I stayed in a hotel suite
and my meals were reimbursed
back to this house nearly out
of heating oil and the stress
of bills, debt and holidays.

I stand looking through the
kitchen window into the
backyard and something
seems unreal.

Holiday Business

Write the mundane,
draw up the agreement,
try to get through Christmas
both solvent and guilt free,
clean the grime,
expell the roommate,
reduce yourself
to solitude or become
a motivational speaker
(which will require
dentistry and confidence)

Everybody knows
it never works
says the song
something about the
door that shuts just before
you get to the dream
you see

Sparse snowflakes
are falling, but I'm
flying to a warmer city
for work today after I pack
after I stop procrastinating

When I think of you now
it's remembering a tender
conversation on a car ride
just before impact

Status Change

Last night I could feel a sort of tingle
working its way up my nose.
This morning my sinuses are filling.
Here comes the fun.

Wrestling

Losing track of money and bills
receiving telephoned reminders,
e-mails, thanking me for being part of
the family - the part of the family that
pays twenty percent interest. I took a
walk around the hospital in the early afternoon,
alone, wordlesss, breathed the cold air
and returned to my desk with red cheeks.

Houston #3

Walking to work in the dark in the midst of this Houston cold snap. People of means are wearing hats, winter coats and gloves. It's about 42 degrees. The darker figures without means wear blankets in doorways. The police cleared them from their little city of tents under the bridge a few months ago but many have apparently moved right back in, and now it's become a locally talked about civil rights case. They're building lots of condos here but not for them.

Houston #2

I sweat through my new suit walking the eight or ten blocks to work before sunrise. During the course of the day the temperature drops maybe twenty-five degrees. This causes some alarm among the locals like a blizzard might in New England. For me, it's the gift of an October afternoon.

Houston #1

It's humid here and warm compared to the twenty-eight degrees I left in Boston this morning. Checked into a suite paid for by the company, something new to me, then I did what I always do. More like what always used to do when i had the chance to travel- go down to the street pick a direction and start walking.

When I do that, I try to listen to what the place is telling me. I let it take me where it wants me to go, let it show me what it wants me to see. 

Morning Chat

I stopped feeding the birds
when the single male
ruby throated hummingbird
moved off in the Fall.
Last night I dreamed two
female cardinals were speaking
to me through the slider
waiting for me to resume.