(some haiku)

I may have trouble
getting there on time
said the rain



winter comb
black hairs grey hairs
says Goody





kid's rubber bullet
in park grasses
the gun far away





tennis court
rife with fissures
erotic realm






mouth of snow
around dry leaf
at my feet






old couple
running a day
on the church grounds






didn't talk to the stranger
but to his dog
in a lonely place






weeds frozen
in the artificial lake
a telephone book





miniature christmas tree
in the hospital room
the nurse's youth




water pretend sleeping
until a breeze finds it
in the mood




qwertyui
asdfgh
zxcvbn





turkey vultures in trash
redecorate the backyard
neighbor's christmas





ice means it
you mean it
you're not ice




magnetic hope
geese know a way
over even cold





a church consoles me
at night, empty
its missing belfry




the little spider
the thing I tried to give it
a pretend name

Rand McNally

I stop turning to others and turn to otherness
The radiators of the house wait
Here is a droplet against the window I am following
It is outside it cannot drip on this page
To make the words bleed sympathetically
Into each other and towards the edge
The torn edge
Where the paper ceases to exist
Where the page is mercifully air

A New Law of Gravity

There is this other form of gravity.
Let's call it "sympathetic gravity."
The drowned bug, so tiny, in the bathwater with you,
keeps drifting towards your leg,
anywhere on your skin
its afterlife can make contact with your life.
It creeps you out.
You scoop it up in a cup, a lonely pink cup,
and the bug corpse floats in there.
But it drifts towards the pink wall
of the plastic rinse cup
the way we put our hands out to touch
pink marble in a cemetery.
There is a pink limit that is either alive
or is felt as alive,
which is nearly the same thing.