My wife hates landscapes & long books.

I imagine her rewritten as a dark-eyed junco

In the snow under the shadow of a large spruce,

Her wing extended harbouring a solitary fledgeling,

Which is unusual, thin legs of weeds & grass dangle

From the point of her exquisite & delicate beak.

Daily routine in the Catskills:

Check the WIFI connection.

Duck & dodge The American Beech,

Musclewood & Birch eventually blown down,

Besieged in barrage of ice & wind.

Electricity comes & goes

& there is a waiting that occurs

That is central to the heart

Of insignificance & distraction.

The white table glows in the room

& on the table there is a camera:

A Hasselblad from Gothenburg,

Sweden, blessed w The Gota Alv,

Best known for industry & trade,

& served as model & inspiration for

The Pony Express snaking its way

From St. Joseph, Missouri

Through Olef Bergstrom’s Nebraska

to Sacramento, California

Where I drove a 1974 Volvo

Into the ground…

I’ve been @ The London Motel for three days

In the corner room that looks out over Freeway 99

& I see-saw from window to peephole

To see who is wandering by out on the street.

An Endless Parade of Motherfuckers

In the words of Michael Chabon

Who was writing about Berkeley

Which isn’t far from here but might as well be…

My daughter was four when we were attacked

By wasps in the front yard of our house

in Upstate New York

Where we weathered the early years of her life,

The Pandemic & my father’s death.

I slam the fifty down above the left corner pocket of the black Dynamo right in the face of the guy drawing back to take a shot. “Fifty bucks for next. Here’s another twenty says you miss that shot.”

Quinn leans like a dark totem in the corner. She is slumped over & smoking & the smoke is everywhere all around her. She has on the wobbly table in front of her: Empties. Shot glasses & pint glasses. She is holding a pint in the hand that isn’t stove-piping the Pall Mall & it’s half full & she lifts it to her tortured lips & downs it & slams it back to the table scattering ashes from the heap of butts in the ashtray.

Here’s how it is w fathers: Even after you have treated them like absolute shit & they, in turn, have been pretty hard on you & generally been someone you don’t like too much, they show up @ the ICU & wait in the waiting room looking worried as hell. They might even cry if you or anyone else was around to see it. Maybe they do anyway.

Not long after my mother died, she began to visit me frequently. There are many common misconceptions when it comes to, & pardon me for using this term, “paranormal activity” & one of them is ghosts, spectres, wraiths, phantoms & what-have-you only visit @ night. Or they arrive, when they do, w some cryptic message, some mystery for us to solve, some wrong to be righted. My experience has been a little different…

Every time I think back on it…everything was a mess.

I was born @ Saint Agnes Hospital, August 2nd, 1969…