keep walking

little dust devils     kick up at your feet     whirlwinds ankle deep      take the most delightful route home     fill your noggin with snow     or some other calm mental weather     devise new myths and religions where necessary     recall vanished streets and meeting places     tell the monk in persimmon-colored robes      approaching from the opposite direction     singing with his mouth full of donated bread      what a relief it is      that his library of guesses about the future is all wrong     yours too     o holy mendicant what a marvel you are       skipping and stumbling      as gradually the countryside becomes more rolling     an unearned sense of familiarity blooms    is he an incorrect reincarnation of you     and you of him      in that each manifests     what was banished in the other     he smells of manhood     all day he worked harvesting pungent herbs     is it always true that love is better than nothing     if something wondrous starts to happen will you let it     is it too soon to tell the story of you two     working silently together      to bury small dead animals you find by the roadside      mice and birds      where the earth is soft enough to receive them     soft as a rough hug     you listen to him recite a few words    over hurriedly dug tiny graves      what you feel you can't say     his verses mean no more than faded illustrations     in some book from childhood      which is to say                                          everything  

ode to the pillow

Must a pillow, that cushiony head-welcomer, always concede to our cheeks? Can it nurse no higher ambition than to impersonate a marshmallow? Might a pillow never stand up for itself? Does it possess no intrinsic personality? Must it shun sharpness, remain nothing but slump and mush, never displaying its anger or will? The sad fact seems to be that for all its virtues the pillow lacks backbone. Smooth and cool to the touch, clad in a fresh pillow slip, my pillow for tonight exhales a whiff of the steam iron's disciplinary rigor, but transformed, its cotton sweetening the iron's hot metal breath—the breath of a prison matron—into something more like the breath of a meadow. A shock absorber, a pillow is more forgiving than a priest (much is spilled onto it: think dream leakage). And a pillow functions well as a confessional. The sick and the helpless may be buoyed up, as if by a life raft, while clinging to their pillow, or they may be smothered with one into a final goodnight. Like the uncomplaining potato, the pillow is willing to take shape according to people's needs, enduring mashing after mashing. Pillows have no sense of their own splendor. Employed as ineffectual weapon a pillow can of course burst and snow feathers, drizzle fluff or rain buckwheat husks...and herein lies the pillow's mysterious connection to weather. It's believed pillows subsist on a diet of fog and cloud, though no one has ever seen them eat.