you can kiss yourself,

stick to side streets.

carrots hold cosmos . . .

I do not think that Spring

exists amongst the beige

and grey. 

The bulbs trapped ‘neath

fractal crust as Winter has his

way.

In the available light

coming through two windows large and curtained

on the wall behind the bed

I see from across the room just the top of your head . . .

Here

summer is as brief as youth.

Winter is an uninvited guest

who settles in to stay . . .

we said we wouldn’t but here we are

dippin’ into the trailer stash! . . .

The ancient guardians of the big lake

Sometimes seen

More often heard . . .

Hidden pathways off the open road,

secret footprints follow where they lead.

Children often wonder where they go,

they trace the imprints left in fallen snow . . .

You wrote a poem to free your soul

Correspondence, you called her . . .

I’m trying not to hold too tightly 

to these seventy-four miles between 

Superior and Bayfield Wisconsin 

beside my ninety-two-year-old mother . . .

Bug bites on bare bum . . .

How stupid I am

To yearn for you . . .

six lips flap, bombastic hip hop 

beats itself, bottles clink glasses 

and glasses smash the hipsters—

it’s eardrum gymnastics! . . .