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The Hole

 

I looked when we buried you.

Should have never done that.

Now I know how far away you are.

How deep in the earth you dropped.

Must have been fifteen, twenty feet.

Low enough to bury mom on top.

The fall was enough to kill a man.

I felt ill while looking in the hole.

Sometimes I think of you down there.

All that dirt and distance between us.

Just like when you were here.





The Books in His Library

 

 

He stares at them, spine after spine,

and wonders, why do they stick around?

 

Surely by now they must understand

he does not intend to read any of them.

 

And all those women he let slip away—

that he thought he was too serious for

 

or lost to pen a few flabby paragraphs—

where are they now? And with whom?

 

Well, at least they knew how to take a hint

because women are smarter than sonnets,

 

as Shakespeare would surely admit,

if he wasn’t busy shouldering Tolstoy

 

into the also too-verbose Joyce Carol Oates.

He pulls down a book, shoves it right back,

 

runs his fingers down the row of spines

like a piano player finishing with a flourish.

 

He’s spent a lifetime building this library,

so many shelves, so many volumes,

 

page after page of words, words, words,

when the only one that lasts is goodbye.

 

 

 

Dog

 

 

Chained to a pole

He ran back and forth

In a wide semi-circle

Each time he saw us

 

Digging his claws in

Churning the dirt

No grass would grow

Anywhere he ran

 

When he died we buried

Him right in the middle

Of the smile he made

On the lawn of our lives