The puffy white shapes move eastward steadily
toward the ball park beneath the summer sun and the sky's blue
their bottoms grayed as if dirtied by what they pass above.

No store, no school, no church, no house
no space however named, built or furnished
snags and holds a single one.

The clouds are travelers passing without pause
unimpressed with the sign that calls this sleepy town
America's City.

Nearby, on a highway as stark
and bare as bone, the careering cars
speed by like a shoal of salmon in a fish ladder.

Once reserved for the famous,
they are shared more freely now.
Of course, we like some instinctively:
the Great, the Good, the Merciful.
While others offer a pleasing sheen:
the Wise, the Brave, the Pious.
Or, offer some useful information:
Fork beard, Ill-advised, Cross-eyed.
Then there are the harshly descriptive:
Moneybags, the Impotent, Dog Face.
Some we imagine learning to accept:
Old, Bald, Fat, Inept.
But some we never will:
Shit head, Liar, Ass hole.
Fearing, with good reason, that this
will be how we are remembered.

This was the life I intended,
the events and the spaces between.
This was the excitement of serendipity
and discoveries, both welcome and not.
This was the idiocy of youth and the redeeming
subtle wisdom sometimes beneath its failures.

This was not the incense-perfumed credo,
the frog march to an altar or a license office,
or any kind of neat, expected career path.
It was definitely not time spent primarily watching.
In no way did it accept the suggested way.

Despite the the fields of squandered opportunities
and its beshit monuments to prideful choice
it was never a temptation to turn from
the ornery path I determined to break.

It was a night on a hilltop under a blanket of stars.
It was following the butterfly's pulsing wings to the bush.
On a dangerous flight, it was peeking through the black-out flap
at the ocean of snow-capped peaks tumbling to the horizon.
In Cairo's City of the Dead, it was a straight return kick
of an offside soccer ball to a pack of cheering local boys.
For a time, it was walking beside the Potomac with an autistic son,
as if the nightly ritual and the exercise might make some difference.
Once, it was saying no to the importunate grand panjandrum because
what he wanted couldn't be done in time despite his promises.

I was always the fool with opinions and books
and often blind to the ordinary and the obvious.
But I was not the politician, the pastor, the public figure
excusing the inexcusable to please a hot-tempered public.
Never a follower, so never following the bad.

Everything draws attention to her
here where she reclines with hands crossed
framed by an open casket that in turn is
flanked by pedestals holding flower arrangements
with her grieving daughters in a line at its foot.

She has joined her older sisters now,
my mother and godmother,
where time and the world have no writ.
Hers is now the beauty of innuendo:
the beauty that lives only in memory
after the song has ended.

But the living gathered here are incorrigible.
They go on living as long as they can.
They talk, plan and even joke quietly
while she lies nearby, deaf now to
their insistent song of life.

Along a wall, on tables and on easels,
are the images from her life: husband, mother,
children, grandchildren, siblings, cousins,
reminders of religion, emblems of heritage.
One, striking in black and white, features her alone
with tousled hair and attitude - a film noir sylph.

Predictably, my mind turns to a picture that isn't here.
In it the three sisters, young women tightly grouped,
are dressed in their Sunday best. Their loving gazes
focused down on the baby my mother holds there at
the center in a moment finally now beyond recall.

Most of us know how it feels.
It's how we always want to be:
our lives a succession of golden moments
without even the occasional shadow.

It's kittens lapping milk in a wide bowl,
the child given an unexpected new toy,
a young dog chasing a ball across a field,
the man finding a bonus in with his pay.

But it's hard to acquire or even
to cultivate dependably. Circumstances change.
Accidents occur. The unexpected big bad
lands on us and flattens it.

And we have to wonder
whether we'd ever even work,
much less create the new,
if we lived secure with it..

The trouble with happiness is knowing the things
that it alone and unalloyed cannot teach.
In a life spent snug in continual sunshine
would we even suspect the value of shade?

Shaded by a tree in summer green
I sit on a low bench facing out to
a row of volleyball courts below Federal Hill
and a collar of pavement beyond, filled with
walkers and joggers, that rings the spiffily
refurbished and tourist-ready Inner Harbor.

Baltimore is a historic city. But here today
it wants to live in the present, draw visitors,
offer water taxis and tour boats, invite scenic
excursions and provide accommodations for
all the needs and desires of the throng
who have come to walk about this August day.

Below, at the volleyball nets the players are
raucous, quick to dive for a save or cheer a score.
Along the walk, infants in strollers doze under shade.
Their sun-struck parents are content to amble unless forced
to deal with the running and antics of bigger children.
On the hill, a sudden breeze stirs the leaves above me.

Far off, birds shotgun up. They see the future.

Be smart, my love.
The world would miss
that nose
those teeth
those lush
and lovely lips.
You need to wear a mask.

Be safe, my love.
On a walk
in a bus
at a church
out in public
while shopping.
You need to wear a mask.

Be calm, my love.
Watching news
cleaning house
cooking food
sorting pictures
texting messages.
All work OK without a mask.

Soon enough, my love,
none will have to ask
to see again
that nose
those teeth
those lovely lips
hidden, once, behind a mask.

Will we make it? I ask
after we finish yet another quarrel.
Do you love me? You reply
without directly answering me.
What was love once
now coffined in doubt.
Eventually, the answers clarify:
We won't and Not enough.
And I so left, hoping to live
a less sad story.

Wherever we go they are with us.
Always they are where we were,
where we are now,
where we're going to,
even where we've never been.

With time, some acquire an importance,
patina or emanation they did not have
when first visited.

Where I stood in a driveway
watching my father inspect the car
after my mother's traffic accident.

Where I toddled across a lawn
to the low hedge where
my butterfly alights.

Where I sat with my father
in a cavernous movie theater
watching a man cross above Niagara.

Where I knelt in a pew
for the Christmas Eve Mass
as the lights went off at midnight.

However many places we visit,
there is always somewhere, out of sight,
a grave that waits patiently
throughout a life, however long,
for its mute, inglorious occupant.

I will not, as some do, disappear myself
in a slow folding in. And I will not dismantle myself
with drugs and bad habits. I will follow the news
and keep current with the latest medical advice.
But I will not be lured by passing fads. And I will
not confuse the grand possible achievement with
its more likely modest cousin. I will tame my mind
to model excitement-in-repose, like a hungry but
obedient dog at meal time. I will definitely not be
the dangerous carousel wheel sprung loose and rolling
down a hill. Nor will I be the merry-go-round moving
much too fast that will not stop. Rather, I will seek
for both a clarity and a calm that seem improbable
but that may not be. My heart, schooled by adversities,
will wear its best smile whatever the result.

Too often hidden in shoes, socks, boots and other apparel.
Too soon forgotten when we are rewarding ourselves,
the often stated "take a load off" notwithstanding.
Our feet are too easily neglected by a footless imagination
made uneasy by how they anchor us in the world.

Yet there are the crazy-high stiletto heels
some women wear that need feet to fill them.
And the Chinese once venerated the golden lotus,
a foot bound at birth to grow to a point that a woman
could not walk or even stand comfortably on.

With the ease of habit we ignore their finer qualities,
preferring to speak of kicking into gear, kicking
a door in, or kicking at heaven. But without deft feet
who would ever execute a jete, dazzle with a pirouette
or power through the acrobatics of a breakdance.

all these lives
lived like decisions
arrived at as one
small step after another
like the very old out walking
with a slow but steady gait
and passed without notice
on the city's busy sidewalks
who nonetheless arrive at
their destinations and who
must be acknowledged

To the relatives, friends and loved ones
of the family that perished in a house fire
to the random pedestrian victim of a drive-by shooting
to the school band whose bus flew off a high bridge
to the manic man who fell or jumped beneath the train
to the pilgrims packed on a boat that sank at sea
to the refugee children starved in tents and field hospitals
to the laborer falling twenty stories from a defective platform
to the people in a chair or on a bed whose hearts stopped
and all to the incalculable numbers lost every waking day.

Of course they do,
those tender hearts of ours.
But they are seldom gone for long
because those lost souls are for us
no more than items in the news.

Our hearts do indeed go out
to console those afflicted with grief.
But they mostly want to find happiness
until that time, sudden or prolonged,
when, finally, they themselves go out.

It doesn't come with stories, wounds or even baggage.
Onlookers might mistake it for adventure, or even fun.

It assembles itself from the circumstances of the here and now,
choosing to preference some things over others. And why not?

It wants to build carefully, durably and with some flair,
but doesn't need to beat its chest and clamor to be heard.

It accepts that there will be flaws, omissions, things overlooked,
believing that all lives, however curated, experience some of these.

It assumes that, in time, with routines established and habits formed,
a calm will prevail and the premonition of catastrophe will wane.

And it will begin to hope this time to finally close the gap
between success imagined and success enjoyed.

During the day, passing clouds will dapple the green lawn
providing intermittent shade for

pilgrim ants. Among the flowers, the hovering, buzzing bees
will visit only those buds that most

attract them.

On a street beyond the high fence, people will move about
doing chores and pursuing goals

with their mobility unremarked. With luck, a stalking cat with
feral eyes will occasionally stop and crouch

beside my headstone.

At noon the sky here is a pale, chilly blue
that two circling raptors etch hunting for
food. Nearby, the trees still mostly wear their
motley of autumnal colors.

In Baltimore, a fire overnight destroyed
a house but woke the sleeping family
and chased them barefoot into the unseasonably
cold night they would remember however

long they live. South of here, a man steering
a horse-drawn buggy died after a pickup truck
crossed the centerline for no apparent reason.
The driver fled.

Some who look see the seasons change
in specifics, feel different weather approaching,
wonder about what comes next, quite easily
beguiled to try and guess their future.

For me, today may promise that winter follows soon.
But yesterday was where hope and heat was.
Having found no acceptable exit,
I step gingerly now down the corridor of years.