I ate last night’s dinner
for breakfast, wild mushrooms
in bone broth. I sat by myself
in the nook chewing,
contemplating the day.
It passed without report.
In the middle of the night
the moon made the fog
look like a stony broth,
like we were all just
floating in the soup
with our legs dangling,
no floor.
I got back into bed,
let out a hearty yawn
and thought, I must look
like my old man now:
“old age.”
They don’t matter, most of the days.
Don’t matter because we squander
them the same as water down
the drain thinking there will
always be more. The ones
we remember are for good or bad
reasons but the truth is,
most days are really both.
Most days are a mix, same
as a whole life,
water from the tap
drawn from a source unseen.
Drink.
After two weeks, the rain finally returned to Seattle. They said the chances of it staying dry this time of year are one out of 52,000. I kept a foldout chair beneath one of the pine trees and sat there most afternoons with a beer and a book, listening to the leaves drop. When I was seeing a counselor we did hypnotherapy one time, and she asked me to picture myself in the most beautiful, serene place on earth. So I said, our backyard. And she smiled and said that’s nice, because most people pick desert islands or somewhere more exotic. And then I wished I could change my mind but it was too late, we’d already started. Continue reading
On the last day before I went back to work
I lay on the sofa with my shirt off
and the morning sun coming in, playing a record,
burning incense, reading poetry.
All I had left was to clean the sheets,
cook chili for my kids,
and restock the beer.
The dog lay beside me as did my phone,
silent, too.
In the mornings it’s so dark I just lay in the den watching constellations and listening to the clocks tick, thinking any day now I’ll start work. I read about portmanteau words like brunch, Brexit, and Microsoft. The word psionics, coined in the 1950s to combine psychic with electronics from a term called psion, a person with psychic abilities. Like our cat, you can tell by the way she stares from across the room. Continue reading
I removed all evidence of Halloween except for the jolly jack o’ lantern with the little electric light. It had no amount of malice, like a kid’s happy face before they’ve learned how to sneer. I left the large plastic bat in the closet to startle someone; it’s motion-activated with the sound of screams and doors slapping shut, the occasional howl. Still I realized that this is the first year the kids didn’t want or need our company on Halloween, so Dawn and I just stayed home watching TV, tracking their geo-location with our phones. Continue reading
Lily and her friends have formed a band called Your Mom’s Ashes, but spell it in a way that bastardizes the your and ignores the possessive for the mom’s. The four of them circle our property looking creatively blocked, needing a space to work. They pause at the chicken coop and agree “we could clean it up and it would be cute,” then something about tapestries. Dawn and her mom disapprove of the name, but I’m all for it. It’s not for you, I say. It’s punk rock. Continue reading
