WHERE THERE IS DOUBT, FAITH

Had any self-respecting

man of the cloth 

actually witnessed

this—ecstatic and 

innocent-as-

alabaster young friar

out there wandering 

deep in his own garden,

high on his 

hunger and preaching sweet
and ever-sweeter

sermons
to the birds—

he would have scoffed,

guffawed, pointed, and 

just about 

died 

laughing out loud—

instead of 

either by employing those 

little yellow 

canaries' favorite method—singing,

or else,

his own vastly preferred 

and time-honored way—cursed,

and tired,

and finally—of miserable
old age.

CURMUDGEON

Older Americans
are too proud
of their grandkids—

they're always taking
up way
too much
room on the sidewalk,

liking
The Beatles a
little too much,

purchasing
all the good
groceries right
before me, and single-

handedly keeping
the film industry
from being "a thing."

They insist on
taking all of their meals
on-time and
in-order—and literally

laughing
out-loud at network
television (which is
disheartening.)

They do such a
good job sticking
to a "daily routine"
that it's starting to
usurp all my
hope for the future,

and they know
to manage things like heart
conditions, stress,
and diabetes

the same way I know
how to use
a flyswatter.

Older Americans
who are too proud of
their grandkids also "don't really
like poetry." But they're careful

never to blame the authors—
yet they refuse
to lay the blame
on themselves for it, either, because

they simply haven't got the time
or the energy
to worry about things
that don't define them anymore
and—

I'm starting
to think—frankly,

neither
do I.

DHARMA

One day in late July, when the mirage
of five
o'clock in the afternoon
still looms

a huge droning
honey bee
might be the only
one who's not dreaming—

moving outward
from the center, he endeavors
to scour
the entire fortune

of the lone sun-
flower
emerging from
trilling tufts of wild dill—

there, at the still point
of the swift-turning
universe, at the realest
place in existence,

spitting and sucking,
he makes the world.

SUPERINTENDED

The message
is actually

exactly the same;
it's just that—

courage
takes

out
all these

minuscule
personal ads, whereas

fear
goes for billboards—

Maintain. Maintain.
Maintain. Maintain.

But depending
on where

you see this—it makes you
feel either

disgusted
or disgusting—

which then
makes you wish

a custodian
really did exist, so that

they
could be the one

to come down here
and plunge this

toilet
that's not flushing.

HALCYON ABSTRACT

Amid the rippling
galaxies
of white clover, spiraling
out on a
kelly green lawn

where here
and there, a few robins
go gliding,
sheathed in silence
through the
yawn of late day,

on a small blanket
littered
with the glad aftermath
of kool-aid and
cold chicken—

a drowsy ten-year-old,
Raul maybe,
hugs
and nestles
closer, and keeps hugging

his short plump abuela,
who murmurs
some soft string
of lullaby lyrics
he doesn't understand,

but which probably
translate
roughly, to—
it's true,
there's no such thing
as heaven,

and if God exists,
he is not
great. No, he isn't
great at all—

but some days, he
sure knows
how to give it
a shot.

MIRAGES

You've probably
noticed it by now—that
the best sensations

are never found
in the place where
they come from, that

the tantalizing late July sunlight
is your toughest antagonist
when you look directly at it.

You've likely felt it too,
how summer—the true season,
which you swear you've experienced,

with its ripe
tomato-red, immaculate
white of bleached,

enriched bread, and undersea
blue of doo-wop
music under poplar shade—

how it never really
comes upon you; it's always
just around that next leafy corner,

until—wait, now there it is,
back there, behind
the sepia-toned last.

And there's something
illusory too—something
of a magic trick, even to these

hazy backyard barbecues
and dizzy pool parties
with friends and neighbors

when you're disoriented,
heavy with sun
and charcoal smoke

and too hungry to notice
in the moment—how it's never
that hot dog itself

that you're smelling; it's
the fire, the supernatural
smell of ashy fat and charred metal,

and most of all, it's
those little onions—stubborn
ugly vegetables, now

translucent, tortured and sweating out
their acrid toughness—it's just onions
you're after, all along.

THE CATCH

The beginner's mind
seems like
such a hopelessly difficult thing
to come by

after Todd,
the candid landscape architect,
stands and ends
his rain-plagued tour

of the garden grounds
by stating, as if
it were fact—that
the pruned

juniper hedges
flanking the whole perimeter,
which somehow trap
and hold the spearmint

smell of summer thunder-
storms long past,
and which
somehow even manage

to ensnare the silvery
light of the moon
in a neatly repeatable
demonstration

that even the homeliest
little spider's nest
is more breath-
lessly intricate

than any
cartoon web you could
draw or
picture in your head—

obviously, just make
the whole
place—look
dated.