Another very short song

Little folk song.

we should read more essay

certain things like
david foster wallace on john
updike and the way
you realize the peculiarity of the american
brand of loneliness and how ugly
solitude looks from outside
the narrative you catch yourself whispering
to your internal protagonist

and here in another world
lewis describes a beam of sunlight
in an old shed
and then the stepping up and looking
right through the old roof to trees and sun and sky
and also
how it is for God
who has to live with each one of us
outside and in
and still to find us lovable
and i want to set down the book
and run to each person i care for
and some i don't but would like to give another try

and i would be shy to
give understanding a go, now
but i believe it may be that
there is a reason God is invisible
but with his presence free

today, when we left the city

you were commenting
on the little pieces of life that we see
of the people we pass
while on the overpass
that overlooks the Minneapolis skyline
an obese child was skipping
with ungainly joy
and i don't want to mention the obesity
but it made the gladness of her jumps
so pure

we were leaving
out on the open road
headed west toward the crops
of corn and soy
and soy and corn and corn
the wind had the first coolness of autumn
and the last dampness of summer
it made the skin of my arm
feel like a very soft rubber

when we stopped to hike
we took the overlook trail
the trail that nobody wants
because of the two trails you can take
it is the one that goes on, dead-ending
further up the hill

and it doesn't show
its blooming prairie flowers
until you come out into the sun
and the tall grass and the glacial rocks
the bluestem, the prairie turnip, the worn
out coneflowers and the locust
washed against us like a course dry tongue
where we lay at the top facing straight into sky
and i think it wondered
about this little piece of life that was us
and it seemed glad
to see our joy.

why they brought the extra microphone

it was just to have a simple oooh
a sort of note
that is so very expressive
it requires
a sideways slant and swing
it holds the place of words
we don't quite know

what are the things
one doesn't know how to put
where do they reside?

they seem to be attracted to your hair
lost thoughts and ones
i finally gave up on
they like to sing
the backing parts of countless pop songs
at the slightest breeze
shoo bop
na na na

after the rain, in his favorite time of night

my son
has crept down the stairs
and sidled
beside me

how well he already understands
as he says
looking at the night
through the open window
screen beaded with the remains
of the rain

as he says
of the crickets and the hush
hush of the passing tires
that it is
his favorite time of night

how well he understands
this buys him
several moments before
i can stand to send him back to bed.

and calm the placid afternoon. the house you grew up in. peter, paul, and mary.

it is the painting

of a sailing ship with sails

distended above the sea

frothy as a coca-cola

santa claus

it is the classic way

the sun shines across

roads that head toward the corn

and the way you will sometimes

realize or not realize

the love you bear 

when the air smells like green and pollen

yes i do understand

how this all seems

so placidly bourgeois
placed in matte-board
of the color mauve
and a frame of sandy oak
comment on tannins and other things
we do not understand
you can feel for yourself how it puckers

you can feel for yourself how sunlight
sometimes is not real sunlight
like peter, paul, and mary
how can any day be as beautiful as this when
measured in the angle of your eyes
toward a spot how many hours away?

it is the painting
above distended couch fabric
it is the way that nice things go
the way that florals make no scenery
and the patterns feature ribbons or
figures of people at windows where
sunlight could not be threaded
and little clocks of blue and lampposts and things
are papered down the walls.

anthony, saint of lost things

picture this

it is the mississippi

below the falls of st. anthony

like a lady descends the stair

she is old fashioned, she

pulls at her dark skirts

white ruffles of her petticoats flow delicate

and dangerous

and there is a certain spot

that may catch your eye

where the water dips impossibly down

like a spot where a thing

may be lost

and it seems impossible

new water without a new course

and even the undulations

the perturbations of her descending

are like mathematical equations where you carry

long decimals until they repeat and the answer

is made up of differences that are very small

like the amount of knowing

that makes a thing turn found.

Waltz

If you can't think of something to sing, just do another whoa oh oh oh.

Waltzing

then, just as quickly as it started

we are all

save me from

the fatalist pronouncements

and then the little raindrops

fell like bells

upon the steeple of our umbrella

and under it the catch of the wind

the belief in flying

a temporary height and the ground seemed

so soft it could only be painted in little daubs

very quickly

and these could be our steps

the way we quickened and laughed

and in that first rain

there is a smell of the air of anything

anything at all at any moment

my pocketed hand

fingering a little scrap of something

some quotidian paper laundered once

or twice, the edge of it

fascinating my fingertips

and then

we were at the door and we flung it open

when you were in I stopped on the threshold

holding the collapsed

black umbrella

I shook it like an old dog.