The afternoon before five months of cloudy weather.

Acorns and the temperature

have conspired to make barefoot

in my backyard impossible.

Migration

Bachelor buttons bloom

blue by the thousands

along the Pennsylvania turnpike.

They remind me of my grandmother

who lets them grow in driveway cracks

despite their status as a weed.

When she was a few years old

her immigrant parents moved from Massachusetts

for the factories of northern Ohio.

As she sped through Pennsylvania,

she looked out a window

at bachelor buttons by the thousands

seeds blown in a swirl of wind

toward a driveway somewhere

distant in the future.

It's about time we went into the studio to record this shit.

Some kid told me he'd seen a picture

of me standing on a countertop.

I smiled. You cannot believe everything

you see.

We should record an album together,

call it "Companionable Silence." Listeners

will find it strangely satisfying.

You see,

like a lot of people, I'm tired

of a lot of things like people who stand 

on countertops for comedic effect.

 

On days we learn to lose.

The more we tried to win,

the less likely it became.

That's the way it seemed

anyway. Don't get me wrong,

there were small victories

like "no one got hurt" and

"at least it didn't rain."

The days were beautiful,

those crisp early October

mornings of dewy grass,

mad sunlight in treetops

just beginning to scarlet.

I will always remember

the flight of the ball

over a goalkeeper

and into the side netting,

then the boy's outstretched arms

as he ran in celebration

into afternoon sun.

Sometimes that's got to be enough

a small victory

in a series of defeats.