Sittin' in a Snow Globe

I was caught looking sad.
I didn't mean for it to happen.

I was in a room with many people.
There were conversations
going on in all directions.

Their words were snow in a globe,
everywhere and nowhere.
I sat very still.

So much had gone
so quickly wrong,
I was thinking about nothing.

That's when the kid came up
and said, You look sad.
The globe shook.

Words had no function.
I smiled as millions of flakes
swirled around us.

Bridge Building

Long before he was able to determine
the distance of grief, or to measure
the weight of well timed words,
my young son came into the kitchen
where I sat on the floor,
head in hands, and he told me,
I'm sorry about your friend, Daddy.
I looked up and thanked him.
We smiled at one another
as the sunlight built a bridge
on the tile between us.

Transition

When he sat down on his skateboard
propped on a curb
near the end of the summer of his 14th year,
the sun had nearly set
behind the rows of suburban homes.

In this golden half-light
his friend Matt passed him
a cool can of beer. 

Looking skyward,
he took a drink, his first,
not realizing that,
though this was a beginning,
it was also an ending.

Last Year's Rock-n-Roll

The left ear is ringing again.
It's not like sleigh bells, the doorbell,
nor a heavy tolling church bell.

It is more like constant high-
pitched feedback, a guitar amp
cranked up and gone wrong.

When I set my beer on the table
by the stage, next to the stacked speakers
at hundreds of shows, over dozens

of years, I failed to consider
this consequence.  If you were put off
by my inattention today,

I apologize.
It's not you, only last year's rock-n-roll
in my head.

The Kids Are Alright

In the quiet hours of morning, say
between five and seven o'clock
when the bitter wind blows dusty snow
like so many stars into the streetlights,
and a cup of coffee tastes like all you need,
when I hear my son giggle in his sleep
so I know that everything is alright,
and the cats don't say a word, only
stare at me like they've been waiting
the last eight hours or so with a hope
that I'll fill up the food bowl, just then,
in the quiet hours of morning,
everything is alright.

Borrowed Time (or The Lifespan of Belief)

Two days before Christmas,
with the scent of ginger in the air,
the 7 year old weighed in

while making cookies,
"That Santa Claus at school
was a fake."

Snow swirled outside the window.
My wife stopped stirring, and the lights
on the tree momentarily dimmed.

"Why is that," I asked.
"His belt was different
than when I saw him before."

"I think it was the real Mrs. Claus, though."
"Right on," I said, as my wife
went back to stirring the dry ingredients.

She and I glanced at one another, and
smiled weakly, with the knowledge
that we are now on borrowed time.

The Day When Sitting in a Driveway Felt Like a Miracle

I grabbed a chair from the garage,
and set it in the driveway facing southwest.

It was 5:30 pm in November.  A sunset
played around with the idea of blue and pink,
made black silhouettes of tens of thousands
of seemingly intertwined branches.

The silhouettes pulsed like veins.

I followed a sparrow with my eyes, then
I thought of north, the tilt of the earth,
and I saw myself from space, sitting there
in that lawn chair while the sun shone
on the southern hemisphere and our planet
deliberately spun, hurtling through space
like a misguided sparrow.

Then, all of a sudden,
I was in the driveway again.
Sunset had ended.
My hands were cold.
I took a breath.