I’ve been feeling like a suburban home,
family-bound, dog-eared, cat-haired, dust-bunnied.
The floor sprawls, covered in lines of loosely connected
bits of string and tape, shoes without mates,
things without name or purpose or place,
shoved in too many drawers, beside stray Tupperware lids
unsure where home is.
I’ve been thatching a wayward garden,
long since surrendered her virginity to the fate of
time and neglect. Her gnarled roots now
the bed of fools – those with nothing to do
but wait for another dry Spring and
long, parching Summer to follow.
I’ve lost the memory of how to cultivate in her
whatever tempts or teases a solitary bud.
I’ve lost my place in the song,
where happy, drooling drunks drop their lines
of sprawling melody, disconnected from time or tune
or taste, but dripping, soaked in the solicitude of friends.
Old lyrics lie waiting for my attention,
faithful old soldiers of forgotten wars,
older still, fought on fields among the family
of tables and tumbling talk, well-practiced lies
in well-memoried songs.
I’ve been acting like a poem in progress –
a toss-about of lost words, tongue-tombs tied
together by accident in a free-falling frenzy.
Outdoor syntax lost in the mall,
painted-on ivory-tower lips for her rent-a-friend parties.
The ironies, playground of op-eds and writers of no
fixed address, wasted in wordless
sentences no one can read.
But the best poems are never really
finished
A fire makes its heartening presence known, tucked under the hearth upon which hang individual stockings and an antique clock I inherited from my Dad. A delightfully chaotic looking tree, augmented with bobbles made by growing dexterity of little boys’ fingers, the accumulated little boy detritus of Christmas past. They are now men of humour, virtue, and creativity. 
