Kitchen Porch Repairs

[Norma photo]

Replacing purlins, posts,
Where rot appears most,
One climbs onto a house's
Heart from here with tools
And tapes, embraced
Finally by weathered bones
Where the world chews.
One reviews foxing soffits,
Neglect and all distraction
From its purpose --
To protect, to protect
Where life goes.
It holds onto one until
The job is done.

Random Effect

After showering, I
Put on clean underpants
And found one of
Her socks inside them.
Chance, yes, a random
Effect of tumble-dry,
Yet, after forty-one
Years, it still
Makes me happy.

Don't Look Up

[Norma photo]
It's not only signs
And portents; we
Need to know when
Something, even
Something remarkable,
Means nothing.
Recovery is not always
Restoring what one has been.
It is always discovery
Of what one can be.
Heavens may open,
Angels flock clouds and
Armageddon ring.
Leave me alone, I'm
Fixing something.

Genie's Curriculum

[NASA photo]
Incomplete training,
So we don't live in
A silver lamp, but
It's been a good
Weekend --friendly
Arms stirring
Gasses into stars.
It, unrolled in roaring
Night, includes us.
For this we
Need a lamp?

Grampas

[Norma photo]
We are here--
avô, ông nội--
Sharing beer
Where you fall
Asleep on your
First birthday.
We stay in that
Place defined in
Twilight or dawn
Behind you as
Life goes on.

M For Memory

[Daughter photo: our back porch]

Grampa's pistola, Alfred's
Watch --gold-- a
Folding brass rule
In a dimming past,
A netting shuttle I
Saw whittled out of
Shingle under shady
Trees sees me, and
There's sissors stabbed
Into Portuguese cork
And a box of pins,
This is how settlement
Begins: someone
Builds a shadow,
A shadowbox, and under
Glass each soul looks
Out, out of the past.
Only in reflection do
They see outlines
Of things to be --
Like us, like
You and me.

Re: Russia claims US interconti​nental military tunnel complex hit by series of secret nuclear explosions

I have listened to
The strange noises
Recorded in this report
And they are the same
Sound my bathroom makes
Late at night because
There is a moose in it.
It is a very friendly
Moose but still, I'm
Beginning to regret
I ever let it in.