HOW FAR WOULD YOU WALK

There’s a gate across the path now

Horse high, bull strong  

No parking 

perch or pickerel 

No people

in the pond

Fine okay the rose can stay

But the rice has got to go 

Not near the empty houses 

Don’t let there be a ripple 

In the glass when they get back 

Don’t let them hear your laughter 

Floating sweet across the cove

night swimming 

Is a battle cry  

And lonely loves a fight 

Feel free to stand on shore though, weeping 

They’ll ignore you there 

Like they do the wailing loon 

I’ve built empty houses too

And sometimes I still throw punches 

Like I’m waking from a war

And sometimes I even miss it 

We’ve lost the family photo 

We’d die to see just one last time 

to show the kids, you know?

So we turn our turtle island 

Into a private little stage 

And try to set the scene 

Success does not stand still, though 

Living targets shift their weight 

So aiming can’t be true 

Because we’re breathing 

We stamp our feet at sunset 

For being peach instead of plum 

What year was that anyways 

Where’s that child even gone

Have you ever tried to tug the rope of poison ivy 

from snaking through the rock wall round your home?

Our dreams are married to memory like that 

But there are acorns stashed in every crack

And they will sprout

Most words should be verbs, I think 

Nouns trick us into knowing

Instead of sitting down to watch 

And see

the mountain never done

If you’ve waded into the bog

it’s loud it’s not a finished thing 

it took you in 

forgot your name 

and kept on being 

There’s birth beneath the old growth 

Death already in the seed 

you can’t keep life from water 

With a gate 

Like you can’t keep deer from running 

How far will I walk 

To get home 

If I fall through the ice 

and drown for the empty houses

maybe then they’ll let me swim