the date returns more quickly each year
a squeaky hinge to remind you
as if you would ever forget
half a lifetime ago
a pre-sunset boat cruise
up and down a river not known for romance

decades after the last fire
decades before fish from its waters
would be safe to eat / never safe
for the fish
it’s not about a yacht called Heartbreak
Hotel / or is it

it’s not about sisters bonding / or is it
not the other Elvis headlining Nautica Stage
not the DJs or cousins of DJs
dancing to an opening band
no one would accuse
of being a dance band

a daydream first mapped out
in a New York City brownstone
it’s not about the City / it always is
a lead singer that leaps off the stage
even you yawn a little
telling the story / Minnesota boys

you’ve reduced that one
to dredge found
in the bottom of a drained glass

everything flows back to that river
you took for granted then
cannot stop thinking about now
the real hero / crooked
with its jawbone exposed
and recovering / let’s hope / in time

I find my spot
near the pool table
in a room empty of people
leafy green pals everywhere

a seemingly neverending
flame in the transparent fireplace
even on a hot Friday night
the sun won’t go down for hours

I know a little about being
permanently see-through
have been telling all
with my face since birth

Saturday morning south of downtown
they do the nitro cold brew here
I’ve been waiting for the season
to fully kick in / the cool froth

smooths over the edges of a long week
coffee ice cream colored of course

over and over again
I have professed my love
to this month that holds so much
promise I thought would be kept

the way NCB lives up to its beauty
as a taunt to all those wasted
sips / the ones I thought I would get
to keep along with the blue hued awe

the opposite
of any December girl’s
innate darkness
the elongated light
signals freedom
from the classroom

let the day
lilies school you
to stay in the moment
brightly without
a hint of chalk
or radiator hiss

still scolding
so many decades
after the fact
when facts still
got factored into it
without irony

o June
month that sways
me / slays me
loves me / is above
me / grows in me
rows away from me

o June
month that brings
evening swims
in an everlasting
civil twilight
long drives

across Pennsylvania
to reach the Jersey shore
before weekend traffic
clogs anticipation
with boredom
and paternal fury

o June
month that brings
my mother home
for the first time
my niece too
on another 6/6

that asks us
to celebrate fathers
even though the name
whispers be sacred
to Juno / even when
fathers have lost

their minds
and died
and all that potential
of a life
dissolves into
broken promises

tonight
let the hell
strip beach roses
fill us
with the fragrance
of delicious amnesia

the way her empathy flows
in elongated shadows in any light

to envy the waves
or particulate mix
of charismatic morning dew

is too crass
even for me

even the ancient Pando
in all its trembling
massive root system glory

would trust her approach
it’s really just one system after all

those crooked pines
in the crooked forest
would straighten up to greet her

this left hand relaxes
into the hinted presence of such awe

she watches the woman water
potted plants on the stoop
in the pouring rain

an indoor ghost garden leaves traces
on the ceiling / an enclosed atrium
aches for its missing awe

a preserved moss wall
in any color merely represents
never reveals the true river

will it stop / it doesn’t stop
Lola on the Lake from burning
to the ground / Tin Fish phantom

from another wet spring
a bite grabbed / he brought the dog
one more walk around the lake

some histories too burdened with slag
are not worth rescuing
from the flood

he will know when
she finds relief
stops blaming
the sky
stands beneath
his favorite ash
and laughs
at the sight
of all
those carvings
exposing them
she knows now
trees prefer
a gentle touch
without risk
of tattoo

Illegible scrawl creates a collision
on a freakishly cold, rainy morning
in mid-May.

She wears a knit cap. Tree pollen
ruins her for anyone
who crosses this crooked line.

Nothing against those blooming
northern pin oaks. Misery clears
an unwanted swath

through an urban forest
of steet signs and boulevard droops.
How did she get from tree

lawn to boulevard? By way of berm
to hellstrip to swale to snow shelf
on the verge of bursting forth

along a line of maidenhair trees,
dewy green blades might reply.

Extreme weather cleaves another
station where she might have met you
during a calmer time.

A crawler reaches for the sky
so that vegetables with dirt on them
might take us the rest of the way.

In this version, she retreats
from guitar strums,
the plaintive crack
of a worn voice,
to write a letter
to her 27-year-old self:

How many babies won’t you have?
How long will you stay
in one place?

A voice in some messier version
gives her permission
to let the questions dangle
precariously from her lower lip.
Whispers from another river
elevate her view

of all that high water danger.
She wants to release it
to a more natural shape and flow.

Another version
will emerge truer
with more nuanced
section cuts
in an even darker ink,
if she can wait
just a little longer.

she keeps coming to you
in a dream fog
to show you where

the streetcars used to run
around a sharp bend
the hill so much steeper

in the slumbering mind
you know she’s wrong
you remember those tracks

mapping a different route
on another street / neither of you
alive when buses replaced trams

in another city
in another state
in another dream

you ride the Rapid
downtown / it will remain
the Terminal Tower

in your mind / dare you say heart / she nods when you laugh at yourself
all the protesting

may have been valid
but the crooked river
is slowly being set free