I will write a slow poem for you
that drifts down the Mississippi
on a pontoon raft created from upcycled
piano parts and plastic milk jugs.

That seeks to be snagged
by venerable tree corpses.
That detours into the mutable thickness
of a quaking bog

where walking becomes the flipside
of a footrace, and all
the duckweed-eating turtles wear
orange ribbons on their necks.

I will become your slow
poem to recite
when everything begins
to go out of tune.

Slow down,
you move too fast.
You got to make
the morning last.

And it all unravels
into yet another
thing—
late and soon.

Wordsworth and Simon and Garfunkel
and every ekphrastic poet I know
will give me a little help
along the meandering way.

Let’s live
a slow poem life
backwards and sideways
and inside out—

giddy at the sight
of another highway
closed for reconstruction
over a long weekend.

I will revisit that museum
in Cleveland
where I made my own
slow art day.

Seated on a cold wood floor,
I paused
before her
for over an hour,

tears blurring the view.
Freshly released
from the weight
of addiction

one moment at a time,
I was hanging onto
anything I could grasp
with pried-open fists.

Then a raspy voice whispered,
It’s your duty
to tell her story
any way you can:

(“Fallen Caryatid Carrying Her Stone,” sculpture by Auguste Rodin, Cleveland Museum of Art)

Rodin’s Caryatid

Bronze pillar come rest
your arms upon your right knee,
bow your head beneath the burden
of your stone.

Your robe has fallen, a bundle
upon your left thigh,
a foot exposed, arching
taut as a dancer’s.

You would be lovely
outside those gates of hell
should you one day risk

standing. Bronze is a liquid
when boiling. You would be
lovely without that stone.

When I return
to Governors Island,
I will collect shells
from a mussel, not

spent ones
from shotguns—slugs long gone.

I will pogo around a circle
with 21st-century punks
without a stick or shtick
and nod my head vigorously

as poets shout the secret
ingredients to their broken hearts.

When I return to Governors Island,
I will bring the freshest figment
specimens I have been collecting
from empty ditches

and storied sidewalks.
I will bring the dirt.

Think how it all began
the night he discovered
the mirror
in the lake,

and she saw it too.
And they lost themselves
in the surface
of things.

Think how bog bodies
and dead monkeys
in air shafts
refuse to tell on themselves.

And how you pull a red
knit cap over your ears
in mid-May and brave
another day without a Plan B.

Think how Plan X
is so much sexier
with its brackish creek
that breeds a new ecosystem

in the fen sedge
of desire. How you never know
how I will respond
to that color on you.

Think of orange ladders
everywhere we might meet—
the evidence we leave
on those slippery metal rungs.

in this genius of place
a meadow and stream
dance together to invent

a new color
you can touch
with your favorite edge of sky

those bare birch trees
remind you to shout
bring on the dirt

how many bridges to nowhere
can you count blindfolded
is not the question to ask

with so many blackbirds
soaring noisily overhead

instead tally the pedestrian
one that leads to a garden
of sculptural delights

when it’s not closed
for the spring
maybe all summer for repairs

no one wants
another one
to fall down

don’t blame the river
no matter how angry
or lonely it gets

* from Alexander Pope’s “Epistles to Several Persons: Epistle IV to Richard Boyle”

It’s not simple as
you have fast-twitch,
I have slow.

I always knew dirt
was the answer.

Tread water
this precious. Air,
mercurial. Fire,

fear and courage
dance to the edge
of tread lightly

on the beach
without uttering
a sound or wasting

a word this far gone.
Apologies encased
in a foamy guilt

sink to the bottom—
no longer interrupted by pearls
or extraterrestrial dust.

Plastic shame floats
to kill its way
around a neverending loop.

Tread now to the heartbeat
of this aching place
we call home. Can you hear it,

can you hear it,
hear it, please,
I know you can.

Another car parked sideways
beside a snowbank
in late April.

I hear Leonard Cohen sing
about Suzanne and heroes
in the seaweed.

2016 was a bad year
for music
lovers. Two more go by

since Prince
let the elevaror
bring him down for good.

We talk about omnidirectional
wheels. No one dares
murmur prop walk.

I could be a 360 degree
spinner—would still miss
the stowaway’s gaze.

So laden with meaning,
this wallpaper peels off
in irregular strips

till my hands
are covered
in blood.

What remains vertical
will become souvenir lyrics
I don’t dare sing

aloud. Call it
a ghost poem
with circular sawn lath

and plaster stanzas
that will double
as a raft

for all the vagabonds
who want to join me
on the river as it thaws.

I promise
only wind and current
will propel us then.

How delightfully sinister
to welcome another lefty
into the family.

My sister will always be
her right-hand woman.
Lake Erie’s gray morning ire
will become its evening calm.

Gales do pass.
Humility gets defined
over and over again
with the seiche’s oscillation.

And we’ll sit down to another meal
without elbowing one another
at the table. Nothing
sinister there at all.

strangers at the next table
speak so loudly
you can’t capture the next
image in its naked moment
the way Bachelard would have wanted.

Instead, you hear:

If you get chickens,
don’t sleep with them.

I heard about a woman
who slept with a snake.

My sister tried to sleep
with me last night.

That mannequin has no clothes on—
visible or invisible
to the naked eye. And you
like the red cat stick figure
bike corral best.