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vertical slant danda pike | so
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No snow.
You see a real
cardinal on the trail
on your birthday in the last month
of this

warped year.
Red light flashing
everywhere, nowhere to
go, the slower the pendulum
swings. Let’s

call it
lento. Let’s pause
to notice the hidden
truth—stray mountains of dirty snow
leave proof

of odd
October storms,
escape the thaw. No, let’s
call it rubato. How we’re all
stealing

time. Born
into one of
the darkest nights to one
of the darkest days in this, the
darkest

of years,
these latest fall
babies brood all the way
open. Not even winter yet.
The wait

to hear
it loud and clear,
December girls, not boys,
sing a subtler perched beauty one
branch up.

Are you
a dove or a
pigeon? Do you drive, or
are you driven to say what we
must be

thinking
in a broken
Ashbery kind of way?
It is so much like a bridge for
walking,

make it
running away.
Longest poem in this
world, spans 16 lanes of traffic
both ways.

What I
take for granted
extends beyond metal
letters. Time to pay attention
again.

Last night’s
hazy dream, was
it a big rig or freight
train we almost crashed into? You
behind

the wheel.
Me shouting your
name to turn it or do
whatever it is you drivers
do to

avert
collisions. I
felt no motion sickness
the way I would awake inside
a large

starling
murmuration—
a half million beating
wings undulating across the
dusk sky.

It’s not
their fault they’re here.
Blame the Shakespeare-obsessed
drug maker who released 60
of them

into
Central Park in
1890. And please
do not call that tiny saw-whet
owl found

inside
that giant spruce
a stowaway. It was
her home before it was chopped down,
tossed on

a truck
to become the
Rockefeller Center
Xmas tree. Refugee is more
like it.

Rhythm
goes underground.
The clock clicks 12 twice a
day. And night movements glow that much
slower.

It’s time
to find your own
metronome encased in
mahogany wood. Wound up and
ready

to soothe
the most restless
body to haunt empty
streets. When will the pendulum swing
back is

not the
question you want
to ask. It’s those alleys
that connect everything back to
nothing.

As I
say the words spray
painted on a subway
station wall “gratitude and grief,”
who knows

why these
tears taste so good,
how the empty car will
warm you overnight in a dream.
No one

owns this
land, the city,
that underground refuge
possesses us to tell it like
it is.

I must
confess the truth:
property will always
confuse me. Here I sit alone
in this

rented
jumble of rooms
inside a century
old building made of bricks and stray
stories

tossed, or
lost, or misplaced.
Truth is I made up that
subway graffiti to reclaim
this year.

Fill in
the blank with four
letter words, with shattered
travel plans, human contact in
tatters.

Rolling
across floor boards
in search of any face
you might recognize from eyes
and forehead.

Indoors
alone again,
lucky to be alive
to live through this without gasping
for breath.

No more
tears streaming down
cheeks while standing in
a crowd, the band playing its third
encore.

No more
memories to
make, share with anyone.
Remember how you said you wished
you could

become
a hermit just
like Thoreau? “Not till we
have lost the world, do we begin
to find

ourselves
and realize . . . the
infinite extent of
our relations.” Walking the whole
way round

the pond
is no joke. Is
the only way to get
out of bed in the morning, the
only

choice left,
a slow run toward it,
count the curves in the next
circle left to draw with what
remains.

Note: Thanks to Henry David Thoreau for a few choice words from Walden.

Without
these shadows, how
will I know where to find
corners to coax me to believe
in light?

Snow squalls
burn through the day.
Crashed semis in flames.
It’s a miracle no one dies
out there.

Into
this dark winter,
miracle can’t be the
science we follow to beat this
virus.

Stop the
dying. So much
depends on words that fail.
They sink straight to the bottom as
ice forms

above.
My vote is my
vow is my voice as it
gets entangled with others to
become

one long
break—beautiful
disturbance that spreads as
ripples to awaken water
beneath.

counting
on counting to
get me through the final
stretch: miles lines days stanzas votes
exhales

Let’s feast
on ghost stories,
how red was a belief
before it became the color
of blood.

Let’s light
a bonfire
to complement purple
shadows chasing faded yellow
horses

that still
run through those caves—
mission-fed messengers.
Never got a chance to see or
touch them.

Let’s cross
the Golden Gate
Bridge in the fog. Could be
any day. Call it Halloween
this time.

Don’t jump.
Together, we
can rescue the color
international orange from
that face.