Other Than Warm

Bone cold, the chill becomes an ache and it's easy to confuse tired with afflicted. There is no heating up. I know how it will go tonight; I will bundle up for bed and still shiver until sleep, wake up hours later in an incubated sweat, stripping layers, forgetting I was ever anything other than warm. Tonight and most nights, it's that moment I can't wait for.

Eastern Shore Ride

Moody October clouds and spit, but still warm enough for short sleeves on my bicycle. This isolated finger of Virginia is like a clearing, of land, of heads, of air. Onancock, Wachapreague, Pungoteague, Machipongo; any turn in the road can change our standing with the wind. We roll through hollows and between farmland, auburn woods and pale amber scrub. 

Night Swim

Some late night on a wide carolina beach, six or eight of us took to the water. New to college, I was happy to be in this new life with new people, doing new things. The mild waves crept over our ankles. We joined hands and in a line walked into the sea, soon a string of bobbing heads, pleased with ourselves. The warm dark wrapped around us like a womb.

Old Truck

Bouncing like a farm hand to my office job, I strong arm the big tall stick shift. Too loud to hear the radio or a phone, this is two-fisted driving. Left hand keeping me on the road, right hand keeping me in gear. When I'm driving this truck, I'm driving this truck. Utilitarian, honest, throwback, Buddhist. Like a calling, it demands all of me, responsive and present.

Looking Out

Still dark, I wander upstairs looking outward. The bathroom is full of moonlight; and the back porch bulb makes its make-do roof glow yellow like a honeycomb. The spare bedroom, where a silence and calm lives like nowhere else in the house, I can see out across rooftops eastward. And here, if I wait, I will watch the sun fight its way up through the trees.

Sixteen

I had my own universe at sixteen; a room of my own and a record player. I bought obscure albums from used bins, examined them in hours alone. This is when I wrote the poems, the epic melancholics, a squeezing of pain from one container into another. Sometimes after spending all the words I had, I looked out the front window at the world outside my head. 

Mine

My father's sweater, always in plain sight, I notice and remember sometimes. This I kept. Poly-blend grey and white, it's what he wore on Saturdays, hunting or napping. It stretched as he did; I wore it after he died until one of the pits wore out. Dead twenty-two years, there's almost nothing left of him. So I keep what I have, balled up, stuffed away, mine.