What youth is

is the gift of unaccounted for time

What to make of our unremembered times
Rinsing my face
Pulling a loaf of wheat bread from the grocery shelf
by its twist-tied piggy tail of cellophane
An elevator One elevator in a lifetime of elevators
All that has happened in one minute fed
forever to the meter

What will it mean if I enjoy these or not

Youth doesn’t ask

The Woods by John Muir

The Woods by John Muir

In the dream this is a poem
I am failing to memorize

Each time I lift the page
the lines have shifted themselves

It is becoming a different poem
because I am trying to memorize it

It wants to elude me a reader
who wants to own it Like every poem

Every song's running faucet
Every skypatch of canvas with

its shoulder braced against a door
of pigment and crushed minerals

Like the woods Definition
Clusters of trees whose edge

you cannot see Whose ending
mercifully you will not reach

Ego

Ego

Snail warm in its shell
snug on some rock

brandishing a riding crop
and chanting

Where you live will make your
work beautiful
You need a city city city
What you need is to hurry

I’m not saying to kill the poor thing
but maybe relocate it
Under that bush over there will do