Even Women

we are all immigrants nothing but
some fleeting glimpse or sense
remains of where we came from
ancestors moving out long ago
driven off or hoping for better
remembering only recent moves
that somehow happened to us

we are all veterans of wars
we didn't wage or want to be
surrogate suffering inescapable
drafted without exception or
escape to Canada nowhere safe
all threatened by poisoned air
water animals mass destruction

we are all women even men
in burly trucks showing off
exulting in power underfoot
even women calling the shots
know better the limits of life
encased in muscle sturdy bone
drawing down the balance

we embody our time and self
descended from a better dream
depleted by not mere difference
but degradation impermissible
arrogance in privileging this
above all as if final throes
had never been seen before

Lively Lingo

"a slow-spoken orotundity" the mark
of a true writer himself getting along
finding lively lingo on any subject
living in Paris kids or aging or not
like Neil Young preserving the craft
and art for still adoring younger fans
whatever New Yorker readers may like
to think about in freshly lucid words

How It Feels

everything is recorded is that
God at the knobs not that you
can actually replay it etched
as it is ridiculous I realize but
that's how it feels otherwise
nothing matters would be
closer to the truth time erases
as it goes though some of us
try to save murmurs as it passes

This Comma

once more for your approval
not knowing the many dubious
decisions an editor had to make
if you ask me I could tell you
why this comma this paragraph
break word removed replaced
but we are six thousand miles
apart so you just say it's fine
and it is the story what counts

Going Along

would I have chosen this
had I known I was choosing
what to do or going along
as I freely did not knowing
what would work out how
the days arise from nights

each moment anticipates
more of the same and less
if we know what we are
by what we do again our
ending implied in choices
nested inside necessity

dignity requires decisions
when nothing is quite free
within the frame of politics
and culture we never know
we helplessly embody like
termites in our own abode

so here we are today sun
rising behind clouds light
filtering through confused
impressions of our relative
well-being as if we know
what's good for the world

Naked Mirror

o belly where did you come from why
do you bulge diligent I exercise dutifully
do my swims and workouts not that I
don't enjoy them but here you still are

this is not how I think I look or used to
skinny in my youth flat-fronted now I
look away from the naked mirror hoping
clothes can make the man I want to be