WORTH

As I get older I get skinnier,

as if my body is preparing to become

a skeleton, shedding its juices,

its fatty matter, its passageways

coming closer to the surface, blue

veins no longer invisible lines

inside me but ropes pulling me

ground-ward toward the dark

underside of the earth, toward

my future or my non-future,

the stranger looking into a mirror

at the shimmering twin ponds

of my eyes.

                         My old friend

scrunches the loose skin

of her arm between thumb

and forefinger, and says

Look at this! Like the finest

silk ruche. We could sell this stuff

for pretty penny. And suddenly

I see its puckered beauty, sold

by the bolt from the best shops

in Paris. Wedding dresses

and velvet curtains, dinner blouses

and organza pillow cases.

                         As the living grow

fewer around me I think

of the dandelion that refuses

to die, mown over

they simply grow shorter

until the blades pass harmless

above the little suns of their being,

then transform into seed heads

composed of fluff and light,

even more beautiful

in their dying, tiny parasols

rising into nothing but air, looking

for a new place to land.

Not Even My Name

There are no poems in me today, the space

between my temples a blank hymnal,

no song, no prayer, just the snowstorm

of a broken TV, all electricity, no connection.

I want nothing more than a spicy, crunchy

tuna sandwich, chosen from the last row

of the Deli display case, behind the pastrami

and the egg salad with its chunky umber

oozing between slices, chicken pesto,

turkey swiss. I want to walk to the park

with my paper bag and sit on a bench, watch

a taxi disappear in the distance, lost among

the school of yellow fish, each one the sum

of another. I want to be chosen to live

in this small swath of heaven between

two elms squatting at the end of the trail,

alive to the desire to leave nothing

behind me, no need to make it mine,

not one word writ even in water, nothing

to own, nothing to claim.

BUNNY CAM

I could watch my gray bunny on the bunny cam for hours.

So I do, making her way around the enclosure in the kitchen,

her world no bigger than a shower stall, zooming like a ball of smoke

on a string, racing along the fence edge, a little gray Mario Andretti,

then jumping on top of her miniature picnic bench, her island

in the stream to peer into our human drama.

Every new day she makes herself up, her own little opera,

threading bright webs we get caught in, two old romantics

needy for her antics, her apricot tongue licking our thumbs.

When we found her she was no bigger than a Kroner, asleep

in our palms, so like children we made her a bed of hay,

and fed her and petted her and watched her grow fat

as an eggplant.

                          Once, my five year old daughter told me

when she looked into the eyes of a duck she knew

it could never have a bad thought, or do a bad thing.

We were at a river, birch trees along the banks,

their white bark, their thousand eyes looking

down on us, her head in my arms, her soft eyes

looking up into mine.