Winter’s End

Little golden baby guppies
Furry fighting biting puppies
Hammock and a pillow
Sunshine butter fellow
Ease because we can
Ease because we can.

Three times two is plenty
And a one-third twice is life
I calculate what makes us laugh:
Nothing makes us laugh like age.
Live with me without answers
Till we nod at horror’s yucky trousers
Lie until we lie for real
In a garden.

I get back from mud and rushing stormwater
Parrot, egret, and near-season box gum;
You are under midnight drizzle chasing moonlight
More difficult to do than tell it in a pitchy brochure:
What’s put off to get there is time recovered:
A glimpse of eternity in the shifting banks.
When we wash it off, warm up, tidy adverbs
Save and take advice on its passage into the world,
If we have time to examine the trace in daylight
With a breeze running by through screen door
Into domesticity; if we can filter the ordinary impression
Even our best friends can’t help but offer with just a look,
If the leash of probability is for an instant lifted
And the detail still keen in our eyes
Just in the gap between forgetting and distraction:
What was always present
What will always be
How we do anything real:
Just make it up as we go along, that’s all,
No parliament of effort and no industry of fools.
See it.

How the end is new again, the formula spinning sideways
Just from faithful mimesis because it’s so or it would hurt
Putting in the miles because by now you know the pay
Stepping into puddles without a beat, getting wet –
For Jesus as it were. For particles of heaven
Spinning lazily – fine bargain after all. Spring.

August is the kindest month to sums.