Before the world takes you away to keep

you to itself, and others take my place 

at center-stage, I will be stuffing bags of

everything that’s you, until it happens, like

the silly knock-knock jokes, the little pranks

you telegraph beneath a covered impish grin,

At sixteen, seeing that soldier majorette so

bold and sure as she led the high school

marching band down the town’s parade route

in white hat, gloves and boots with tassels,

It was one of those family discount haircut stores 

where you get the next of four or five hairdressers.

She was petite, in her early 20’s likely,

tattoos of something on her upper right arm,

short-cropped hair dyed orange,

a small ring in her left nostril,

“And the wolf shall dwell

with the lamb”, Isaiah 11:6

I spotted it in the grassy clearing

in a back-pocket park I’d go to for

the cork-carpet trails more forgiving

to bones and joints. It was a fox, it

A flock of common house sparrows, hundreds

of them, roll up high overhead as I walk across

the parking lot clinging to my cup of joe early

Was early morning, early January,

the monotony of snow-cover

was broken by grassy shoals 

here and there across the lawn

after a two-week warm spell.

His designated alias

was Tim Olson,

brother and patient

at that big Boston hospital –

and Tim Olson

was the name-key

the lobby’s receptionist

gave us, to be sure

we’d locate the right patient.

I see him through a buttonhole of blue

as I cross the parking lot, up there on

a pinnacle perch on a lone dead branch

You keep pace with me walking

alongside you tippling helpless

in the snow-melt drink running

downstream with flood vengeance,