22 Hard-crust

I have loved many people in this rush
of decades I must now consider a life

or so I would have said even as late
as yesterday but strip away the fear

of hurting those I never loved
enough and the truth luster-gleams

across a thousand acres of hard-crust
snow on a clear black night

under a low full moon. How can
light be bright and cool, intimate

and vast, unimaginably vast,
regal, near-divine? No matter lies

I had to tell I snuck out to that
field every hard-crust moon fell back

into the snow until my body shook
open my heart exposed its dark

to a light it could bear
without breaking. To everyone

I loved less than I loved lying
there I am sorry. Each heart

is born to beat only so
many times and I gave mine

to the ice and moon. If it was wrong
to let you believe I could return the warmth

you gave, know the pretense was because
I did love you, in my only way.

(note – I found this image on Pinterest. It was unattributed there, but I’m fairly sure it is by a photographer named Veronika Pinke from Germany. If I can find a site where I can buy this photo I will. I’ve never seen another photo that captures just how bright the moonlight is on snow)

21 Singin’ this will be the day

How much wood would
a woodchuck chuck
if a woodchuck had a
pickup truck, a chainsaw,
an axe, and awl?

1 cord 2 cords 3 cords, more
10 cords 11 cords a dozen cords haul!

I have a rocket in my pocket
I have no time to play but
time to eat my peas with honey
which keeps them on the knife
until not last night but the night
before when 24 robbers came
to my door.

Scholastic book club, A Rocket in My Pocket:
the rhymes and chants of young Americans,
best 25₵ I ever spent
on a book, source book, my head

when left to its own devices begins
to chant these poems, beats of a life
in a predictable 4/4, comfortable
cadence of country music.

Eastbound and down, loaded up and lonely
teenage brockin’ buck, pink carnation,
pickup truck, I knew I was out of
luck the day the music.