A Kind of Order
I love a pint of Sierra Nevada after three straight classes
followed by three straight hours of student advising during
registration week, wise guys in the bar be damned
Unretrained fingers touch the flaming 401k to the gas in the foreclosed basement, smoke commingling with former jobs and phony investments and the immolation of Iraq
I love fresh diapers on babies, if someone else has changed the used ones
I love anybody’s daughter in the poignancy of any kind of light
I loved to play baseball until dark. The call to dinner, then night tag
Night vision sights acquire targets – a muzzle flash – burning children fill the distant West Bank streets and alleys, silent flailing white ghosts
I love to be alone with sun and a body of ocean, river, pond, pool
Ten thousand refuges bathe in a Congo lake of bloated corpses and their own excrement: death by earth, wind, fire, air, industry
I love any of my daughters rapt in play, dance, thought
I love breasts, sorry. Another round
I love blasting icecubes in urinals
Rounds of rocket fire snake toward a Haifa market where a gleeful boy is eating melon, a girl picks out a party dress – pieces on the pavement
I love the scent of salt air, salt mud, salt home
Salt blood
I love artichoke with lemon butter sauce, pork chops
I loved the surprise of my seventh birthday, then my fortieth
I love to dig sinuous philosophy
Comforting grave
I love “Sonny’s Blues”
The cup of trembling
I love Claire at ballet, Molly at scissors, Gwen at puzzles
I love to be at one with Shari in bed
I love seasons, woodsmoke now, gifts dried crackle-brown
Heaven issues a recall on the planet, exchangeable for equal value in cash, drugs or guns
I love this maul, this wedge, this sweat, this muscle
I love nailing a poem. For me, you bastards
I will love when I know success
Yes, I’d love another shot
Traffic, root canal, failing vision, cops
