Weight

So this is what you’re up to now
bribing us with concert tickets
and permission to smoke
all we like in your garage.
I hate to say it but your offer
is a good one so I’ll see you
in the last half of the summer
when the pollen is the foggiest,
and the toads get nice and covered
in their poison.

The lilies have been busy with each other
and you can tell that by the mixing
of their colors in the mulch beds
where the tire tracks just missed them.
I wish I was with them when I see
the endless pictures in the daily feed
where everyone is happy
or just angry at the prospect
of a wasted day. Although, I like to sometimes
linger in the hay where all the horses
lay around and wait for sundown.

Lately I’ve been looking at your picture
when I’m not that far away,
and even though I’ll see you today
I still wish there was some way
I could tell you about gathering
the branches for the burn pile,
where the geese all like to fuck around
and bite each other’s feathers off for fun.

For now I’ll just make peace
with the humidity, and the crickets,
and the cawing of the crows,
and just live quietly in memories
of plastic fishing boats flipped over
in the shallows.
No one knows the weight
of that aluminum gate,
but I have torn it off its hinges
more than anyone,
and I can tell you it is lighter
than it looks.