THREE ODES
ode to a friendship
Due to disuse, our
youthful, seemingly
keepsake friendship
vanished
like an overgrown
path in the woods—lost
to spouses, children, distance, work.
But the spring feeling
of our traveling together
always remained, you
my imaginary companion, one
I confided in
through the course of our lives,
and even after
I heard of your death, your counsel—
ever probing and bracing—
the walking stick
I needed, and still need,
for us, my friend,
to hack our way
through the old growth ahead.
ode to our furniture
In its day cheap, mail-order stuff—Sears, Montgomery Ward—our
battered furniture of family hand-me-downs from both sides clash.
That these ordinary, individual pieces somehow endured over years
of changeable weather and family wear, why they’ve always seemed
a match
to us.
ode to hibernation
Stuck in gloves
over a rough winter, my recluse
hands, one early spring night, became
idly exposed
to a quickening breeze
as I walked alone, sensitive
yet open
to what felt—after
long, stuffy hibernation—
like a return
to the temperate time
before hard, stinging freezes;
like a return
to soft summer days
of long, easy engagement;
like a return
to life before the fall refusals
I can now, winter-mended, refuse.
Hammer
An old hammer, heavy head to floor, leans
its brown, glazed handle against a bench.
A hammer once my dad’s, one
I watched work
throughout my boyhood so take,
in its giving, a beating of its own.
One now inherited by me.
One, its labors done right,
as my dad would say,
I let rest in peace.
