Butterflies running away from home 

Cool, crisp, sensually expectant Fall 

right around the corner and I can barely keep my pants on!

Cold night air smoky in your window, candy corn glowing in the sheets

new kids at school, new clothes and school supplies new 

all there at the foot of your bed, or under your pillow

(probably no kids under your pillow) and, then ... 

touches of lipstick and blue jeans in the backseat of some car. 

Some see decay and death in Fall, Winter blowing in next

(but there are forever romantic secrets sparkling in the snow drifts) 

and though I could drop in my tracks any second, 

I don’t see it that way at all. 

Last year I saw a skyful of red dry yellow wild  

leaves blowing sideways 

like butterflies running away from home. 

This year I’m going with them!

 

Sinead unafraid 

The kind voice of a fierce rebel angel 

and I hope she’s somewhere beautiful like her 

somewhere loud with laughing and love runs free,

where shame’s gone out the window

somewhere the pope lost his dress and Sinatra 

(and other one-note choir boys!) can’t get a gig. 

 

Drinking in a blues club at seven in the morning, 

then getting breakfast

I had been drinking like it (or I) was going out of style since ten 

in the morning the morning before, then I heard a yellow clock

humming behind the bar across the room, glowing like the yellow 

Moonbeam clock in my grandma’s kitchen across the state line. 

Snowing all night, so we didn’t know where the state line was 

anymore, and anyway it was just us now, sweetly and privately. 

A woman real close to me had her yellow pumps up on the table 

crossed at the ankles, some of her fingers interlaced with mine,

the rest of them loose into her loose red hair, she was smiling sleepy 

but her fingers were squeezing me awake. Still smelled of Chanel. 

And then, breakfast. Eggs rose like suns on the tables, pancakes 

piled up hot and smoky, syrup and butter lathered in, the warm woman 

near me kicked off her pumps, dipped her toes in the egg yolks 

and acrobatically fed me the drippings as I dangled bacon like grapes 

to her lips, then I dangled her the grapes (I owed her, I liked her!) 

and everyone ate, and ate, and kept on eating until they all passed out. 

This was all friendly, no one was going home for days, a warm shaft of sunlight 

came in, some of us in the room were cheating, with other lovers, blame

it on the snow, but everyone was alright, smiling at each other, and the smell 

of the kitchen lighting up was so homey, all of us so far away from everything. 

 

A good deed, a soul connection, and a touchdown

This happened on a flat Sunday, almost 4th of July

so flat even God — he or she

wasn’t gonna go to church, the local church 

being so square and pale in its architecture 

and congregation; so hopeless and defeated in its music, 

out in Kansas City long ago in a soft, dreamy place called Brookside.  

I was out strolling, Señor Jobim on my Walkman,

going for my Sunday case of beer; I eased into the market, 

took a look at the clientele, not inspiring, maybe church had let out; 

they were devotedly praying hunching over their shopping carts, 

their little kids trying to make a run for it, and yet—

there was this one brave woman. 

She was swirling colors in her clothes, smart blue eyes like spotlights

wherever she looked, I could not take my eyes off of her 

and although she hadn’t seen me, I wanted to go over and shake her hand. 

She was powerful, she rotated around herself, 

but radiated out something that pulled objects (like me) in; 

she was private but spectacular

with a sensual, sniffing nose that may have been powdered in Paris. 

Meanwhile, gradually, nearly imperceptibly, everyone in the market 

(the second they saw her)

stood up straight off their carts, bright-eyed 

and bushy-tailed, all the way up out of prayer mode.  

There was music up above us, it changed the moment, a song called 

“The Captain of Her Heart” coming down; I knew it, looked at her, 

saw that she recognized it too, we made eye contact with each other 

(I felt fireworks all over me, 4th of July weekend had nothing to do with it), 

recognized that we both recognized the song, so, nothing else to recognize, 

she went back to the cooler full of white wines. She had frosty breath. 

I was being nonchalant in my fascination with her, on the surface

(she wasn’t looking my way anyway—I thought), got my case of beer 

from the opposite cooler, we both had frosty breaths in the cooler aisle. 

Behind me, she was humming, then singing 

to “The Captain of Her Heart.” I smiled; I smiled 

and turned around to harmonize with her 

but she was above me, and reaching higher!

She was standing on the low foot rail of her very full 

therefore rock-steady cart reaching for a bottle 

of Gallo white wine up high in the cooler, chilled 

and seemingly out of reach but she put her finger on it. 

Her finger set the bottle, and the rest of the day, 

and a lot of the rest of my life in motion; the bottle wobbled, 

got in a rhythm wilder, teetering … swinging side to side, falling, 

a fat gallon going down.                              (Yes, I dived. I dove!) 

I dove for the bottle like the wide receiver I once was but 

was never meant to be except for maybe 

in this moment with this woman 

and I caught the bottle cleanly cradling it from the hard linoleum 

(smashed the Walkman) and slid down the aisle 

into a soft display 

of paper towels for sale.

“Touchdown!” 

This from the woman (of course) as she flung her 

red velvet beret up in the air where it landed with a 

red velvet wobble on a security camera high in the supermarket ceiling

—apropos, you know?

We were stealing the show from the churchgoers. 

I got up, stacked back up the paper towels, 

the woman’s arms were still up in the air 

(she was too!) for the touchdown 

as she eased down from her cart with a big, bright smile. 

People watched us in churchly silence, 

a manager of the supermarket (name tag) arrived, 

I went around him, took the bottle to the woman, 

her arms came down, we looked each other over. 

Maybe it was a flat Sunday, both bored 

or maybe we were both Sunday lonely at home, 

or maybe we saw a new curvature 

of the earth, the two of us walking off out of orbit! 

Looking each other over, we began to smile.  

Like maybe it was that last thing. 

I’m in the book, she said. This was back then, 

in the days when there were those books. 

What’s your name? I asked. I was almost at the point

of telling her mine, to be gentlemanly. 

You’ll know it when you need it, she said. She had me there. 

I knew what she meant. And I knew it was on the horizon. 

That need; it was coming soon. 

She was maybe many years older 

but what did that have to with anything? 

I was simultaneously maybe many years younger. 

Fireworks are fireworks. 

Disheveled rebel baby 

Yes, I was born disheveled. 

I felt precarious already, but also way precocious.  

Ready for action, said the nurses, so they say. 

A couple of years later, in the first grade, 

I was sent to the principal’s office for climbing up

the venetian blinds (those tough old heavy wooden slats) 

of my classroom. I had to stand in the corner. 

Something was going on. 

Some of it was sheer crazy baby energy, but also 

because somehow I knew that I’d been born 

with an unfair advantage, me, a little boy, 

and because of that kind of male delivery, the world 

and all the doors were ridiculously, unfairly open. 

I saw the little girls getting the short end of it all (later, 

they grew up, turned into women, and I still saw it). Well, 

fuck that, I said 

in some some sort of equivalent baby language. 

That’s not fair, I said to the principal, 

from the corner, and I’m gonna mess with it. 

And messing with it messed with my mother, a grandad, 

some of the teachers, most of the the male coaches 

and all of those gym classes and other classes from one end 

of school to the other. Jobs, and a lot more, later on. 

No matter what, I’d proceed, evermore—disheveled.

It’s not enough, I know, to change everything or maybe anything 

for all my girl and women friends, but I’ll do all I can 

to short circuit it all, stick up for my friends ... 

and fuck up my unfair advantage. 

Anyway—as women know as well or better than me—

the corner can be a real dangerous place. 

For the so-called principals in the room. 

I said, to the principal. 

 

Birds both in leather 

I drove into the Whole Foods parking lot, a black bulge 

of weather rolling in over the mountains, Led Zeppelin 

turned up loud as I could get it (“When the Levee Breaks”) 

and slammed into I thought an empty space 

except for a bird sitting in a bush, looking me right in the eye. 

She didn’t move, I turned off the music, and the car. 

She cocked her head left, then right. I kept quiet. 

I got out of the car way more gentle than I usually do, 

came around the car door softly; she watched me move. 

The bird was propped up on a green-gone-brown limb 

and she was not getting ready to fly; trusting me as I got closer, 

I don’t know why; this was all making me softer— 

the bird watching me, trusting me, I don’t know why. 

The granola crowd was glaring, going into the store, 

still mad at me for the loud rock and roll; I was melting. 

The bulge of weather overhead was about to unload, 

the granola shoppers went shopping; I saw that the bird’s back leg 

was caught on the strap of an old abandoned purse, 

leather rotting, trashed-out, but still holding down her down.  

I got low, close, real tender, touched the strap, and just barely, 

freeing her leg instantly, I hoped not hurting her, but the bird

—a she or a he bird, either way we were birds of a feather—

went on looking at me, and still she didn’t immediately fly away. 

Then she did, she flew, and she was gone. 

I lost my train of thought, and the shopping list. 

I was thrown and touched by the entire moment, 

got back in the car, caught the tail of my leather jacket 

on the door, going too fast, forgetting for a second my new soft thing, 

then I slid in my Norah Jones CD and drove away from the storm.