WALKING ON SHERIDAN ROAD
Walking on Sheridan Road in the rain
this is what can happen:
at Eastlake Terrace, as you are about to cross the street,
a mother in a station wagon can be turning the corner
and she can hesitate for a moment
and you can hesitate, letting her go by
and in going by she can hit a pothole, not even a large one,
filled with water,
and in movie-like slow motion the water
can rise up, progressing through the air,
and landing on the whole of your body,
from the bit of hair that falls on your forehead
to the exposed part of your socks between pants and shoes,
and you can do the only thing you can, given the circumstances,
you can take your hand
and wipe the water from your face.

LATE MORNING, HEARTLAND CAFE
He is touching her forearm
she is talking,
the waitress asks
if everything is alright
it is,
she places dijon mustard on
another table,
the sun enters through
the window
shines on the face of a woman
eating
vegetarian chili
as
outside a man in a
white t-shirt
walks into a steady
wind and
a tall, thin woman
bends down to whisper
something to her
round-faced
daughter
and hands her
a box of crayons,
the busboy accidentally kicks
a chair and
startles a man
as he drinks from
a tall glass,
a woman's face comes
alive as a plate
of pancakes
her table, at
the next table
there is
the hand on the forearm, the
hand rubbing the forearm
up and slowly down,
the hand purring along
the forearm, above
he is talking
but what he is
saying... who can
hear what he is
saying, as the forearm
rubs itself
against the
hand,
the sun now on them,
late morning, hand
and calf and
all.

AUTUMN
The near cold now,
the gray off the lake, the trees at my windows;
these, this absence of entreaty,
this face unabashedly other,
neither pushing nor pulling. This brief flicker before winter,
before days eaten by cold and by night,
this bluster,
the leaves turned to waves
turned to sails, taken to flight. This, this almost calm and silence,
the wind at my old windows, wooden,
asking me first to close and then to open,
holds me in its hands like a grandfather, like a child,
and then lets me go.

THE BOY WHO ALMOST WENT TO SEA
A boy of a year and a half
on the beach was playing
while his older sister ate a plum
and his mother and his aunt
watched and ate plums. Where the beach was pebbly
the boy squatted and picked up pebbles
then walked unsteadily to the water
and flung the pebbles
out to sea. Again he did this
and again and again
delighted by his accomplishment
while his sister laughed
and his mother and his aunt laughed. On the fifth or sixth try
it happened that the sister was facing away
and the mother and the aunt were facing away
and the boy with a loud splash
fell face-first into the waves. This did not feel at all like
the sand and pebbles beneath his feet
what’s this? what’s this?
the boy flailed his arms and legs
what’s this? what’s this? By now he might be
well out to sea, a sea-creature
or a sand crab, a soft stone
except for his mother’s quick hands
and she pulled him from the sea
and she gave him a sweet plum.