WHAT I’M GOOD AT

is tinkering  taking friends apart

to replace burnt-out connections

tightening loose relation-

ships  installing wires

I can fix wobbly theories so well

they’ll hold

nearly anybody’s weight

and glue smashed situations piece

by piece until

the pattern’s reconstructed

I’m good

at alterations too

can take a pair of poems

and pinch and pleat and patch

to perfect fit  I’ll spend

hours lying flat  mouth full of pins

till a hope hangs right

no broken reason can resist

my insistent fingertips  my loves

revamped  retrimmed  rewoven

last a lifetime

what troubles me is

throwing out

hoards of hardware  scraps  spare parts

emptying cartons of old fears

that clutter up my head like lint

every time I move I think

I’ve left them behind but they keep

reappearing in my new place

never come in handy

impossible to give them away

from Ultimate Conspiracy (Lynx Publications, 1987)

Whale After Orgasm

As that tremendous wave subsides

all forty feet of her sleek skin

shudder, and a huge sigh

ripples outward to the ocean’s

farthest reaches while

her 25-ton body languidly

drifts into sleep with a cetacean smile

from "Four Drawings by Jean Kent"

LAMENT AND EULOGY

for Edward P.H. Kern (1925-2004)

Edward, your combination of absence and presence

has been carried to uncomfortable extremes.

Here are your blue towels hanging in my bathroom

and there’s the box of ashes on the nightstand

next to your side of the bed.

Every day I think of things I want to tell you;

your voice, with its distinctive accent,

echoes every moment in my head.

Waking, I reach over and feel your arms around me—

how can you possibly be dead?

Edward, everyone who knew you was shocked by your sudden

Demise.  At the memorial from which I was excluded,

Weeping women crowded around the widow

And all the men said you were their best friend.

Really, sweetheart, for a shy fellow you

Delighted without half trying—until the end.

Keeping you alive in my heart is

Easy—it’s my own life that hurts.

Rest knowing your ashes float now on the ocean off

Nantucket where you are always, forever, a small boy playing.