Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

On swiftborne wings
They cross the sky
Their chittering brings
A wandering eye

Yet they’re more fragile
Than they seem
For things so agile
They’ve a delicate gleam

Bereft of roosts
Few insects on high
Once what was loosed
May homeless die

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A killdeer was killhere
Nervously pacing in the field
While a mockingbird, nearby
Incorporated its call
Into a cacophony
Was it put out to be mocked so
Or just irked to be insulted
In its own language

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I try to make sure I am grateful
To tell others how much they’re valued
How much they contribute
They are just words
But they’re all I have to give

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Everywhere we walk at the art fair
Our first purchase in hand
People stop to admire it
The inlaid, geometric perfection
Of a cutting board assembled like
The lobby floor of a Jazz Age hotel
We tell them over and over
Where the artist’s booth is
Urging them to go, to buy
But that light leaves their eyes a bit
When we mention the $150 price tag
When I asked the artist how long
Each piece took, he told me a month
I want to look the others straight
In the eye and say, as if agreeing
“Yes, $150 is highway robbery,
he is selling himself far too short”
I don’t know what I would charge
For a month of my life
But it would be more than that
If I could find a buyer

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Brightly colored native birds, all in a row
Intricate papercraft all, politely perched
And made of end-on paper folded and glued
Stunning bit of paper art, still envelope-able
But even as I admire it, I know
They would never pose that well together
Robin, cardinal, bluebird, goldfinch, hummer
They would fight
Oh, how they would fight

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It’s in the brambles that one must look
Between bland manicured greens
Nature surviving in the nooks
Living amid the in-betweens

It’s not the fittest that thrive
In these man-altered zones
Those who stay alive
And make the cracks their own

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It lays there, solid steel warmed by midday asphalt
A holy ring of solid steel, malefactor gripped tight
The short claw of the law, flight an impossibility
It feels like there should be some empathy
For the poor stranded vehicle, chained unwillingly
But seeing the bleached-tooth gleam of that SUV
Its fraternity parking pass flaunted on the dash
Out of state Texas plates loud, proud
Knowing that this may be the one, the only
Situation they can’t weasel out of
In their young lives lived on cruise control
The only response is a smug smile
And a “give ’em hell, meter maid.”

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Someone once asked me
“Friend, I love books
So very much, should I
Work at a library or
At a bookstore someplace?”
And I smiled and shook my
Head. Having done both, and
Turned my hobby into a job

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The editor, a student like myself
Though an upperclassman, said that
It was the best writing sample he’d
Ever seen, that he had no notes that
He’d like to publish it immediately
Take me on as a columnist at once
Get me twelve dollars apiece
I utterly repudiate a lot of the
Things I said in those columns, a
Younger, angrier me wrote in haste
I now know I was both blinder and blindee
Unable to see and so depriving others
Of sight, as so many young men like me
Are wont to do as their first instinct
But still, I think back often to that
Crowded office in the basement of an
Ugly building because it was, and may
Still me the nicest thing anyone has
Ever said to me

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I watch the late-spring rains fall
Bands of radar green shading to orange
Sodden ground giving up its trees
Pumped in, groaning, sloshing
The lifeblood of the season to come

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