The only reason I agreed to move here

Was the way the sun lit the front room

The way it reflected on the wide pine boards

Their yellow imperfections

Which seem to let my life off the hook

But now after an early snow and the overwhelming

Permanence of coming winter

I can’t tell if it is the season change or this life

That feels so off course and uncorrectable

Like walking down a wrong street

You realize suddenly you have to retrace your steps to get back

But you walk purposefully in the wrong direction

Knowing to your inner most self

Eventually… eventually

You have to turn around

The night terrors that woke your lover

will no longer rush as a flood

And you will understand the aggression

and demeanor of others

You will no longer be the prey

nor feed the endless appetite of victims

You will not elect kings and squires

to serve you nor pay taxes for

someone else’s labors

You will govern yourself

You will leave religion behind and

split the wood with your own hands

lift a stone with your own fingers

The earth and it’s beasts will become

your friends and you will stop seeking

yourself in others

In the end

limbless children and worthless bloodshed

will become the final convincer

And Peace will reign

(for Ross on his 54th birthday)

allow the blue-gray substance

of your voiceless visions

to float upward

to the surface of your knowing

passing noiselessly

the river doesn’t stop

and there, over there

the trout surfaces

side slick with rainbow colors

mouth open

rising up

hungry

like you

I’ll meet you in that place

where the rivers converge

by the big rock

on the left bank

hungry, we’ll contemplate the current

by Ruth Asselin Harwood

The changes of day light

or night are eternal

I can’t say for certain

I will rise to it

I reach out my hand

and touch ice on the

old brick wall

until my fingers numb

I remember being a son

a father

as best I could

now another man’s face

emerges in the glass

at the theater

on State Street

When fear comes

with his plaster prayer hands

When fear comes

with tiny beads in sequence

When fear comes in early morning

before my dreams are finished

When fear comes in that dark

silhouette of avoidance

May I have already prayed

rightly

You are blessed

You are blessed

Here in this place

Here in this place

There is no other

No monk or priest

No holy water

No immaculate conception

There is nothing to do

No prayer to recite

No corner stone of faith

 No pews

No holy books

No ancient audible language

Just the breaking of promises

Just the betrayals

It is perfect here

The perfect place

To start living

To start loving

The need in the chest is as if

A great stone to rest against

So lean into the crag

It won’t harm you

My mother’s feet

I remember my mother’s feet

eye level

the blood and spike

Sisters arms stretched

hands nailed through

And that abdomen gushing

definitely my brother

The head now dead

hung forward was father

The whip marks

the back and those thorns

weeping, blinding

All mine

the nameless ones

in rooms with no windows

are carving strategies out of burned wood

for the advisors to the king

they never sign anything

you’ll hear about them in the movies

years after they’ve died

movies always tell the truth

years too late

meanwhile the advisors

are drinking and signing their names

to everything

tying yellow ribbons

kissing babies

keeping their options open

you know the drill

From Saigon 1968-2009

Remember the Dylan poster you sent folded one hundred times

Remember you beat up Eddie after he beat me  

The way you screamed, “I’m lonely”, the night I drove you from the bar

 Our love is sacred before our arguments or disagreements  

And even though you are confused and beaten

old veteran who has seen too much

I remember your words on the back of that poster

Ross

 go to Canada

                       Bill