Reveille

The moon,

a glistening bugle

low on the Mississippi bayou,

swirls silvery jazz notes

through half-closed blinds

across the early morning room,

composing a refracted lyric

next to the antique mirror

and a picture of a child

playing near the river.

A solo reveille

for my love to wake and hear.

She lies drowsy,

emerging from the dream

she relives over and over,

head of dark red hair

tucked against the cool pillow,

body molded in a pink blanket,

like dogwood petals on a small grave.

She lies motionless, but present,

slowly focusing, her eyes

sliding through the shimmering script

flickering on the pale yellow wall.

A meaning so brief

in a second it will cease to exist:

Wake up, sweet mourner.

Look beyond your bed.

Night is ending.

Night has ended.

Shed your grief.

Bury your dead.

Emergency Procedure

If I lived in the Blue Ridge Mountains,

I could be healthy, live like a craftsman,

build a log cabin, forget this complacent life.

If I moved to the Outer Banks,

I could eat better, fish snapper off a wooden pier,

chew seaweed for snacks and dinner.

I hate my piedmont half-an-acre life

sustained on a suburban cul de sac,

scars of right-of-way passages, like surgical tracks,

cutting across my back yard, and that ominous line

of natural gas buried next to my drive –

one more sign that it’s the utilities

keeping me alive.

What exactly is mine?

Pine needle-filled gutters, like clogged arteries?

Dying bushes, like plaque along my wall

lining or the cracked concrete drive

deteriorating in front of my eyes?

My house on life support, inch-by-inch

sliding on a red clay gurney

over to my neighbors?

But what of that vein of natural gas?

With a sharp knife and lit match

couldn’t I, using a surgeon’s touch,

erupt my dying cul de sac?

Resuscitate my life with a fireworks blast.

It would be worth it at last:

Better than living like a sad cadaver

or with stents continuing the past,

like trimming over and over

the trimmed away grass.