Chicory

 

My boy falls asleep by my side each night
cats sometimes fight in the alley even in rain

walking in the hallway past the open door
one daughter sleeps suspended by pillows

the other flings everything aside and sprawls
face down and then I’m here room as wide

as a hundred year old house and your guitar
sits waiting for you and I sit waiting

I finally hear the crickets they’re late this summer
when a poem begins to emerge it begins

like stink bugs and hard backed bugs
charging the window screen like rhinos

then when all that fails like moths alighting
holding their ground like kites in instant photos

and when that fails I finish my tea and listen
the crickets I hear are from a midnight walk

in Ithaca on Coddington Road 28 years ago
in the dark of no streetlights and miles of field

when my soul first disappeared into a million
songs with no refrain and when that all fails

I go out and look at the gangly weed of a plant
in the front yard I spared from the weeder for

No good reason one afternoon the next morning
it was full of modest flowers the color of late May

skies closing up at noon like it was the old school
diner of the plant world since then I have noticed

it everywhere on the highway’s side every morning
the short lived beauty newly bloomed each day

and I think I’ll write about that but cannot find
a poetic way to describe a plant made entirely

of old ladies’ elbows and eye wrinkles that turns
into a goddess in the cool morning air so

I sit waiting along with your guitar it is not a question
you will come up and carefully take it

from its case and hold it and find the chord
that brings me back to this