There comes a time
in a building’s life
when you start to compare
demolition and repair.
For a building,
there is no such thing as
aging gracefully,
dying with any scrap of dignity.
Only scraps of scrap.
Because a building is not alive.
These bricks are not like cells;
they don’t have organelles.
These walls are not like skin;
they can’t choose what to let in.
And so we work our living bodies
and we burn our living skin
as we strive to keep alive
these buildings we live in.
My Latest Idea
I have about three thousand ideas a day
and only three of them are any good,
and one of them is just “we should go to bed now,”
so it doesn’t really count.
But still, that adds up to quite a few good ideas,
and my latest idea is bound to be one of them.
Good For Us
Being hungry is good for us.
For us, it means it’s time to eat.
For us, it means we might lose something that we don’t want anyway.
For us, it means the food will taste that much better.
For others, it means that there is not enough to eat.
Yes, being hungry is good, for us.
Games
We have a shelf of games.
We do not play them much
because our baby likes to eat
dice and tiles and such.
When she’s around, cards quake
and checkers try to flee.
She thinks it is a game,
and we cannot disagree.
First Bird
First bird of the morning,
I heard you sing,
but now I hear thunder in your same sky.
Maybe there’s rain
to come for the ground,
but while it is raining, where will you hide?
The Bottom of the Middle
There is a spectrum from
taking advantage
to being taken advantage of.
There are those who do one
or the other,
then some people in between
who can freely give and receive
not only gifts and help
but also respect and admiration.
And then there are some
in the bottom of the middle of that spectrum
who are told by some to stop freeloading
and others to stop working for free,
and that is not a fun place to be.
Sliding Puzzle
Life is like a sliding puzzle,
the kind with nine or sixteen squares
that only work when there’s a space,
so if your life seems full, beware.