The Holders-On
Hours past the evening's peak,
the holders-on stay.
And there is still to be heard
a momentary inflection of voice,
a capricious chuckle, a stray titter,
but the rollicking has receded,
the carousing collapsed,
the festivities faded.
The energy has gone out of the room.
Yet in this deflated space,
the holders-on linger
as if overtaken by the pervasive lethargy,
or reluctant to return to their too familiar routines,
or hesitant to go out into the cold.
But there is a sense that,
in holding on to the meager remnants of a spent celebration,
they are desperately trying to wring a few more laughs
from an evening now more melancholy than merry.
Perhaps what they are holding onto is the notion
yet to be proven,
that the last laughs are the best.
Inside the Horizon
You have to learn,
from physics, philosophy, or lobotomy,
how big the world is
and how much bigger the universe is,
and that the only thing small enough
to fall into the black hole of your anxiety
is you.
Whether you learn this
from physics, philosophy, or lobotomy,
you find a great, imperishable calm
advancing from the flat line of horizon
that all along has kept its distance.
Walk or run, ride or fly,
you could not reach it.
It had to reach you.
Coming to you by way of
physics, philosophy, or lobotomy,
the horizon brings with it
all the tranquility it had withheld all those years.
And you discover that the black hole of anxiety
and the horizon of tranquility
are the same,
for anxiety's jabs and jostles are gone,
and with them, any prospect of relief.
Urban Frost
On a snowy evening in the city,
comes the salt truck strewing
its bounty about.
Freshly fallen salt
sparkles and crackles
beneath wheels of weary cars and exhausted buses.
Crystals skitter along the surface
and tumble into potholes, salting the road's wounds.
Diamonds of fallen salt
turn to dust beneath the tentative tread of tired traffic.
Salt dust turns whiteness to water
whose crawling current keeps
wheeled vessels creeping slowly by
these snowy woods of steel, concrete and glass,
where crowding and congestion,
distraction and deflection,
allow no moment for "stopping by,"
or for thinking whose woods these are,
or for so much as a dream of sleep.
In the city, there are only
the miles to go
and the promises.
