April 30!

I’m one of those people who carry on

to the bitter end, and this is my last

poem for National Poetry Month,

the wonderful month of April,

in which spring comes to Minnesota.

Yes, this is poem #30 in 30 days, and

I am overjoyed to be done for

another year. Thank you, my

readers, for coming along with me.

April 29

What’s left to do? Is it better to leave

a thing or two undone? Will one loaf

suffice, or will we need two? Depends

on visitors, the number and the appe-

tite. Can we escape the past? The pre-

sent? No. The future? If we choose to.

The bag of recycle left sitting on the

porch; the shower nozzle rusted shut;

the frayed selvage; the lock without

a key; the missing money. The sound

waves of an unfinished thing may

accompany the soul in its final and

eternal journey outward, outward.

April 28

When nothing else can move the day forward but the slings and arrows of outrage, I seat myself before the sounds of iron bells, streams of brightly colored paper, the blunt thump of drilling somewhere far away or the aftereffect of a car subwoofer rolling by. I’m trying to hear the birds. Music, the most time-bound of arts, for it is constantly dying and being replaced. Music and its recall; the tendency of the mind to fill the blanks and thus to make time pass.

April 27

In the years when we first moved to this piece of land, trying to make a yard from an old field around a house only recently western white pine timbers, we tried to discourage the moles from digging by throwing poison down their entrances, by making runnels of their tunnels to drown them out, by planting vibrating posts around the yard to ward them off, but nothing worked. The moles went about their nights, which included their days, paddling back and forth across the sad excuse for a lawn, popping up here and there to eat sunflower seeds or dandelion greens or whatever drives them forward, like the need to explore the vast unknown drove Columbus. Also the greed for gold. Some things are inexorable. We walked their paths, tamping the earth back down to try to save the grass, and have learned after some years that moles will not be tamped down nor drowned nor discouraged, but will leave on their own terms, in their own time, in their own manner. Which is probably more than can be said for us.

April 26

Even if the form shifts, there is something in the cloud that overflows onto the clear portion of the sky. I can’t hold anything in place, and shouldn’t even try. It would be better to build my own bulwark out of sticks and bones and the contempt of swindlers. What could be more audacious than the sound of an inveterate liar making a mockery of the neighbors, who have lived beside me for more than twenty years without so much as a good morning. Only when my Jack Russell leapt into the mouth of their German Shepherd did I hear from them. My dog came home in one piece; for that I am grateful. Also for the table and what is on it, and for the red that permeates the human handiwork. Although it is not my favorite color, it is the most necessary. Like an experience one can recall, even if one did not, oneself, live it through.