Sister Ricardo preaches
the sanctity and struggle
of marriage. I laugh at her
extra-long lashes. 

Roy Rogers, Tim Holt, Gene

Autry, Lone Ranger—only

you and Hopalong Cassidy

wore the bad man’s ensign.

The moon belongs to mothers.
Her cylindrical cycles
both carved and curving.

Slim in the beginning
with angles sharp enough
to scythe hearts.

It’s hanging behind us.  Blue ball.  White feathery clouds.  It glows out of the black.  Darkness crusted around it, spreading out everywhere.  Thick black.  But we penetrate, metal speeding through the opaque molasses of space.

My brain
Is flying all over the place
bouncing off the ceiling
climbing the walls
it just wants to rest

Cedar waxwings really get it.
They know it’s better to give than receive.
They also know an hour or so of wine tasting
goes a long way toward boosting conviviality.
(They are the bon vivants of birdland.)

a buffoon built an igloo
for a social deviant
hunk of fatal slush falls
ends career in estrangement

The neighbor’s cat
comes and visits
me sometimes.

On Sundays and Saint’s Days, he wears
his cloister’s black and white,
hikes his hem to the handle bars and billows
like a striped sail, rising and falling
along the prairie highway, tacking
the green swells of tall grass
on his squeaking Schwinn.