we fell the tree

I found my brother folded
in two, his arms holding close his knees. Beside him, self
portraits portraying a man much younger
than he, eyebrows pressed. An orange blanket
fell across his hands and feet, turned to paper—his eyes
closed, covered in slow air
from his nose. There was a time
when he would be the one awake, patient
for me to join him in the sand littered
with drying weeds. Small trucks, enduring
each storm hidden beneath the slide, would be pushed
across and intro each other. Hornets
and their nests, we knew, were full of honey to stir
with milk worthy of a broken knee if slipped. The new
neighbors brought a fileted lawn where once
ideas of mystery hid the pathways leading to caves
we never found. But here, with the door unlatched, the fridge
left gasping, drooling on the scarred wooden floor, the milk
is warm and you lie asleep in humidity.

Movement and Repose

On paper, a joyful mouse with a Christmas stocking for a cap, holding above
its head a star on a string, stood in front of a wobbly
tree dressed in the season. Every year, like the year before,
snow would fall and Mom would help me put on my boots.
“Remember the bunny ears,” and I would. We'd walk
to her car with the rusted shut passenger door and I'd sit
on the back seat. She drove bus and at the station was a quarter
run Ms. Pac-Man and I always wondered where
Mr. Pac-Man was and why he wouldn't wear a tie. After I turned
seven, on the nights before we'd open presents, Mom would hand me a card
marked my name. Inside I would find the picture-- a mouse, a stocking,
a star, a string, a tree-- with a fifty dollar bill signed “Dad.” I've seen
two pictures of him, one him informal and young, standing on a deck surrounded
by trees and people. His hair was the color of my hair and his face was as much
a baby as mine is. The other, sent two years ago inside the same
card, of him standing next to his dog. Her name I forget. The title
“Dad” scrawled across the back. “I hope you are well. Please write me sometime.”

---

Near Everetts Foods, where good Polish sausage
is sold at $3.59 a pound and soggy nests
of bread cross the second t, a man pulled beside me.
At first I thought he'd like to turn, so I pressed less
on the clutch and inched ahead. He stayed
by my side. I waited. And when
the light turned green, he must have kicked
his foot down the full three inches,
because his tires noisily slipped around on the asphalt
and he plowed ahead, placing himself in front of me
as we drove.
Something caused me to be upset and then,
with the same something, sorry
for him. He was alone in there and the paint
was brighter than the Minnesota Fall's leaves where
Marshall meets Lake and the waxy red reflects
up at those willing to look down.

---

The couch was the scene of an abandoned mouth,
each cushion its own cavity, hosting conversation never to stick
with it. Above, the ceiling fan wobbled in circles,
thinly clinging to the ceiling, as a newly arrived
student— I'm guessing here— sat down and mauled
the keys of the decorative piano. A few sound
right. A man then stands and stumbles on
his chair, the boy playing laughed, looked at him, and stopped.
His name was called. There's no reason to force meaning,
but it can be strange to see dimension in habits.

Birds Thinking

Its fingertips are feathers nearly touching the bark that acts as a safety harness
suspending the ground. It glides between branches
like a sober imitation of Daisy flirting with the stem, while each look,
a head catching movement underneath old leaves, could plummet
a spiral and then, of something, nothing.
No, it has done this for years, a hand upon
a handle and the fingerprints of flash oil. And how is this
not the same as a car ride? Only the other cars could be-- but we don't
talk about that because metaphors are
for school and birds thinking, "I matter, despite how pointless it seems."

Cup Foods

I sat to write about a man
when a mouse scuttled underneath
the kitchen table. I, at first, watched
the stretched shadow bob and weave and freeze
as it saw me seeing it. I then thought only
about walking into my room two nights before, surprised
and angry about it on my bed. I followed
the mouse into the wall it hid
in and assembled a cove full of traps.
I stood guard with an idle broom for a lance
and thought: the man had radio headphones,
a gray beard, dark skin, and a miserable broom
arched on the end. He leaned forward
when he walked and chased the garbage
away in front of Cup Foods. There it is.

A Tour

It seemed like they crawled out of the Great Lake, the rocks
tumbling over until fit-- strong, secure. The metal rails, a rusted glue
like the gold trim on my Great-Grandmother's saucers, balanced
lightly, as if prepared to escape at the threat of wind. The train you paid
to take us pushed past the hanging brush scratching the tin roof.
“Look,” you said to me, holding our bagged lunch as it rested
on the empty seat, “that's the ship your Grandpa was on two years
ago, before your mother left. The gray paint’s turned to rust.”

Bluefin Bay

Bluefin Bay was where water pushed itself through
other water and curled over glass. No one wore their heels
against the rocks or placed their naked feet atop the half
broken beer bottles that washed upon the shore. Tossed
by the semi-lonesome sailors listening to each other
for company, remembering other halves. I asked if we could
go there. We never went, but I wonder if you had.

small thoughts.

I realized today that my mother
is the same age as my grandmother
the year I was born.

***