-Pairing the bases-

I took the measure of a small group of poems,

Those which I've chosen to preserve

And because I publish poems on a blog

Passersby might determine them less relevant

Than the glossy-jacketed, tactile beauties pulled from the shelves.

I won't argue against that requisite.

But a few friends and acquaintances stop by,

Read some now and then,— then go about

The daily business of documenting their own faculties.

Everybody's active.

I took the measure of subject-matter;

The compartments within the geography

Of the local planet at my hands;

Family, friends, tenement,—

Church, schoolyard, slow-dancing,—

Playground, textiles, bakeries and junkyard,

Bound between two parallel streets

But running in opposite directions;

The nucleotide of Bedford and Healy.

Sub-settings fill the DNA of the structure.

Mother straightening up, preparing the table,

Swiping the countertops, balancing

The mantle's knick-knacks, weaving between

Elements in the chaos of the inside world,

Father driving hard toward the sales near the sea,

Sister's academy friends waltzing through, draped softly

In angora pink,— (It has to be beautiful)

Brother interrupting in every room with tricks up his sleeves,––

Water heating in twin-handled pots

Atop relentless burners of the gas-stove

In preparation for spaghetti or the tub.

Outside, father drives to the curb,

Sewer eats baseballs,

ESSO Station saturates

With a pungent scent of leaded gasoline,

Smokestacks exhale the hard smoke of running cloth,

Girls hang-around leaning on the fins,

Church tolls for the living and tolls for the dead.

It's the space between each toll which matters.

Sometimes it’s quieter on the outside of life.

The job is collecting the pieces,

Fitting them into the structure,

Finding the link which holds the bases together.

Growing old, I understand that a poem may be written
Which one would hope to preserve.

But to be preserved it needs to speak to the salt of life.