Does it make a difference, anything we write?"

is there some point,
to this.

Like forgotten toys, Sears Roebuck catalog wishes,
come materially true,
or old trips to the Utica library,
mom and I counting how many green lights
we could pass through from all the way through
New Hartford.

We write because birds are in us,
as trees are in us, waiting to give form
to the world of living cells, that tree branches and fronds,
limbs and leaf metamorphosis into
little animals of different sorts, fauna,
to climb those very trees.
Bird calls in April morning, the most agreeable of
cacophonies, the sound of the Universe itself, between
swoon of dove, crack of woodpecker,
towhee, beautiful morning birds all agreeing
on the conductor's spaced symphony.

what does reading do, reading someone else,
but pull us out of our own minds, our own mental states,
our own chagrins, to finally forget our own impending
neuroses, as if by some rehydrating
and mineral laden fruit
soothing and reviving.

I am not a writer, a hack like anyone else,
a Hallmark card, for better or worse,
as if my rocking chair,
made by Amish, purchased at a fruit stand
made of bent twigs simple and wooden,
comfortable was that of Lincoln, or JFK,
just so, with the green chamois shirt of winter
draped upon it,
like some sort of bird or dry manta-like sea creature,
or hide,
chest pocket button becoming an eye.

wood goes with wood, good to leave it plain.

night is hard when you cannot sleep.
Reading is the best soothe.

I feel better now, now that I have read,
somewhere in the night,
something about Lincoln,
a cemetery, the life in between this one and
the one beyond.

So doing, I join the pattern,
the greater, the leaf shape,
the bird's whistle, cheep, coo,
song of regular notes each time, perfect,
without question.

Mental health,
is regained,
one no longer
so alone.




Shape of the head
makes one a writer,
karma, the adjustments
of DNA.