It’s a beautiful summer’s day so I go to the park with a book tucked under my arm.  There’s a mature shade tree - a willow - standing near a bend in the creek.  Its branches arch high overhead in a broad canopy and their ends swing low almost sweeping the ground.  I sit close to the trunk and press my back against the bark which is rough and etched with deep lines like the skin of an old man.  The air is hot and still.  Clouds hang motionless in the sky as if someone has pinned paper cutouts to blue Bristol board.  I doze for a while but I can’t say for how long because when I next open my eyes the clouds haven’t changed.  I could have dozed for a minute, I could have dozed for an hour.  Nothing is moving.

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The ceiling fan above doesn’t turn.
It waits on a switch that never trips.
The snow outside sits cold and white.
It waits on a sun that never shines.
The world is a head with empty sockets
spinning itself into nothing and nothing
stirs me as I lie on my bed and see how
the ceiling fan above doesn’t turn.
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They give me a green capsule and tell me it contains a radioactive isotope.  I swallow it and wait in the reception area until they call my name and lead me to a special room.  They leave me alone to put on a gown.  I don’t understand the concern for privacy given a) the gown has a single tie in the back and the rest hangs open and gives the world a clear view of my ass and b) they’ll be using a machine that can see through bone so a few articles of clothing aren’t going to make a difference.  Doesn’t matter to me though.  I’m not much of one to get all bashful about things.  They lie me down on a table beneath a big scanner.  A technician explains that the isotope binds itself in a special way to uric acid so the images of my kidney will show up bright green.  They do a couple passes with me lying on my back then a couple more with me lying on my stomach.  When they’re done they tell me the doctor will be in touch.  After I get dressed I check my watch and see it’s nearly rush hour.  No point going back to work so I ride a bus to the subway station.

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Do you wonder what I do
now I’m gone away from you?
Do you imagine how I live
with the freedom that you give?
Do you stand alone and gaze
at the brightly whorled haze
from my spackled palette knife
that paints a lustrous life?
Or do you look with clearer eye
past the colour-dappled lie
to the worn concrete greys
of my empty days?
Or do you call me back to you
in a soft and pastel hue
arguing the virtue of
what passed for love?
Though I wish to lie with you
it is the lie I must undo.
Only when I am untrue
will I show good faith to you.

When I was a teen
it was inconceivable
that I might find radical
tucked in the folds
of an old man’s face.
Now in my forties
(though with a boy’s libido)
I see in the mirror
how the first lines crack
my youthful veneer.
From mid-day the dawn light
looks the same as the dusk.
Which explains why old fogies
spend so much time counting change
at the check out:
they’re protesting something.