THINKING

Like a spindle,

it’s just there

and yet it runs 

through everything I do.

It is the thing around which

all the turning takes place.

It will take whatever I give it

and twist it into thread.

How tightly it winds

is up to me 

and starts with

how I work the wheel.

NON SEQUITUR

I am trying.

I am really trying

to stay with you.

To stay with the diversions 

and deflections

because I think

you are taking me,

taking me some place

worth going to.

So I wait for the punch line,

for the needle in the haystack.

But they keep not coming.

And so, I finally just ask:

What’s your point?

And that’s when it comes

like a catapult, the non sequitur,

your answer that makes no sense  

given what we’ve been talking about.

It sends me flailing away

into the distance, into a mote

of confusion, from where I see,

bobbing all by myself,

a fortress that will have

no visitors today.

THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH

I am the helium

that fills it,

the plastic

that surrounds it,

the string

that has me holding it

in the carnival

where I carry it.

I am the child in the circus,

in the Big Top.

I am all the children

that are there

with their big red balloons,

who at different intervals

let them go 

while they excitedly watch 

as they rise toward the tent’s peak,

toward its tight pucker.

There the balloons stay bouncing

against each other—against 

all that red—trying 
to get out.

I am all these things at once

if I go through the world

always thinking I’m right.

THE AUCTIONEER

Maybe the problem is…

I am trying too hard

to be the wheeler-dealer,

the go-between, the fast-talker,

the auctioneer.

Maybe I’m the wrench

in the works.

Maybe I should go

straight to prayer

to do my bidding for me.

Maybe I should ask it outright:

Prayer, how do I pray?

And if I do…

Maybe the real Auctioneer

will wordlessly answer 

and serenity will become 

my Sotheby’s.