Cold, Cold

  The little thyme plant Dani and I have been trying to salvage is becoming what looks like a pile of dry green noodles beside our window. This is because it has been killed by the cold that makes it through. And the fact that THAT MUCH cold makes it through should be a sign to all Britain that the buildings you build are really damn poorly insulated.
  My cold has returned. Right in time for classes. Dani and I could see our breath in the bedroom this morning. As master of this small abode, I was not well pleased. My subject, the thyme plant, has perished. Scotland has begun to purchase emergency road salt from Africa. It is sunny outside, but somehow there is still sleet. Falling. Right now. It is a mortifying miracle. I can only shake my fist at the snowy castle. At least its suffering with me. And furthermore, it is a tourist trap. And dirty. Ha.
  The internet informs me that I will need to decide on a dissertation topic soon. Yeah, right. Any of my scholarly friends want to suggest something? I have a new idea every day, but the trouble I once got myself into with Yeats is still ringing like an alarm in my head. Paralyzing. Time for a sixth cup of mint tea.
   Luckily, a package arrived this morning with my books for the Modern Poetry class. Nice Faber editions of some of my favorite poets that I have hitherto been too cheap to buy? Check. Nice woman going to work while I sit on my butt and blog? Check. Big bucket of candy within arms reach? Check.
  Oh my gosh. I just realized that this all could have been written by a middle aged, lonely woman.

 Such is the poet's mind.
Here's a poem about a dangerous habit.


Imagining Heaven in January

What about Heaven’s geography?
Will the Hand of Paradise
wipe away the mountains like tears?

Will we forget, in the stillness
of a frozen river, the truth we learned
once from its ceaseless goodbye?

A snow that falls but never
meets the sea, will it fall there?
And on it a ship that has

no need of sailing, drifting close
to the spotless shore, accumulating
Heaven’s dust, as its

barrels of rotless spice
sleep inside, dreaming of
the deaths of flowers?

Here my imagination fails.
Looking to Heaven I see
only the greased colors

on the surface of its bubble.
The city is rittled with examples
of my kind of ignorance,

though not, as some would say,
in the laughing accordion man
who cares for nothing,

or in the limp carnival that
workers are hastening to
dismantle only to rebuild.

Trying to find an address
whose building we
have never seen,

my wife and I pass
a neoclassical statue,
clothed in barely-clinging

robes and snow,
looking serious, looking
toward no future

but the stony
inwardness of
herself.