greed

Your heart said "more"
but you thought it was
your stomach and so ate

(and ate and ate until
nothing remained,
not even the plate).

Remembering How to Sing After a Long Winter

There are new blossoms on the trees.
I step outside, emerging from a chill
that had settled in my body, in my lungs.
Ahead of me is grocery shopping,
coffee, sitting on a bench people-watching.
Behind me: a season of mourning.
Its slow dissipation an ambulence
whose warning screams have faded back
into the humming of life.

The gas furnace in our living room
shut off. Cooling rods creaked,
arthritic in their metal joints.

Every moment I suffer the same fate
the heat of my life created thus
by the science of equal forces.

An organ weighed in exact proportions
of expansion and contraction. My heart
labors, without solution, the same arithmetic.