All day long the wind's been blowing,
moaning around the corners of the house.
It rakes the gravel around on the roof
and bangs loose trash cans down the street.

Now the storm spits rain on the windows.
I smoke my new pipe in silence and
sip my cold coffee, feeling the strong wind
should bring me some inspiration.

Last night's tequila has me subdued today,
the low energy forces a detached perspective
and I watch the fierce wind rage
with a stone god's utter indifference.

I wait without anxiety as the day goes dark,
finding my pipe smoked out and the coffee gone.

LXIX.

1.

The house is silent without expecting you soon.
My bourbon is stronger than usual, my pipe
more bitter. I left the bed unmade all day.

I remembered sadly this morning when
I left you I did not look back to send you
one last smile to fly on, another regret

to file. I've been listening to the records
you don't like, playing some of the songs
you love, catching up on the laundry

we ignored to hold each other and listen
to each other bitch how the damn world's
been treating us today. Tonight we might

have watched the late show, I, needing sleep
for tomorrow, awake and you asleep against my chest.

2.

We had a wet Christmas drizzle here.
You without your luggage in the frigid east
had snow like diamonds and belated cheer.
I ate too much and got bored with the beast.

Our little tree twinkles in the dim room
where the piano waits. Nothing but carols
on the radio. I've been trying to consume
the fudge and cookies and damn the perils.

I'm trying to acquire a taste for scotch and seem
to be succeeding. The Chivas you brought home
makes it easy, but I won't be dumping the Beam.

While I sit here at my sloppy desk and my poem
takes shape you are asleep across the nation
in a dream of me, sending me your inspiration.

3.

Ready to change the furniture, switch
our sleeping rooms. You'll be surprised
because, though you'll expect it, it will
be done, done well and the clutter gone.

Somehow I hope to find a niche
for everything, all organized
and sensibly arranged. But still
the old garage must be imposed upon.

There'll be an extra bed for company,
or for me if we must sleep separately.

My desk and chair and books galore,
the persian rug on the bedroom floor.

When you come home don't let me hear you say,
"I don't like it, change it back the other way."

4.

Coming up on New Year's Eve and this year
I have no place to play. And as long as I'm here
I feel I might as well give up trying to
with such flakes in the business, jerks who

won't give you a chance or who take the first
excuse to dump you, or, what's worse,
expect you to work for free, rehearse

for weeks and when the gig time comes
change the show and say we're sorry chum
but these changes are too tough for you
so fuck you very much, you're through.

Among all these bummers, though, there is one thing
which sustains me and gives me reason to sing;
and that's your love, whose success soothes failure's sting.

5.

The smug lights of the center strip now mark
my horizon. For the first time since '79
arrived I'm home alone on New Year's Eve.

That year I was ill and a witch about to enter
my life. She was insane and I don't know what
I was thinking. I believe I'm a little wiser now.

That was a rough winter in the Northwest, ice
caked on the cars and trees. Now I look at '83
and see myself settling down in a good woman's love.

I feel maturing changes, a phase of life go out of me.
I tried to be a book I couldn't write. It needs
a meaning which I am somehow unable to consider.

I am out of place and lonely here and only your love
holds me together. It builds me a way to see myself.

6.

I was reading Rimbaud today. His young vision
spits on the sentimental and dissolves it, bares

the ugly necessity, the actual foundation we rest
our sweet ideals upon. My poetry lacks courage,
audacity defers to humorless calculations.

I must have another story in me, not a tale,
but a parable with a lesson of importance.
The theme is isolation, speech without a voice.

You are not the grail of my heart, which was lost
and never found. The quest was vain romance.
You and I seek our labor in a common ground.

I would like to resolve this be my year to breach
my lovely walls and hand my words to the world.
Silence has me stifled. I must devise a trumpet.

7.

Okay Charlie Fox this is Alpha System falling,
get your gut ready to bounce blocks and heave,
weave, believe. You won't buy no pep talk...

Mom thinks it's a lack of confidence, but it's a lack
of faith and a presence of cynicism, doubt and fear.
I can be broken down by the truth, but I cannot

be built up with praise. Futility embitters me.
I'm wringing out the old year, sinking in the new
and all that I can do is just what must be done.

These are the days of longest darkness at the end
of the calendar. I am aware I have begun to sow
the fruits of the future, discard the cherished past.

How shall we blend our favored stalks, but slowly?
This love ignores us shaping gardens in its home.

8.

As I prepare for your return, scrubbing
up the sinks and floors, the radio goes with
the latest songs (meatless mush) and I think
I might try being stronger and I might try
to shape some pattern in the chaos around my head.

One ought to be positive about what's going on,
but negative disillusionment sometimes seems
more appropriate. It is not you suggesting this;
though I wonder if our love will last, naturally.
I know I need to believe it is true and necessary.

I have been recurrently hopeless about all prospects
before me in this life and alternately certain fate
will not let me fail, only that waiting will reveal
opportunity's proper time. Welcome home, my love.

LXX.

Farewell to the strayed flock and the shepherd's business,
the clever oaks and the executive image.
Farewell to the surgeons of romance, to the wizards
and their vain diagrams of the floral soul.
These recede on the shore as we sail to fresh continents.

Their sands will welcome us, their rivers embrace us.
Their mountains will sing to us of distant snows.

Farewell to confessional letters and midnight lamps,
to friendly enemies and their promises.
Farewell to the cabinet where the child's doll hides,
to the mendicants camped on the temple steps.
Their reasons blow away like the smoke of a snuffed candle.

The sands will welcome us, the rivers embrace us.
The mountains will sing to us of distant snows.

LXXI.

The length I've waited, measured slow in doubt
of love and worth shall end with our
beginning pledge. I've kept this distance clean

of any vain expense of self by blood
or pen or song. Of course I have a past,
but rolled in no regrets, nor image cast
into the changeless stone of history.

Not knowing they were meant for you to heal,
I kept the wounds of youth alive who loved
and lost and wandered with his story sealed
from those whose eyes could never read

beyond the portrait lines. My words are meant
for ears alone. And only you shall fill
with faith the pages of biography.

LXXII.

Soon shall be our wedding day,
my love so long in waiting.
Soon shall be our wedding day,
my love, my promised bride.

We've launched our roots, our twining vines;
our leaves and metals merge.
Our vows confirm our living pledge
to consciously entangle.

In the passion of the marriage bed
we celebrate our love,
but in our hearts a home is made
and in our minds its comfort.

Soon shall be our wedding day,
my love, my waiting bride.