There are rhythms running in my heart, wordless and sensuous as music,
that, dreamlike, release images of mountains, massive, even grand,
of prairies – especially prairies – immense, open, endless, American,
and cataracts, rushing, tumbling, white, silver, sparkling as lifelines.

In the caverns of memory, the skies of anticipation, the murk of the future,
in treasured rubbish in the attic, broken streets of slums, flower beds behind keypad gates,
I search constantly to find words for the energies anterior to words,
for the e=mc2 of a single atom in the old wood of a pioneer’s table,
for the cohesion of galaxies huddling in the void.

In this life around me, daily, in alleys and allées, American and elsewhere,
in the peculiarly American dream of opportunity unbound,
possibility endless, life not everlasting but exceptional in its promise,
in the evidence of all human history, from which we Americans are not excepted,
what I observe, experience, learn, and re-learn,
is that we, like all peoples, are exceptional
in the rhythms running in our hearts.

for Alexander

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
was the doctor’s primary diagnosis when,
once a month, Danika materialized at the local ER,
was stabilized with steroids and inhalers,
and sent home.

Chronic obnoxious monthly bills
was the insurer’s prompt analysis when
its own nurse reported, “Sure, she has COPD,
but there is no reason for her to be in crisis
every few weeks.”

Unobtrusive exploratory talks by phone
revealed to Christie, on the insurer’s outreach staff,
that Danika was 76, lived alone, and went out little:
“I get lonely … anxious. At the ER, they’re nice. They
talk to me.”

Chronic destructive strains of despair
was Christie’s conclusion, and her solution –
a community center near Danika’s home
where she could play bingo and be with people
all day.

Impersonal, objective maximizing of profit
was the insurer’s selfish motivation
to keep Danika out of crisis. Therefore
it made the life of one old woman, living alone,
richer.

Invisible as glass, a shield hangs,
from sky to scuffed concrete,
from east to west and sunrise round to sunrise,
between me and the world.

A barrier I seemed to slip through
with alcohol as catalyst, altering molecules
like fire and fork scrambling an egg,
itself remaining unchanged,

while I, apparently on the other side,
exuberant, headlong, almost heedless
from pole to pole and sunset up to sunrise,
was on a course to fry my brain.

Now, behind (or inside) the barrier –
if it even exists, except as I create it –
headstrong, almost giddy, I recombine words in poetry
like fire in an iron forge, contained, continually

roaring up the chimney.