Looking Good

Coffee is a plow horse today
each sip digs a trench, I'm falling
fast into loamy soil, it's a day where every
little chore gets done with your people
swinging arms around your shoulders.
Be gone you say, but dang, they've
brought along photographs.

I tell myself to shake it off,
but my flyswatter brain is no match
for these big-eyed tender demands.
From my mother’s Slavic cheekbones
to my grandson’s beamy smile--
today, they will hang around.

And even spring, with its early blooms
won’t light up each and every shadow.
Nor will the licking tongue of
my sable dog who rubs my legs and asks for treats.

Some days are just meant to be
twelve hours of -- I can’t forget.
You keep on doing regular things
while all the dead ones
strut around -- stuck in time,
looking good.