I awake to a racket at 3am bandits 
      by another name two orphaned coons climbing
the kitchen window screen protest in 
      ratchety voices but don’t budge when I tap 
the glass so I open the sash and peer 
      into their partymask faces. 
"What is it you want in this human world?" 
     Five blocks away, behind Lowe’s Building 
Supply in the green by the Merrimack
     the homeless of Concord have built cabins 
from pilfered lumber complete with lawn 
     ornaments a ceramic frog, a garden gnome
gesturing "this way." The river flows by
      and so the highway, the shoppers in and 
out with bags of nails. In Luke, Jesus said
     Should someone ask for your coat, 
don’t withhold your shirt as well; in the Jataka
      Sattva Buddha throws his body from a 
cliff to feed a starving lioness. What did you 
     expect from this life? says a voice
room for everyone to breathe?
      Imagine what can be done with three nails
with the blood and flesh of the bone.
      The coons don’t understand but I do. 
It is not the sound of our own starving 
      that will wake us--if we are destined to
wake at all.
​

​I wonder what
I will do with the
night when all the
crickets have died
and the zeros come
to roost their crystalline 
holes all over the
wind stripped trees.
the crickets, who
anchor the night to
the reasonable hours 
and keep it from
spreading all over 
everything the way it
does in November, the
month when razor 
blades sharpen themselves
and the dead won't 
stop dying.
I eye the guitar in
the corner that promised
to teach me magic words
but that was April. 
time does not wait
and I am beginning
to suspect the postman
of keeping all the
love letters for himself
and the mice of turning 
the hands of the clock 
ahead just a bit.
​