Walking To Work - Michael Rogner

Unhurried in a realm below the acorn woodpeckers
hoarding their harvest I try not to think
of their bright clown faces while eating
their own babies though I’m not working so my mind
is mine and I can think in any direction – walking to work
when I don’t want to work I can think of Steinbeck
sailing into San Diego Bay to get a haircut and asking
the navy gunner if he ever thinks of families
at the far end of his bombs and then sailing past dolphins
and their winking blowholes on his way to Mexico for work –
the park is frozen and I shuffle more the closer
I come, past the swimming hole where the dead man
turned up dead last week and what he would
give to be working right now or walking to work
or thinking of Steinbeck sailing with his dead friend
working over rocks in tide pools and collecting whatever
was on the other side but instead he’s drowned dead in Chico
and Steinbeck’s friend is dead by the tracks
and Steinbeck died in New York City for fuck’s sake
where the thrushes only sing in summer
and in a box he sailed home to Salinas
on a boat with no red light atop the mast
which has a name I don’t know and holds the job
of keeping this world of strangers alive

Originally published by Barrow Street 2020

Michael Rogner is a restoration ecologist, self-taught poet, and husband battling stage IV cancer. His work appears or is forthcoming in Willow Springs, Minnesota Review, Crab Creek Review, Moon City Review, and elsewhere.