<div class="line">In Sisimiut, Greenland, today,</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">Inhabited for the past 4,500 years,</div>
<div class="line">And now a town of 6,000 selves,</div>
<div class="line">We visited a Lutheran church</div>
<div class="line">Completed in 1775.</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">Our guide said there are only two houses left in town</div>
<div class="line">With two separate entrances—</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">One for the conquerors, one for her people.</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">Isn’t it thus</div>
<div class="line">For all of us?</div>


A Horizon Is Vague at a Distance

Ode to the Cameraman

Throughout This Teeter-Totter World

<div class="line">I hasten to assure</div>
<div class="line">All who wander by</div>
<div class="line">I live, a pragmatist,</div>
<div class="line">And know regret</div>
<div class="line">Like Romeo and Juliet</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">Fallen in love.</div>
<div class="line">We know the launch,</div>
<div class="line">Pure joy, but</div>
<div class="line">The landing, endless</div>
<div class="line">Sorrow, I confess</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">I picture those two,</div>
<div class="line">Married for years,</div>
<div class="line">Three kids, a million fights,</div>
<div class="line">Romeo at the pub, he’s out,</div>
<div class="line">Juliet at home, with gout.</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">Do I long today</div>
<div class="line">For all my Juliets?</div>
<div class="line">Prithee, kind reader,</div>
<div class="line">Not at all, I’m sane</div>
<div class="line">With my Juliet who will remain.</div>


Self-Portrait as Mastodon Remains

Medals of Freedom in the Afterlife

Wherefore Art Thou?

<div class="line">I keep many secrets</div>
<div class="line">I’m going to tell a few</div>
<div class="line">You will know me better</div>
<div class="line">Though still I won’t know you</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">A process much like praying</div>
<div class="line">Though we don’t need a pew</div>
<div class="line">And we’ll really never finish</div>
<div class="line">We’ll always keep a few</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">I’m tired more than yesterday</div>
<div class="line">Exhaustion simply grew</div>
<div class="line">Now that you are older</div>
<div class="line">You may feel it too</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">Do dear friends really know me</div>
<div class="line">Perhaps, just one or two</div>
<div class="line">Not completely because I hide</div>
<div class="line">Like others in the zoo</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">Most important, I’m an alien</div>
<div class="line">Here to spy on you</div>
<div class="line">Report back to my people</div>
<div class="line">They’re energy, like you</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">There, that is the big one</div>
<div class="line">We were separate as we grew</div>
<div class="line">Now carrot and potato</div>
<div class="line">We swim in the same stew</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">Now you know me better</div>
<div class="line">What I say may be true</div>
<div class="line">But when you tap my shoulder</div>
<div class="line">We still ask each other who</div>


Eighth Grade Industrial Arts

The Bar-Headed Goose

Full Disclosure

<div class="line">Old times are the best.</div>
<div class="line">Aren’t they?</div>
<div class="line">Old times rinse the fog of pain,</div>
<div class="line">expose the pleasure, shining down</div>
<div class="line">like sunlight from a star.</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">An old woman waits in front of a house</div>
<div class="line">in which we both lived years ago, ’til</div>
<div class="line">one thing led, ’til she pushed and I fell, naked,</div>
<div class="line">to our bedroom floor, a swelling on my head.</div>
<div class="line">But she only knows bruises of her own,</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">and she is wont to disremember,</div>
<div class="line">remaining beautiful, dressed in her best,</div>
<div class="line">which has seen its day, not yet descended</div>
<div class="line">to shabbiness, to “Weren’t you someone once?”</div>
<div class="line">I watch her stand and stare. She was my wife.</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">She gazes up at windows</div>
<div class="line">through which we viewed the sea.</div>
<div class="line">She pictures the outside bath</div>
<div class="line">where we once cleansed ourselves;</div>
<div class="line">she wonders who bathes there now.</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">A tear forms in one eye.</div>
<div class="line">She brushes back her hair.</div>
<div class="line">Still tough, she will not cry,</div>
<div class="line">but allows herself to love …</div>
<div class="line">briefly, before she turns away.</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">I need to tell this story</div>
<div class="line">in a slightly different way.</div>
<div class="line">She does not stand before this house.</div>
<div class="line">Old times are the best. Aren’t they?</div>
<div class="line">She is me.</div>


My Mother Was a Dancer and She Never Looked Back

The Night Before My Father’s Surgery

Old Times on Maui

<div class="line">She won’t</div>
<div class="line">let me out</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">so I bark</div>
<div class="line">at the coyotes</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">from behind</div>
<div class="line">the window pane.</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">I smell them.</div>
<div class="line">They hear me.</div>


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September 19, 2018HelpAlan C. Fox

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