Note To Self
It’s Mahler’s Sixth, with Szell conducting, on
the stereo:
the tragic in our art
and lives is what I’m thinking now, the part
we play within the cycle.
Wife is gone,
and dogs are fed, asleep. I’m with my self
or selves, my many deaths and births.
The gold-
brown leaves shot through with sun, the crumbling shelf
of cloud beyond the neighbors’ house that’s old
but freshly painted and reroofed, the new
blue vein I see on my left shin. . .
and now,
from woodwinds, strings, the brass erupts.
How do
we handle flux? Catholicism, Tao,
or Hamlet’s calm “Let be?”
My wife comes back
tomorrow. Percy yelps; he wants a snack.
Thomas Zimmerman teaches English, directs the Writing Center, and edits two literary magazines at Washtenaw Community College, in Ann Arbor, MI. Poems of his have appeared recently in Antiphon, Electric Windmill Press, and The Petrichor Review. You can link here to Tom’s website: www.thomaszimmermanonline.com
Copyright © 2012 by Thomas Zimmerman
Randomly Accessed Poetics 
I feel the same way about my dog. My first thought is with my wife, but Toby comes a close second, and he never leaves me for days at a time. Fine poem.