Mass
Out back there is a stack of aging tires,
indignant grass rises green against the rubber.
I don’t know how to get rid of them,
like the gathering of white websites
on my front porch, demanding passwords,
obdurate, like the deepening puddles of mail.
The old houses around here tilt and hang
on for so long, no longer compliant with code—
I may no longer be considered a feminist.
But the birds, in the soft-colored morning,
are this second lifetime’s kindness:
the feeder fumbles open and I pour
the seeds in. I’ve sacks and sacks
of seed (I bought them over decades).
I will never run out of them.
• • •
David Foster’s memory tells him that he was a finalist in a national poetry contest when he was 18 or 19, but he does not remember the details. He does remember that he managed to make a spot for a poetry class and an extra lit class while majoring in physics and mathematics. He wrote few poems for two decades after that, but the last few years has been actively reading, writing, and workshopping. Three of his recent poems have been published in The Pierian and Cirque.