too seriously please
take the December goodness
of my neighbors’ light-strung eaves
take the struggle helping with the tree
for the children’s sake
don’t take me seriously
on questionnaires about faith and fault
and country Don’t
take me for a loner don’t take me for a foreigner don’t
take me in the public
library checking definitions
of freedom in the dictionary or
tracing satellites after curfew
or in my Goodwill truck delivering a repaired TV
to the house of the foil’d revolutionary
2002