Tuesday, August 31, 2010

LINES FOR AUGUST 31

Red Wing, Minnesota -
this is where I
cross the Mississippi,
cross the Mississippi,
cross the railroad tracks.


Monday, August 30, 2010

LINES FOR AUGUST 30

Trees in the air
like swirling fog.

Swirling fog
like trees.

Sunday, August 29, 2010

THREE from
THE OLD POET SAYS


“Make notes.
Leave a trail of them.
And so

you find your way home.”

*

“Eventually,” he said,
“it is all one poem.”

*

“Don't set the pen down
thinking there is no more

to say. There is always
more, if you pay attention.

Like blue sky breaking through.”


Saturday, August 28, 2010

THREE from
THE OLD POET SAYS


“Let the tree
be oak. Do not
burden it

with yourself.”

*

“I do not
understand

how much
this is this.”

*

“Solitude is
bitter with its

sweetness.”


Friday, August 27, 2010

LINES FOR AUGUST 27

This crow, and that one
ten miles back, they both
fly west - what

do they know
that I don't?


Thursday, August 26, 2010

LINES FOR AUGUST 26

Love
in a parking
lot - these

are not neighbors
who stand
so close,

each lost
in the gaze
of the other.


Wednesday, August 25, 2010

LINES FOR AUGUST 25

Over the top of the fog,
over the promise of God,

into the shining blindness.


Tuesday, August 24, 2010

LINES FOR AUGUST 24

Don't travel so fast you
disturb the silence.


Monday, August 23, 2010

LINES FOR AUGUST 23

Arrive
by any means.

Love
with the heart

you have.


Sunday, August 22, 2010

THREE from
THE OLD POET SAYS


“Dust devil
in the field,

the poet
speaking.”

*

“If this
isn't

a poem,
what is?”

*

“Someday

a poem of
a single

word, like
blessing.”

Saturday, August 21, 2010

THREE from
THE OLD POET SAYS


“Give me wine,
yes, yes. I will

give you poems.”

*

“Poem, the leap
we'd make, if

we could.”

*

“Is not the silence
as important as

the sense?”


Friday, August 20, 2010

LINES FOR AUGUST 20

The sudden white blindness.


Thursday, August 19, 2010

LINES FOR AUGUST 19

Wet sky so thick.
Cream on berries.


Wednesday, August 18, 2010

LINES FOR AUGUST 18

That which
lifts the clouds.

That which
lifts these hills.

That which
makes me

lift my eyes.



Tuesday, August 17, 2010

LINES FOR AUGUST 17

Variation on Basho #2

Yammering crowds.
Wind from all directions.
The broken flowers.


Monday, August 16, 2010

LINES FOR AUGUST 16

Variation on Basho #1

Evening.
Bare branch

with crow.


Sunday, August 15, 2010

THREE from
THE OLD POET SAYS


“Having nothing
to say,” he said,

“does not make me
any less the poet.”

*

“It will collapse
without that word.
If only

you knew which.”

*

“Sometimes
nothing more
than scratches
on paper.

Sometimes
nothing more
than the need
to scratch
on paper.”


Saturday, August 14, 2010

THREE from
THE OLD POET SAYS


“When the master
throws out your offering

say Thanks.”

*

“Well-chewed vowels
is what you need, with

some of them
stuck in your teeth.”

*

“Why so many
red-tails

in your work?”
they asked.

“To see the world
the way it is.”


Friday, August 13, 2010

LINES FOR AUGUST 13

Ruffle of sky
dragging the hillside.

What makes sense
in such greyness?


Thursday, August 12, 2010

WHERE LIGHT
COMES INTO THE BODY


Greg Kosmicki, New Route in the Dream, Pudding House Publications, 81 Shadymere Lane, Columbus, OH 43213.

You don't want to do it -
you have work to do.
There is always work to do,
more than you can handle,
even in retirement, and poetry
takes time away. You don't want to
take time away, and yet you can't
help yourself - you're still
in your bathrobe, coffee is already
cold, and you're holding the book
like an old man would. You can't
set it down. Every book reads better
back to front, and that's how you're
reading this one, though in the great
scheme of things, it doesn't matter.
"Deodorant" is a poem that will
make your eyes mist up whether
you read it first, or last, or some-
where in the middle. Because his
daughter is fourteen. Because she has
gotten deodorant in her eye. Because
"she can't believe how stupid she is."
Because he can see the two lines

running across her forehead,
lines like his own. Because they are
so much alike in their separate
bodies, their separate trajectories.
Because he puts Visine into that fragile
place where light comes into her body,
where all our thousand sadnessess
fly out, that place which lets us
take in poems like this one, like all
the others in the book, poems about
how much we've lost, like all Greg's
poems, wise and sad and compelling.
Because his voice is refusing to be
stilled. Because his hand demands to
write, to get it right, to get it down,
to go on to the next thing, whatever
it is, whatever is required of us.
Because that's what we do. We can't
do otherwise. In spite of everything,
we have to love ourselves, we have to
laugh, we have to hold on and let go,
find our way to the bedroom, put on
the costume of who we are
for another day, put it on and go
out into the day a little sadder,
a little wiser, a little more weary,
yet also brightened because
the light of these poems has some-
how come into the body.


LINES FOR AUGUST 12

Road bends
or does not.

I go with it.


Wednesday, August 11, 2010

LINES FOR AUGUST 11

Rain in my face.
Someday the ocean.


Tuesday, August 10, 2010

LINES FOR AUGUST 10

Un-
settling is this not

moving when around
you things are.


Monday, August 09, 2010

LINES FOR AUGUST 9

The green
peach promises

sweetness.


Sunday, August 08, 2010

THREE from
THE OLD POET SAYS


“So many words.
We're blessed that we can

pick and choose.”

*

“Sometimes
not enough
is too much.

How to know
which is which?”

*

“Circle
and circle
like a hawk.

When you see
something, drop
like a rock.”


Saturday, August 07, 2010

THREE from
THE OLD POET SAYS


“It is not enough to write. You
must also have something to say.”

*

“No tougher corner
to get out of than one you've

painted yourself into.”

*

“Do you have to
wait?” they asked.

“No,” he said, “they
line up and push.”


Friday, August 06, 2010

LINES FOR AUGUST 6

The heavy
fog. Heaven

come down to
earth, to

clobber us.


Thursday, August 05, 2010

LINES FOR AUGUST 5

Such a grayling
sky. No shiners.


Wednesday, August 04, 2010

LINES FOR AUGUST 4

I am lost
in the fog.
What is

lost with me?


Tuesday, August 03, 2010

LINES FOR AUGUST 3

Not the miles
that tire me,

but the distance.


Monday, August 02, 2010

LINES FOR AUGUST 2

How much
lifting up

for this much
sky

pressing down?


Sunday, August 01, 2010

THREE from
THE OLD POET SAYS


“Force the wrench
and you break the bolt.

It's not pressure
that shines the diamond,

that makes the poem.”

*

“Make the poem.
Don't make rules

to make the poem.”

*

“The quiet man may have
nothing to say, or perhaps

he does not wish to throw
his pearls before swine.”


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