Monday, August 31, 2020
IF I WROTE
IF IT IS NOT
If it is not
a good poem,
if it is not
beautiful, why
must it be
abandoned?
Don't the homely
moments still
mean something,
even when
I don't know
how to say it?
Should the lost
souls stay lost
because I have
failed? No.
I don't think so.
Let even
the bad poem
be good enough
for what we love.
ON MY BIRTHDAY
Sunday, August 30, 2020
BEAUTY
SKY COLD BLUE
Sky cold blue,
snow a foot deep.
I am feeding
the birds who are
cold blue too, who
are fluffed on their
perches, waiting.
My fingers are
cold blue and numb.
Sun off the snow
is blinding, yet
hope will go on
into darkness,
as we do not
give up, those who
leave these seeds for
others, those who
gather them up.
Saturday, August 29, 2020
AT TEN
At ten I lay wondering
what it all means. At thirteen
I learned. At twenty-one
I learned some more. In old age
now I understand. What it
means is you must remember
what it was that took your breath,
knocked you down, left you awed.
WHICH AMOEBA
Which amoeba split when, then
so on and so forth, the railroad
going through my great-grandfather's
farm so he moved, so grandfather
could meet my grandmother and
my father meet my mother, and
so on and so forth. Think: if that one
amoeba had split another way, who
then would be filling the space that I fill
along this great chain of things?
Friday, August 28, 2020
SHAKE THE BOX
THE POET IS NOT SO POOR
The poet is not so poor he cannot
take a glass of wine upon the evening,
and so he does. As the light fades the red
of the wine deepens. Wind sings a march song.
The snow is going. Summer beckons from
a distance. The poet thinks the wine is
the color of blood, spilled and spilling and
still to be shed. That's the kind of evening
it is, too cold to go out, too late for
him to make any other plans tonight.
Thursday, August 27, 2020
PILE OF STONES
Pile of stones
and boulders,
their deep heat
in summer,
their winter
nakedness.
The boy knows.
He sits there
among them
and knows some-
thing has changed.
It will never
be the same.
EVEN / THE SUN
Even
the sun
in our
sky does
not crack
the ice
in this
hard, dark
season.
The wind
speaks its
foreign
tongue, its
bitter
truth, and
we wait,
we have
to, for
spring
to come.
Wednesday, August 26, 2020
WE TOUCH ONLY
We touch only
the surface of
the world, what we
see is only
approximately
what is. The distance
from the hand to
what it touches
is infinite.
If we could close
the gap between,
wouldn't we all
die of wonder?
A HARD MONTH - JANUARY 2019
Who leads the
light away?
Who brings the
evening in?
Finally, the
cold has
broken. Can
we keep what
we've taken?
Who lets these
nights fail? Who
will let the
stars come home?
Tuesday, August 25, 2020
THE POET SAW
The poet saw
his other self,
a thin old man
hungry for love
and demanding
a hand-out. It
frightened him, that
he might be some
disheveled creature
who spends his days
talking to power-
lines, that what he wants
is farther than
he is going.
FEBRUARY SKY
A cloud
takes the
shape of
a tree
branch out
there. How
lovely
the world
is now
making
things right
for me
in here.
Monday, August 24, 2020
WHICH IS IT?
Is it that
the spider
tunes his web
or the train
comes through town?
I cannot say.
The darkness
I mean to
speak of blinds me.
There is nothing
left now but
what I touch
and what the
light refuses.
LATE AUGUST
Sunday, August 23, 2020
TODAY
Tomorrow
is a blind man
and yesterday
fat with everything.
Today is a child
waiting for her parents,
who don't know
where she is,
yet her eyes
shine with hope.
STORM
The sun
turning leaves
more silver
than green.
You think
it means
a storm is
coming. It is.
There's always
a storm
coming. It's
August.
Saturday, August 22, 2020
BEFORE AND AFTER
Before, she
imagined
it would be
everything --
the sun at
Summer's Beach,
wind in her
hair, a taste
of ocean,
stars in the
soft darkness.
After, she
wondered, Is
that all it
is? He gets
want he wants
and I might
get pregnant?
We know that
innocence
is always
a long way
from wisdom
and now, yes,
she knows too.
SUN CHANGES
Friday, August 21, 2020
EVENING, THE FIRST OF OCTOBER
We go out
and stand waiting,
as if the stars
would talk to us.
We know we know
nothing and grow
smaller at the thought
of it. The stars,
as they always do,
say little.
Whatever you want,
what you get is
wind in the trees,
this forever sky.
AUGUST MORNING
Thursday, August 20, 2020
WORDS
Far from the
knife edge of
the moment
they are but
the empty
husks of dead
insects trapped
in a sill.
Try as you
might you can't
breathe life back
into them.
I CUP YOUR
Wednesday, August 19, 2020
I CAN STAY BUT / A MOMENT
I can stay but
a moment in
all those lives I've
glimpsed. Some were saints,
some were sinners,
some are still to
find their place. It's
as if I'm on
a train rumbling
past and they are
in their kitchens
making supper,
in their bedrooms
making love. All
I can say is
this: I saw you
and I heard you
and I love you.
JUGGLER
Tuesday, August 18, 2020
I CAN'T
IF I NAME-DROPPED
If I named-dropped my
friends' names in my poems
as often as Bernadette
does, I'd be called
a minor regional
poet. Oh, wait, I'm
already called that.
Monday, August 17, 2020
NOT KNOWING
ONE NOTE
If you could be one note,
just one note, which note would
you be, in which song, and
how long would you want that
one note held on whose tongue?
Sunday, August 16, 2020
WISDOM
CARDINAL CITY
Cardinal city, there,
under the bird feeder,
an early Pentecost,
winter fire in the snow.
It means what it means, though
what that is you don't know.
Saturday, August 15, 2020
THE AWE
STATIC
Friday, August 14, 2020
SMALL HAWK
Small hawk with a mouse
dangling lifts. Image
of a world where what
you eat is what you are.
To be hawk, or mouse --
no difference in the long
run, for any of us.
LIGHT LIKE FIRE
Thursday, August 13, 2020
WHAT YOU
What you
wish for --
truth,
beauty,
the light
of angels.
What you
need is
sleep -- sleep
and another
chance at
morning.
SOMETIMES
Sometimes,
naturally,
the rhymes
come lovely
as a snail's
trail,
slick with
mucus.
Our eyes
see
the chime
of language
as a wet
marker
left for us
on a dry
land, the way
our ears
hear
the echo
echo.
Wednesday, August 12, 2020
THE SKY SMEARS
EVEN THE GREAT ATTRACTOR
Even the Great Attractor, which
we cannot see, is being pulled
by something far beyond our
understanding. This universe
doesn't need any of us
and yet it keeps us safe in its
infinite fling of darkness, its
equal pull of light. You cannot get
there from here, and you cannot not
make the journey. Light and darkness.
Gravity and the force of our
momentum. Joy in our last
embrace of things. Beyond all our
understanding, at the end, yes.
Tuesday, August 11, 2020
LOVE
WE NEED
We need
the hard
sounds, the
harsh ones,
those which
form at
the back
of the
throat, those
which come
like a
cough. Crows'
talk, the
kii-ii
of hawk.
These are
poet
sounds which
hurt our
ears and
fit our
hearts.
Monday, August 10, 2020
WHERE I WAS
Where I was when
I learned language:
the cottonwoods
teaching me to
speak only when
necessary.
Wind is a kind
of wisdom you
will wish you had.
I mean, if you
understood what
those old trees might
have been saying.
IT DOES
Sunday, August 09, 2020
THE ROCKS SING
The rocks sing
in the sun.
They tell of
far stars, of
loneliness
and loss, of
desire. Yes,
the heat of
afternoon
has filled them
and they can
no longer
keep in what
holds them here.
They sing
in the sun.
FORMLESS-
Saturday, August 08, 2020
OLD PINE
WINTER TREES
Friday, August 07, 2020
MIRROR
THE LONG SUN AT EVENING
The long sun at evening.
Wind in the hairs of your arms.
What descends in the coolness
is the darkness of knowing.
From here to the horizon
anything you touch will
change who you become.
Listen, the wind says. Listen:
you can go, you can't go back.
This is where you came from.
Thursday, August 06, 2020
EVERY SLEEP
Every sleep
is death
and every
waking is
being born
again.
This occurs
every day
until one day
it doesn't.
I KISS
I kiss your lips.
Shoulder. The back
of your neck.
Lobe of an ear.
Woman, I touch you.
I rub one breast,
the other.
Your hip, thigh,
back of the knee.
The moist place
where surprise
meets joy. How
do I love you?
Let me count
the ways.
Wednesday, August 05, 2020
AUTUMN TABLEAU
IN THIS WORLD
In this world
sometimes something
comes to pass
and brings a
poem with it --
goldenrod,
Queen Anne's lace,
water running
in a creek.
Tuesday, August 04, 2020
WISDOM'S MOMENT
A boat
on the water.
Its wake
laps the shore.
Tomorrow
we will know
nothing more
than what
we learned
today.
THIS COW TOWN
These plain clothes of mine.
I'm only a boy, green like
the weeds in this lot beside
the bar full of cow men
badly in need of a bath.
I can smell them even
here. The wind picks up
dust off the dirt street, carries
it farther than imagination
can run, farther than
the sheriff will go without
armed men beside him.
That's how this town is.
Monday, August 03, 2020
IS IT BETTER
Is it better
to stand in
the stillness
or to make
of it a
poem? Some
argue one
way and some
the other.
I smile, nod,
bow my head
to blessing.
NUMBERS
One is
a l one.
Two is
what two
do.
Three is
what rises
when one
stands alone.
Four is
the doorway.
You cannot
come back.
Five is
almost perfect,
except for
what two do.
Six is
what you like
morning, noon,
and night.
Seven is
next to heaven
though you will be
lonely there.
This is
how you count.
These are
what the numbers
mean,
which is
why math
is difficult.
Sunday, August 02, 2020
LONELINESS
Loneliness
the color of
winter coming.
No one wants
to listen
and I have
nothing I wish
to say.
Learn from this
what you can.
Saturday, August 01, 2020
WITNESS
Witness
to the
brightness
an out-
of-body
moment,
as if
lifting,
as if
silver
sears through
you and
beyond,
the idea
of heaven
farther
than you
can go.
