The Return
And so we return
to that seeet cacophony,
the sound of living.
Some days the moon
is just a lost nickel,
the big oak tree is
giving you the finger,
and your favorite song
from long ago
turns into a dirge.
Some days the coffee mug
just shrugs its shoulders
while your comfy shoes
are having a spat.
Some days the cat’s fur
turns to cactus spines,
the clouds shuffle and
mutter about you
and the irises
lose their sway.
I pin a stonefly to my lapel—
will hook sight of your smile
in a deep stream, somewhere in the distance.
Because my heartbeat is still clousering,
will hook sight of your smile,
hand moving past shoulder easy and tight,
while working a minnow in an inverted loop!
In a deep stream, somewhere in the distance,
there will be less weight for your limbs to bear,
you will move like an explosive strike of trout!
Because my heartbeat is still clousering,
I tie a bendback—out of sight,
a box of dumbbell eyes, stashed.
*Clousering a rod means to hit your tip with the weighted fly as a result of poor casting.
A bonfire’s extravagant
flap or the soft
orange ember, last
little campfire twig?
Endglow.
My archangel of slow
burn & ash — Will she
play Chopin in a time
warp where mothers never
die & everything’s flickering
taffeta, where everything’s
the northern lights? Hospice
vigil, slow drip. Hands
toes & earlobes
like tip of damselfly. God
doesn’t speak, but the nurse
whispers, Hold her hand,
watch for rattled
breathing. Now is the time.
Get as close as you can to the tadpole
sheen of her eyes. End stage means
she is moonlight in a glass
of water. She’s an escapade —
21 again & she’s at the lake
lighting Roman candles, smoking
Chesterfields & chugging bottled
beer. Sorry, in a rush,
she whispers. In her smooth
blue sedan she drives away, sunlight
beaming off bumper & grille.
I saw you settle
in last night and knew I would
come to see you here
my feet are in the
snow of yesterdays booting
all along the path
sunball wonders wait
turned around/ atop the fog
ev’rywhere is down
sour yellow blush
each leaf a silver dagger
snowy in this stand
they will never see
fire they must feel and know
ev’rything will burn
I am resting the writing self
on this crumpled paper,
thin smudges tucked
between blue horizons,
just another writer walking
and reading the world
almost nearly like a poem —
a turn of phrase
tucked deep into
another marginal mirage —
for thoughts are fleeting
and these feet, in a rush
to get where we’re going,
keep us moving forward
— a response poem to a friend in Kentucky, Terry, who wrote a poem to the query I found at a museum that asked: How is writing a poem like walking through a landscape on a trail?
– For National Moth Week, 2021
Awake! the glabrous moon has stretched her shift
and now, my dearest dark, we come to light:
To shed the glistening weight of summer’s night
and slide into a lighter world adrift.
May scales that hindered eyes become our shrift
and noiseless, whispered prayers, with wind’s requite,
might wing our dreamtime vigil, steadfast flight
into the secret susurrus that lifts.
With every oscillation, fan to flames
th’arete within your folds and nectared veins—
for miles we have to travel in these names
and dreamer’s sleep to sprinkle with these grains
that, where the new may rise from former frames,
the morning sun might shine on what remains.
Thanks to faithful fickle June
and to our penchant to commune
we are a proper culture
for a month of alchemy
Thanks to the blending of the grain,
sweets and bitters quenching rain
enlivened by a mystic yeast
we share calm revelry
Thanks to our hosts who did direct
the forces which here intersect
and merge in symbiosis
into spirit family
In humble gratitude we bless
ourselves in warm togetherness
and robust joy, products
of a loving brewery
Thank you, thank you, thanks be
Author’s confession: this newly revised poem/song was originally written for a beer-tasting sometime in the last century, and sung in different versions in bars, churches etc. by the group Aqapelyx Anonymous. Too fitting for this here gang not to post. Au revior—-
I need stronger verbs to plunk
in perfect spots, metaphors
to materialize, deeper knowledge
of anything – geology, mythology,
maybe fishing. But all I have
is my little life. Loves lost and gained,
daughter raised, my regular rhythm
of decent sleep, healthy food,
reading and writing, working
just enough to pay the bills, keeping
my roots dyed. I know there is poetry
around and in between, if I can find it.
Words for the taste of blackberries
or mangoes, for example, for
the courage of winter crocuses,
the juiciness of thick paint on the brush.
For sun sliding across thin spring stems
of shamrock, for the memory of my mother’s
face powder, Misty Rose. There must
be dream-terms for passing through
light, for the passion of flamenco.
I keep working at it. I really do. Even now,
with the sound of the washer beating against
my poet-brain and the bills calling to be counted, I do.
Everything I try ends in failure,
Be that a relationship,
A project,
A game,
Or even in chores,
I’ll fail almost every time,
Never will I succeed,
At least not on the first try,
Failure is an important teacher,
I never repeat those mistakes again,
In the end I’m better than before,
I may fail to succeed often,
But in the end,
It’s those failures that allowed me to succeed
