Posts for June 29, 2024 (page 10)

Water flows through its toes—

wades in depressions 
made in mud and rock face, and

tonight, loons call an all too human trill set sail
on easy fishing round the reeds.

You cast and imagine you cast a camera. 
Capture the trout with a few exposures. 

A gourmand sears it on film of truffle butter,
opens the foil under hushed, red lights,

finds all to taste—the gentle savor 
of a developing palette. 

But you are exhaled to a peace
buried by this river in the rise 

and rushed call of disorientation,
its slip-grab complications

of whizzing fish darting— 
your clothes whisked away by a flood current.

Now you’re naked as a minnow in the dark—

                    ALL CAPS
                    and pinecones
                            rest on moss
                                    on rocks
                                    or stones
                    as the poet put it:
                    maybe even bone

                          the lower cases
                    also rest
                                     or settle
           somewhere lower down

                                coverskulls
                to prop up patriarchy

            who made all your hats?
        leather       felt       cloth
                    and needles

                    up and down
                            and side by side

      mother     maiden      crone
                      babysitter
          whore      and      bride

                           matted hairs 
                                         collide

            challenge your beliefs-
                            unpry the grip
                                 of power

                wait and watch
                      for you to let 
                                          it slide

                      single strands
                                          laid
                                     side by side
                as if they multiply

            not mine       not yours
                                but my oh my-
                in the sweet
                                        by and by

            with no other choice
                                but to
                   wait and watch
                                        you die.

the pipe-smoker,
whose cursive-hand bedeviled me,
as it skipscrawled over the pages
cataloguing what looks like mess
to us but is mss. to the wise in matters
scholastic. Lay him to rest,  

the patient respondent
who interrupted his labor at Lombard
to write to the teacher in Fort Wayne
about the genius of medieval
art and thought. Lay him to rest,  

the brother caring
for family far-flung in life and death,
with suffrages borne of love,
silent caring. Lay him to rest,  

the giant striding across decades
and leaving tome-sized footsteps
translating not only texts but love
embodied in the Poverello’s band
from Assisi to Oxford to Paris,
to Quaracchi, to Grottaferrata and Olean
and here in this cocoon of knowledge
where in only a month
you awakened for me.

There’s an artist who lives on the street 
behind me, a woman who paints the lawn 
jockeys they sell at Keeneland.
Evenings, she works her magic on the patio, 
leaves the statues to dry overnight.

At daybreak, I head outside for a run, 
eager to survey whatever scene will unfold 
before me – small men scattered 
across the grass, standing on tables, posed
and frozen in various states of undress. 

I like to imagine they’ve been partying
late into the night, like garden gnomes 
who wait for darkness before they spring to life.
The mischievous glint in a ceramic eye 
suggests they’ve been up to shenanigans.

A few of them face off, fists raised to fight 
in a front-yard brawl. Others seem to shiver, 
pale and ashamedly shirtless, their torsos 
pasty, heads probably pounding, lucky 
they’ve managed to find their breeches.

But a handful are well-rested, nattily dressed
in bright reds and blues, alert and ready to race.
They all stand at attention in one neat row,
chins up, arms lifted to herald the rising sun
which shines so bright on old Kentucky.

I have a lucid dream

Perhaps 

You remain unconvinced of my emotions 
“How can a light that shines so bright once have been a dim flame”
I roll my eyes
im the poet, or atleast that’s what I say
you tell me 
“Keep writing”
“keep smiling”
to keep pushing on through the thicket of what was and always will be 
me
Do you know me?
or do you now think
You’ve only grazed the surface 

The mandolinist trills tremolo, a poultice for snake-tasted air.