The silence has ended.
You have returned, triumphant.
My voice forgotten.
A prodigal one-
you are as hard to ponder
as that cherished child.
Doesn’t everyone
secretly love the troubled
just a little more?
I was so quiet,
made myself so very small,
respecting thier needs.
Making sure they ate,
nobody was late to work,
No, I’m not crying.
Everything is fine,
we are so glad you’re back.
Let me get the pie.
We came to spy the sea
far below this ridge:
Like so much in this
remembered land,
I must imagine it,
and the Alpuan Alps,
and the Appenines,
over there—
somewhere.
Like the ghosts
of mercenaries,
of merchants,
of princely vassals,
hurrying along
these rocks,
four or five
centuries gone—
sometime.
Are the bells
I hear theirs?
Or just the cows
belonging to Alberto,
who met us
on the road which
was slipping away,
guiding the backhoe
to shore up a way
to dreams—
somehow.
Fear is the spirit you smoke,
as you turn the pages of a new book.
It is the possibility of burning away
all the endings that never got a look.
Anxiety rises on the shortened out purging of air,
as you begin to replay the chances left untaken.
There is a gripping on the heart,
caused by all the things that ever left you shaken.
An eternal loss,
without the chance to say goodbye-
All the secrets and heartbreak,
that you ran right by
catch up to you in a moment of confusion,
not knowing why the fear came unexpected.
It isn’t until the crisis has passed,
that you see the uneasiness was only reflected.
And it’s your own face mirrored back to you
in that brief second of reading something that hits your heart.
You’ve always been the protagonist of your story,
but good writing makes you unable to set the hero and the villain apart.
Come Sunday morning
God give me, your servant
John Jacob, strength
To hike uphill to St Hubert’s
Where I can carve
My faith into heartwood
And kneel down
On a workman’s worn knees
To cry out in quiet prayer to heaven
Then descend back down
Into the dark of Boone
Creek where kingfishers
Patrol the steep banks
If my house should fall
Toward the sin of ruin
Into the rich duff
Of the forest’s soul
Let someone take notice
Sing a song, pen a poem-
A blues hymn
For the belief I tended
For so many Sabbaths
Where all things are slowly
Being pulled into the river
I’d be content to scribble
and drink Earl Grey Tea
but poems don’t write their selves
When the chorus plays loud
You give me that look
Glide from across the room
With hand outstretched
To meet mine at just
The appropriate time
With glow of the lights
From the kitchen lamp
Our shadows dance
A nicer reflection than
The reality of my rhythm
There is a difference now
In how our story goes
If ever there’s a time
When you start
To unlove me
Don’t bother to
Stop the music
Just leave Us
The way we are
Right now in
This beautiful moment
Find me in the life
And in the next after that
Sooner, so much sooner
So I can love you longer
Like a new favorite
Classic and Timeless
Heartbreaking masterpiece
A well written song.
i wake to hear my granddaughter
downstairs with her grandmother
chopping asparagus
to add to scrambled eggs
and skinning apples for the fruit salad.
i cling to the silence of the morning
that’s broken by birdsong,
the howl of distant hounds
and the slam of the kitchen door
from my granddaughter’s impatience
to be outside to start collecting the blooms
and leaves of all the herbs
that are growing in the yard.
i focus on the thought
every life is like the blossoming of a day lilly
that comes one day and is gone the next,
i come down the stairs to see
the dining room table is set for us to eat
and the kitchen table full of the flowers
and leaves my granddaughter has collected.
She sits there with my phone
taking pictures of her specimens,
then googling their identification
and medicinal usage. She checks
with her grandmother to insure accuracy
i dont know how to hold the mystery
i have in my life right now:
the violence of the world,
the suffering of the innocent,
balanced against my granddaughter’s list
of common plants.
i look down at her
and see that her list is long
and getting longer:
white snakeroot
carnation
white clover
bitter dock
garden mum
kale
China rose
common burdock
perilla
red clover
yellow dock
Sweet William
crimson clover
gooseneck loosestrife
…
On your arms and lips a menagerie
of open wounds, each vying for affection
even as they curate you
in mumbles and screams and Lou Reed songs—
it used to be the other way around.
Each has its story, its origin tale
in the formless antiquity of a bottle
or pill. You don’t like it
when they feel too much. Without them you feel
nothing at all.
