Posts for June 18, 2025 (page 11)

Instead of saying: I enjoyed where this took me

Who are you who comes to these pages unbidden
Across the years?
To count my syllables,
To think my thoughts renewed and strange,
Like a reflection from a pond,
A cool lake stilled in the waning moments of twilight.  

I suppose you loved me and I loved you
But it is different now.  

I think of the love letters my parents wrote to each other.
I read them after,
Found in a Bible on the bedside table.
Their words were sweet and youthful,
Kind and naïve.
People I had never known but had known
My whole life.  

And here we are.  

I hope you are well.
I loved you and prayed for your joy every day.
I worked (too much) and dreamt of a time
To myself
To play guitar,
To write songs,
To read books,
And know my body and mind
Through the clarity of physical effort.  

It is good to be here with you
While I write in solitude
On this cold day in the new year.

a weeding day
gone 17  the beds and rows  paths even
overflow with splendor
and those leggy ratted invaders
aliens just trying to exist in and amongst
intended blossomings

there’s this urgency 

this spark in the tips 

of my fingers

something driving them 

faster faster 

but the words aren’t coming

they are haunting me 

laughing at me in their 

ghostly form 

telling me i’ll never catch up 

this is one game i’ll never win 

but there’s this burning 

this yearning desire 

to do nothing but 

put pen to paper

fingers to keyboard

something that can’t be 

satiated 

so i wait 

looking at empty lines

ink dripping onto to the paper

that’s supposed to be my gateway 

into freedom 

into something more 

i watch the cursor blink 

blink blink 

there is nothing in my head

where images should be dancing 

did i do too much 

too fast

am i washed out once again 

the words haunt me 

with being just out of reach 

my voice can’t even 

sound out the alphabet

hands can’t even write my own name 

what am i if i can’t even jot down a thought 

who am i if i can’t even write 

i am who i have been 

& i am unhappy being that person 

now that i have tasted the other side

once again 

i am not willing to give 

it up for another day 

not willing to stop & listen to those 

saying that i’m not good 

enough 

i have things to say 

& an alphabet to say them with 

the words haunt me

but i persist 

maybe I could write about
red lights countertops doors with panels
striping my toes across
dark white carpet,
like I live on a polar bear the size of godzilla
and I love him.

The dogs won’t leave the garden beds alone,
my fault for using organic compost, ripe
smell intoxicates them, more so than bone,
they paw and dig, crush the rising new life.

I could fence every thing off, but it would feel
too much a prison in that part of the plot.
What of the squirrels, tomatoes appeal,
they take small bites, leave the rest to rot?

It’s hard to let go, allow nature its course
when you’ve put time and hope into a thing,
watered and fed it, picked aphids and worse
from its leaves, to just relax while birds sing.

My daughter out to sun in her two-piece suit,
now boys, thick as weeds, after forbidden fruit.

                            “If I could do it over
                             I’d have waited for this moment
                            to give my heart to you unbroken.”

                                                               — Clay Walker

My One, Great Love—
how can I tell you
the way I wish I could be—
the way I wish I could have been—
yours and only ever yours—
from my start?

                        *** 

In 1607, English settlers broke themselves—
from everything they & their ancestors had
known—against these pre-American shores,
in what would become
Virginia.

                                 I can only imagine the dread they felt
finding Bald Cypress trees emerging from marsh waters
like gnarled, grey fingers reaching up to draw a new sky
down to unseen, stagnant depths.

& then came the Fall.  & the gooseflesh of the winter
that rose and consumed supplies, leaving them
unprepared for a new world.  We’re told
of Virginia Dare, born to first August, abandoned
first scion of those who remained, those who’d gone on
to what would become
North Carolina, those
who would disappear
into the knife-etched word,
Croatoan.

                              I wonder if any had stayed, if any
had seen the magic of the swamps presided over
by that Fall.  If they’d woken to the spectacle
of something beautiful—the dawn light
falling across still water in a rainbow
of dead & dying things. 

                                 *** 

You can still see it, today:  The Rainbow Swamps
of the Bald Cypress Trail at First Landing
State Park—towering, sentinel trees
giving up the ghost of their leaves
like tears at a wake, leaves
leached of the oils
of life

                   that, seemingly, supernaturally, rise
to the surface of this modern American Gothic
under-story, those Bald Cypress trunks,
& their bent and twisted knees
a penitent iridescence
& wonder to what
can remain, even
in the afterlife
of a swamp.  

I’ve yet to see
anything akin to this
peculiarity of the natural order,
this artistry of deconstruction,
this evidence that even after
everything seems to fall
apart, seems to decompose,
seems to pass from anything
could be called lovely—seems
to herald the end of anything
once believed—there remains

an Artist
capable of bleeding
beauty from the madness,
order from despair, overwhelming
joy despite the sadness of regret
& in that first & final
light of the end
of days

pour out—
stir color—
in the places
we believed
hopeless
& broken;

where dead & dying
hearts can once
& once again

be found

beautiful

together.

Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo;
Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo!
Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo;
Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo;
Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo;
Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo;
Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo;
Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo;
Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo;
Buffalo buffalo believe Buffalo buffalo
Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo;
Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo, &
Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo
Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo;
Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo;

*** Bulgarian (n.) harbor grudges, evil remembrance, resentment

What we want—
payback—
may never come.
Patient ice 
watches water spill.
                                                Everything is time.

Have you seen 
the bee’s sting 
stilled
in archaic amber 
stealth?
                                                It obeys the time.

God tempts— 
God’s love to deliver.
Plotting is temptation. 
Intention’s etch 
scratches your eyes.
                                                It tells the time.

One jab, 
three jabs—two
take a tumble 
over chalk-white cliffs. 
Angry faces of lime.
                                              Rage dies in time.

In your prayer, 
there is 
no time.
Time is thought 
in a room 
                                                of time.