I watch the patterns emerge
colors deep and rich bright and pure
the sky lifts while the canvas darkens
from dark to light from white to blues greens yellows orange purple
taste delight pleasure never ceasing joy
satisfaction enough
another bite another brush another gentle sweep of the hand
turning this world to gold
In the sticks where I can’t get
cable & internet is unreliable
it’s natural–inevitable–to turn
to AM radio when you are bored
& want something to happen.
I stumble on a call-in show
for selling tractors, pigs
rabbits, gravel & consider
buying a scoop of Chattanooga
Red gravel or a Blue
Heeler pup. I switch
the dial to Bluegrass Sunrise
on WBLU where old-timey
twang blasts with high
harmonies & runaway
mandolin. Do you want
to go home? Why are you so
alone? the lead singer
belts. I can’t answer. I’ve roamed
city & farm with a restlessness,
a twirling mind like a shiny
baton. No matter, an inner
voice hums. Just breathe
slowly. Watch curvy fields morph
from baby green to bronze
stubble. The welcoming hay
harvest will come & come again
with light coatings of December
now on the naked maples. Returning
seasons mature me like wind
& rain beat down boulder & slate
into sediment & sand. I notice the high tenor,
the three-part harmonies soaring
as I make the practical spiritual choice
& order the Chattanooga Red.
Out there the dark,
in here the light
of my trusty desk lamp,
the kind architects used to use
when sitting at tilted boards
wrestling right angles
from thin air
with their bare hands.
Someday, I’ll be brave.
Ditch this modern life,
step out into the pitch black
and take the only road:
the one that leads
to the moon-white creek
and then, in a straight line,
to forever.
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
