Love Story

From the public domain   

                    I came for you,

                    all leather and chrome and rumble,

                    and stole you away,

                    twisting the handle for speed,

                    your arms around me, hugging my back,

                    leaning together into the curves,

                    wild with the wind in our mouths,

                    powering over the hills and into the sky,

                    mad to be wreckage forever.

—with lines by James Dickey

To One Who Also Waits

JO'B   

                    Pause in your flight,

                    Turn yourself into the wind,

                    Damselfly on a metronone,

                    Daybreak, nightfall, daybreak, nightfall,

                    Lover of the night,

                    Mark time in the light of the sun,

                    Eyes closed in the rattle of wings,

                    Take flight in the dark,

                    With lanterns strung over the fields,

                    Pulsing,

                    You are not alone.

 

Early and Late

JO'B. 

Doves call in the half-light.               

                    It's not a poem,               

                    the poet said,               

                    Without an ache in it.               

          Nor is it a life.               

Looking Across the Valley

Laurel Hill Creek Valley

 

For a long time i stood in light rain looking across the valley,

listening to the sound of the creek deep in the valley

rushing over stones smoothed by the creek

rushing through the valley for a long time.

The creek flowed on without returning,

this was the one creek of night and day,

and i was unable to resist

looking across the valley for a long time.

Evening folded into itself and night rose behind me,

spreading its cloak over the valley

where for a long time the creek rushed over smooth stones

and even a long time was not long enough.

— after and with lines by W.S.Merwin

Red

Peony  

 

I looked too long

And lost my balance

Of course it was spring

Deep into the peony I fell

And never made it back

My beautiful ruin

To Drink from the Spring

Early 19th Century water source.  (JO'B)

                            To drink from the spring they drank from          

                                           when their walls were logs          

                            to clear the field          

                                           and plow to the edge of the forest          

                            to die in winter          

                            with the snow          

blowing through the broken window          

                           To write in a pure language          

of stone and ash and silt          

                                           to read in candlelight          

                                           to lie down in asters          

                                           to drink shadows          

—with lines after Tomaz Salaman.    

Dark Iris

JO'B    

                          Dark iris of the could-have-been,

                          a love we can't decode

                          and never dared to touch,

                          disturb the rain,

                          upset the order of its cells, 

                          disrupt the spinning universe,

                          never to recover —

                          so much we'll never know,

                          

                          but we pretend.

 

Notes to Self on a Cold Day in May

JO'B. 

Slower, deeper, each breath,

yours and the earth's.

Who do you think you are?

Don't love your life too much,

Mary Oliver wrote,

and vanished into the world.

Aural

JO'B

 

  

   Under the green canopy

   of my 82nd spring,

   Each morning

   more silent

   than the last,

   One dream

   flows into

   the next,

   And then no one,

   and then Tao.

Timelapse

JO'B  

                                                   A certain elegance

                                                   still standing,

                                                   stoic with purpose

                                                   and faith in one's self,

                                                   waiting for the miracle to come

                                                   as the trees overtake us,     

                                                   our graceful surrender,     

                                                   our gorgeous collapse

                                                   enriching the ground     

                                                   where we fall.