On the Anniversary of My Daughter's Death

Blue cohosh                           (JO'B)

  
                    

                    In the slow, slow unwinding

                    of the year's slowest month,

                    alone in the dripping woods

                    with the blue cohosh rising,

                    how do I sing you

                    the phrases of the moon?

                    Does tomorrow exist

                    as the rain down the glass?

                    Can the fire in the grate

                    absolve us of the future?

                    I listen for hours trying to learn

                    the language of water and flame.

                    Cast beyond the verge,

                    it's all we can do to cry out

                    to one another in the dark,

                    like bats hunting moths

                    in windowlight after a storm,

                    the universe hung in the trees.

 —first published April 28. 2015

Acceptance

JO'B.   

          Let's sit awhile

          and watch the storm come

          Giving in 

          to the influence of wind and rain

          With faith

          in the natural course of things

          even as it overtakes us.

We Cannot Keep

JO'B  

                                                  We lose what we love.

                                                  Peace, then,

                                                  To the broken-hearted,

                                                  Forgiveness, then,

                                                  To the undeserving.

                                                  Listen to the wind,

                                                  Stand in the rain,

                                                  And to us all

                                                  An easy drift

                                                  Beyond the end of change.

 

Finitude 6.85

JO'B   

                                                       Averages

                                                       dropped him

                                                       into a chasm

                                                       of expectancy

Thoreau's April

Houstonia  (JO'B)

Many guns are firing

and bells are ringing

The sun

takes a higher course

Many turtles

have their heads out

Pure and simple bluets

spot the world

—from The Journal of Henry David Thoreau, April 24, 1853 

Dawn Among Bones

 

               From peach to tangerine fading

               to daylight sky behind the bones

               of mountain ashes once the hope

               of one who watched his children

               grow and go beyond these fields

               now testament to blight and infestation

               bones returning to the ground

               in the place they lived and never left—

               his own. 

               Birdsong less and less.

Waiting Out the Storm

Waiting out the storm.  (JO'B)

                    Waiting out the storm in the open doorway

                    of a neighbor's barn, gusts of shattering rain

                    telling me I have the right to be silent,

                    But I want you to know

                    I remember everything

                    when everything changed,

                    And I wpll go again when the strong, sweet sun

                    pushes into the time I ride through

                    in this always vanishing world.

Come Closer and Listen

JO'B

I wish I had known                             

to call for help                             

in the dark                             

I wish I had known                             

you would come                             

—repurposing a line by Charles Simic

And Yet Tomorrow

JO'B

                 Under the layers of evening

                 I hear the creek in the valley

                 And the river in me

                 Sorrow sings the sweetest strain

                 And yet the south wind blows

                 And yet tomorrow

                 The sun may warm my back

                 I'll wait

                  

Three Oh Five

JO'B

                      Come closer

                      my friends of the dark

                      the notepad the pen

                      the small circle of light

                      the second hand's slow sweep

                      the book on its stand

                      a sentence or two strong enough

                      to repeat in a whisper

                      as if you could hear it

                      my face faint on the pane

                      against the fathomless night

—after Charles Simic's "Nothing Else"