Chimerical

Please click to enlarge.

I have dreamed myself awake to face


this sunrise in the Solidago bones,


growing wings of frost and breathing steam;


I am willing, I am willing –– come,


second solitude ––and as always


when I'm still, the dream begins again.

-

First Snow

Holds you under

bending trees

to feel the drop

of clotted snow

white exactitudes

blooming in your brain.

The small epiphanies

bring you down

lovely and chilling

in your descent.

-

After Our Disaster

Impossible not to notice

what we were losing,

dusk closing

like a celestial fan,

night arriving

encrusted with jewels

and full of omens

as always, stars winking

with malignant insistence.

But the gentle morning

painted the black night blue,

and the enemy stars

were swallowed by the light

while we sang peacefully

with no catastrophe

and no guitar.

–lines from five poems by Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalto

Wreckage

Cut off in both directions, isolated by extinction

I scatter ashes over the island of the moment,

Over the hoary asters and goldenrod,

Under the dark birds dipping over the field

And its wreckage, apples fallen in the thorns,

The swallows gone, the blackbirds gone,

Absence always a surprise,

None of us coming back.

-

Self-Portrait with Chainsaw

I barely exist

already you can see me

vanishing

thin gruel against

solid oak

knowing my best lines

will not heat the atelier

 but my least work will.

-

Blue Knows

Blue knows,

but he won't say,

(to steal a line from Emily)

or so it seems,

for I've watched him

watching falling stars

and falling leaves,

and me when I am, too,

or maybe silence seems

so wise because we

say yet know so little.

-

Flipped Ecliptic

Please enlarge by clicking, then expanding the window.

May I show you morning 'ere you go,

Spines of sunlight through the oaks, the frost

Stiffening the thorn, the dying field,

The rising mist, the ice becoming cloud?

Dare I say what morning breaks in me,

Desperation 'ere the season's lost?

-

Why Write

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To say the trees are bare,

The day is dark and buffeting,

To say it's raining in a vacant room.


A wooden match and a few pages

Of The Threepenny Review

Are enough to start the fire,


A few lines excised from a raging heart

Enough to warm the mind

And fill the emptiness with flame.

Please click to read

-

Balm

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The wind shifts

to a colder source

and I am trying

not to tremble,

fever-haunted,

consoled that

nothing lasts,

seeking peace

in cycles,

waiting for

the snow.

-

Happy Life

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At my desk all morning,

In the woods all afternoon.

Headed home now through the yellow light.


Yang Wan-li said,

"There's enough to eat.

Who needs a lot of money?"


I've had a happy life

Doing what I want to do.

How could I be so lucky?

–poem by David Budbill. 

Degrees of Yaw

Solidago altissima. Please click to enlarge.

What if I made you hear this as music

But not how you mean that. The sound

Of your motor fading through trees

Opened me up. I want to have taken

Better care. I thought that maybe

If you're not too busy, we could spend

Our lives parting at sunrise. Wait,

I wasn't finished. I was going to say

Stems drop leaves and lean in late sun.

–distortion of a poem with four lines by Ben Lerner

–

What Remains

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Harsh in the afternoon, the clatter of time, cold and keen,

Clearing by sundown, last apple bending last rays,

Gold and red the colors of want in these mistake-rich days,

Wound in the sparrow-colored fields, and bleeding.

Please click to enlarge

-

Search

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The vivid days have left us

In the rain and stripping wind

Remarking on the speed of time


The difficulty of original thought

Seeking out the wisest long dead

For a clue a philosophy a confirmation


Finding it at last in the close at hand

The circle closing once again

Privileged to feel the winter come.

-

Dress Rehearsal

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To walk bone deep in fallen leaves

Beside the eloquence of silver'd water

Is to know with a shudder and a chill

Every thing possible to be believ'd

Becomes an image of truth, or will.

–with a line by William Blake.

Peak

please click to enlarge

Contemplation shows respect,

Best when it is silence shared.

-

Prophecy

Myotis lucifugus

Beautiful the world

That sleeps away evil.

Europe is sleeping.

Soon America will

Be sleeping, too.








–bending the lines of Polish poet Adam Zagajewski

Blaze

To set aside rage

And sit quietly under the leaves

Under the blaze of yourself

And go past it

And live in the body of the  finch

And in the sky

And in the heart of your own gift of seed.

–based on a poem by Adam Zagajewski

Dispatches From Sunday

Lophocampa caryae. Click to enlarge, then click again.

Yesterday the worms

were chewing

over the well.


Despite what we

know and have done

I felt limited, alone.


I envy stone,

no word, no sound,

–– the spell.






– with a bow to William Stafford and Yehuda Amichai

Ascetical

In the middle of the woods

In the cabin that you built

In autumn's salad days

Where living surges

In your ears hear

Existence roaring all

Confusions roaring all

Emptinesses roaring

Unexplainable desires

Almost too much to ask.

-

Embrace

Briar with the afternoon behind it

Hooks my flesh and holds me there,

Bids me take a closer look,

Blood brilliant on my arm,

Praising shorter days and change,

welcoming what comes.

-

Skywalkers

There is no beauty in the sky, but in the eye that sees it.

Health, high spirit, serenity, these the great landscape painters.

Let us engage our bodies and our hearts, strong while beauty lasts,

'Ere we rock beside the fire, dreaming of the sky as it once was.

-with words by Henry David Thoreau, October 3, 1859

The Implications of Dark Energy

Now that we think

The universe flies apart

In acceleration we

Seek each other out,

Or should, the physics

Of this world imperiled

Beyond our little fears,

No longer limited

Or saved by gravity.







-

Celts

The sky presses down on the field

The green world  going to ground

Men stand revealed in the mists

And the wind is the sound of lost souls.

-

Passing

Finger-cold,

Clouds dragging

Their damp skirts

 Over the ridges,

Snow on the crest

Of Laurel Mountain

When we crossed

In the early dark

Coming back,

Already in recovery

From the excesses

Of  the city,

And from their lack.

-