Alone Together

A work by Alfred Stevens in the Ringling Museum. Expand by clicking.

Alone in a museum, you are one,

Quiet in the woods all afternoon, you are another,

An hour reading 14 lines, we are alike,

Waiting in the dark for something, something,

We are not sure just what, unless it could be others

Alone in their galleries of experience.

The Pastels of Winter

Brighter than the humid sunstruck southern coast

The day is winter's wholly and with me in it

Returned to the shortest month's northern pastels

The faint blue sky in snowfall

The pinked fields of hidden sunrise

The chalked grays of the wooded hills

The powdered wind billowing through the treeline

A man in wool and canvas happy to be home.

Florida Song

South Venice Beach

Let evening come, the long orange dusk, let it come,

the darkening cloud stretching out across the peninsula,

the cooling air, the emptying beach, let it come,

night gathering in the pockets of the trampled slopes

going down to the water's edge where sanderlings fly

neck-and-neck with their shadows, let it come.

I spread my towel on the warm sand,

the long empty sand of your absence,

to welcome the stasis of aging, and i listen

to the recitation of the sea: Let evening come.

—following Jane Kenyon's lead

Bounty

Roman, from the Ukraine,

fishes for his family with a net.

The sea gives him the names.

His net tied to his wrist, he

translates: sheepshead, mullet,

mackerel, freedom to believe,

hope that helps him start anew

each warm day beside the sea

with a bucketful of gratitude.

Sea Change

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Bannered waves marching to the sea's drum

the fog and its effervescence

like champagne on the skin

words in my head like a race of gulls

the light i cannot avoid

which we once called heaven.

—first and last lines are Derek Walcott's

Pretty

i give up

here's another pretty sunset

with its pretty people in it

on a pretty jetty heaped up in the pretty sea

save yourselves oh my pretty friends

cast a critical eye.

From Inside the Coop

Chain linked

willing captives

caged to watch the

swift and young

and rich or soon

to be roam free

the treeless plain

exclaiming baseball's

very good to me.

Enlarge by clicking.

Death in Venice

Numerous and aging in our rolling atmospheres

We flock on heaving asphalt to watch

The sun drop with a hiss

Into the rocking septic stew of our dominion,

And we applaud.

–thinking of George Oppen and Robinson Jeffers

Florida Gulf Coast

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Moonset in paradise

if not paradise

as close as any dare think

to sirens, safety,

and the wounded sea.

What's Done

My memory singed

i go where it leads

sunshot and halved.

Snow Moon

The short iris-colored night

wakes me from a dream

that seemed so long.

—photo by Greg Diesel Walck

Valentines' Day

grounded, windblown snow at sunset.

Unexpected, your leaving

over what? inclusion? exclusion?

dizzying.

all topography seems strange,

alien, threatening,

just when i committed to love.

won't you come back?

it's my fault,

goddammit.

Crossing the Mountain

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Snow on the pines

thus breaks the power

that splits mountains.

—Death poem of Shiyo, one of the 47 Ronin, who died

on the fourth day of the second month, 1703.

Monet as a Verb

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The frost that

spikes the wire is

no more worshipped

than the sunrise

that gilds the

silo domes or the

feathers of ice

that Monet the

farms beyond

the windshield.

—adapted from a poem of the same title by Matt Rasmussen, photo by Chad Lopez O'Brien

Climatology

Frisco Pier, Outer Banks.

What strange zone is this

another storm over the collapsing waves

the sea smoking and the mammals in panic

having lived all their tender lives

under the temperate illusion

that everything will be alright?

—photo by Daniel Pullen

Vanishment

Trail of a white-footed mouse

Yes the universe is expanding

feel it as the day falls down

everything ever farther from everything else

even dreams become solitary and uncontrollable

until you can't find your shadow

and you ride through the concept of time

without leaving a trace.

Self Reliance

Strength is a friend

as fickle as the rest

the saw and the wheel

the wedge and the maul

my companions

with muscle and bone.

I shall sleep this long night

in the heat of my will,

and what then?

Snow on Snow

Snow on snow begins again

before we reach the cabin

i would stop for awhile

steam rising from my skin

i'd  think of you again

though i've learned not to

so i keep going

have i told you it's still snowing?

Riders

all we can know

inverted vaporous adrift

under air as if underwater

losing track of up

all we can do

holding into the wind

crossing paths

calling out as we go

Same Old Song

sky coming down again

baby it won't be long

unitl i'm tying on

my flying shoes.

—lyrics by Townes Van Zandt

Urn of Rationale

To see the world as line and form

as with an artitst's eye

is to map emptiness 

negative space nearly all

of the expanding universe

moreso now than a line ago

always more without end

thus am i happy

with a little snow

between the stems.

Pastoral

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Forty years ago

i planted this post

when everything

felt new and

promising.

The horses

are dead.

Keep moving.

Midwinter

Let him sleep

here in the midst of things

where he has decided to stop,

going back to the beginning,

advancing to the end,

both unbearable.

He has his story.

Walk quietly by.

Do not give up hope.

—Extraction from the prose poem, "A Foreshortened Journey," by Louise Glück.

Internals

deeper we step into the subterfuge

our works stacked up behind us

clues to who we were in truth

the silent voice behind our eyes

all we ever needed from the world

was what we could not find inside.

Turnaround

i told you you should stay

it's good that you came back

the storm ends at our feet.

reading music

Groundhog Day

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Rising as mist in this tear-hung world,

The chances to savor the feeling of feeling.


No reruns among vanishing shadows.