Rigged

An energy ran through me all day, not a nervousness. All day i felt the world rigged in my favor, not an illusion. If i wanted the day to begin, the air yellowed and the mist rose. If i wanted my book, the UPS truck raised dust on the road. If i wanted the garden watered, it rained. And if  i wanted to talk to you, the email boinged, except it wasn't you. Until the moon rose out of the oaks, and the fireflies throbbed in the dew, and it still wasn't you. And i vowed to deepen the stream of my life and cultivate privacy, not a solitude.

Here Come the Cows

Here come the cows,

swinging their sledge heads

and flopped ears,

knocking their stained knees,

closer with their slimed nostrils

and their flies,

as curious about me

as i am about them,

about the one

who comes to the wire.

If they knew what a man

thinks, they'd run

for their lives,

and so would we.

Long Enough

Weather

long enough,

rain, wind, sun

long enough,

you know

which way is down.

Dog Days Tao

Prone in the heat,

just the hose for relief

between the shed and the pear,

sweet rotting fruit

and the dolor of wasps

are the scent and the mood of deceit.

Injustice basks in the glare.

Spite is the day's corrugation.

Give it up if you can,

trade scorn for compassion,

be true to your own inner nature.

Every line can become a horizon.

—with a line by Deng Ming-Dao

Blood Summer

Ornate tiger moth on feverfew

Summer full-frontal,

blood reds on the wing,

on your arm, your lip,

a caution, a wound, where thorn

caught skin, where fault

flared in the chrysalis of night,

bitten as you are, transforming.

A Woman at the Spring

   

To grow bored with the sky is to tire of living, our last untrammeled zone, a deep thinker wrote 150 years ago, and it was so then. But still the sky is as close as we'll know to that immaculate plane we hold holy, a remnant, perhaps, of origin, or of destination, who's to say? So, yes, another photo of the evening sky —expand enough to count the birds on the wire, and if you stay still long enough, you'll hear their wings when they arise together out of the copse  at your back where the old farmhouse used to stand, and you'll feel the presence of the generations on the land, and maybe catch a glimpse of a woman walking from the spring, spilling life on warm stones. Stay still in silence long enough under the shifting sky, and anything can happen.

In This Heat

Would i think less of me if i did not,

moving freely in this heat,

or would i blame myself for sloth,

or lack of will, let alone desire?

Friends too late build their own cells,

how well i know the old mistakes,

but these are theirs to make,

the most that i should do 

is hold my hands up to the fire,

even in this heat, and wait.

Ditty for Nihilist

Look past it if you like.

Nothing is more real

than death.

Nothing is more real.

Nothing is.

Is.

Estival at St. Elizabeth's

Hearing the crickets,

The old walker said,

Is the sign

Of a grown man's sanity.


Today

I heard the crickets loud and sweet,

Deet-Deetle-Leet-Deetle-Leety.


But what about yesterday?

You're quick to ask,

What about yesterday's diction?


Ah, my dear, haven't you learned?

A poem is yesterday's fiction.

Deet-Deetle-Leet-Deetle-Leety.

Strategic Plan

Speed along, harvestman,

my arm a bridge 

between burdock and primrose;

your touch and delicate propulsion

across my skin awaken me!

I am going somewhere just to go.

I should use this health more wisely,

having glimpsed a light in some

who are living simply and with joy

below the poverty line,

making do. Let us call that

a strategic plan.


At my great grandfather's house

we would sit in darkness talking by firelight

to save a few pennies on oil.

Strategic Planners

Fog in the valley,

corn in rows,

clutchflower facing the sun.

No need for deception,

people over progress,

if kindness be your religion.

Voted Down

When the light falls

and the mist rises,

i find my balance

on the cusp of evening.

Beyond the board room

the air is full of sweetness,

and the hills are full of poetry.

Loyal Among Trees

The woods is home for kinder nymphs

who grew their wings alone

and early on they felt the peace

and safety of the trees

their fragile hearts like yours and mine

still dwell there night and day,

guided by a simple truth

their flights do not betray,

do not, do not betray.

September Soon Enough

Please expand by clicking.

  

When those we thought we knew

surprise us with cold calculus,

September soon enough again,

a freer, simpler month for me this time around

when i will sit and watch the spiders wait,

watch them do their work and wait alone,

and learn from that.

An Artist Manqué Considers His Options

Some things in this world

Need not be said to be felt.

The crisis is initiated by absence.

It is breath that makes it endurable.

Whisper to me.

Tell me i know who i am.

—with lines by Terrance Hayes

Cloud Triptych

The sky opens at last

Into theaters of evening.

We live in the clouds.

All the way to heaven

Is heaven.

The Fifth of July

    

We are desperate minds, and the rest is a bore.

Which is why we are friends, and i can write to you.


I've decided i write in prose. I write to say i am alive and well.

No one understands me when i write poetry. It is not madness.


I sit down on a stone, face up to the sun. Orion

Crossed the ecliptic unseen. We are blinded by days.


Beethoven, it's said, spent most of his day at the piano.

I have this stone, the valley before me, and the thought of your hair,


Long enough now i am looking through haze at it all,

And it's hard not to think, Mine, Mine. Or maybe it is.

—spun from a letter by John Weiners, and after

reading Marie Howe's "Second Childhood."

Raspberries and Rain

  

 I was riding hungry in the rain

when i stopped by the old barn,

a favorite spot for photographs,

and found a meal of raspberries.

Fresh paths led the way.

Others had been here.

I ate the ripest, careful of the plant,

mindful of those who would be next,

natives, I suspect, who knew the land.

I paid attention to the thorns against my legs,

to the rain upon my arms and back,

to the burst of wildness in my mouth.

I heard myself breathing.

A calm set in, and for a time

the world seemed rigged in my favor.

Young blackbirds flew in mobs.

I rode home grateful for my life.

Astronauts

This tossing country

this tall sky

my view from space

orbiting your present

you orbiting mine.

Gravitational

Choke cherry ripe on the road

fruit of the Fire and its spheres

tart with continuance

such globes at the core

of this world's oldest souls

rounded and polished by lives

drawn to each other

charged as they are.