Fewer Barns

The Lephart barn, built in 1902.

Slowed in the shadow

of man's work,

generations too soon

under the ground they tilled,

barns their monuments,

made from the land around them,

the trees and the stones

where they stood,

totems to strength of will

and a daily, lifetime effort

we can scarcely imagine,

having lost touch

with the earth and its seasons,

self-centered and angry

with each other

for weak reasons.

A Moment by Diane Arbus

It could have been either of us

or both

stopped in the park by a woman with a Rollie

in our youth

sad and hungry and convinced we'd always have

each other

And now i'm stopped again and hold your hand

it was our time

 I scribble on the page to slow the memory down

and if

by chance you see this and it slows you too

could be we do.

—reading a page in the NYRB of June 8, 2017.

Laurel Highlands Song

  

But that's all different now,

I have wasted my time in too many places,

The nights are cooler, and the mice are coming in.

What's happening now is my life, 

Lucky to have these woods to stand in,

These woods in the mist of what's happening now,

My life in a house with the mice coming in,

A dog asleep and snoring in the kitchen,

A house in a field where the goldenrod blooms,

Lucky to open this bottle of Malbec and books,

Books to stand in, lucky to have this life

In the mist with the mice coming in and me

Standing in one place hearing the birds. 

It's all different now, all in one place,

The birds in the mist singing, singing,

I'm here, I'm here, I'm here.

 —A rewrite, first published as "As the Nights Cool,"  8/22/16.

And the Night to Follow

Some evenings,

when the shadow of the ridge has covered me,

I walk to the top of the field, each step

an act of will if it's been a good day

with the crowbar and the hammer,

still the kind of work I like best,

except for the night to follow,

to sit in a small grove of young locusts

and listen to the frogs recite their lines,

jeered by the local geese in their sunset circuit,

and wait for the planets to appear.


Some evenings,

when I wait long enough,

I  enter the deepening sky and find myself

sailing through the rings of Saturn in perfect

silence, bright in the immaculate dark,

as it comes back to me, the beauty

and the terror of being lost in space,

and I try to get it down, what it was like,

the crowbar and the hammer work of poetry,

and how can I not think of you

as the stars start to shine in their recession?

NASA via Reuters

 

As Trees Gather 'Round

Clouds and rain confine me

to the surface of the earth

dark shining dusk

in deeper woods

until i hear

the movements of my night begin.

How do you breathe now?

A Feathered Sky

All the next day

Orioles sang in the willow

And when they had finished

Swifts circled the roof peaks

Silhouettes tailless in twilight.

Zabolotsky says

Each man is a tower of birds.

The Academy

of Suffering, of Water —

cooling himself

in mountains streaming

sloughing another attempt

at a life beyond reason,

Just typing, she said

setting fire to his hands

the grafts will not heal,

of Poets, of Meaning —

Oppen and Lorca

Mandelstam, Crane

Neruda and Sappho

Hikmet and Lowell and Cobain, 

of Knowing, of Time —

he sees her pouring

 over the earth

— of Mountains Eroding.

—first line a phrase from a poem by Ilya Kaminsky, "Elegy for Jospeh Brodsky."

Becomes a Breeze

Please expand.

Turning toward the wind

as the wind becomes a breeze

turning in the breeze

in the vacancy you left

leaving me to leave

these vacant lines

turning in the wind

as the wind becomes a breeze

without.

Alternation

First the rain stopped

then the sun broke through

it was the twelfth of May

as it had been the eleventh

night followed day

the ridges and the sky

took turns in moonlight

how deep it goes

this path to the horizon.

Foreshortening

Repeat after me:

I will be brief.

Thus concludes

Our short journey

Over vast distances.

Ever Closer

Hard-wired at the edge

moored to a literal world

but drifting drifting 

toward the shadowed mists

that formless kingdom

where answers exist

to what comes next

or nothing

nothing at all

and the wires are weak.

In the Gloaming

  

I can count on evening

my dear friend

calm and singing to itself

the day with its harsh judgements

at an end the night begins

with sweet illusions

of the kindnesses of men

calm and singing in myself

my dear friend

i can count on evening.

What He Should Have Said

don't leave just yet

the wind will rise again

Inner Landscape

  

I will not think of you again

of your long shore

noisy with seabirds


Thunder shakes the hills

on both sides of the valley

all software interrupted


And i will let my eyes sleep.

—after a Tamil poem from the 2nd Century