On Losing a Child

I wish to forget

in the midst of the Sixth

Great Extinction,

the plants and animals

dying around me,

I wish to stop thinking

of the ancient wails

I've heard from the throats of birds,

for the voices have shifted

direction in me

back toward primary silence.

In my late isolation

I wish to withdraw

into my heart.

—built on a pastiche of Uyghur poems by Ahmatjan Osman.

Sleeping Alone

In and out of consciousness

walking your beach

surf a sound in the dark

unheard in daylight

maybe teeth

under the moongloss

and far off

a house on the dunes

with the lights on

you will never reach

in this wind.

The Cure of Forests

Taking the long view on the long day,

here with the trees and going nowhere,

stationary, stoic, green-pleased,

more bothered by the gnat at my ear

than by your wounding, wine-fueled vituperation,

Baby.*

*—Now I feel better.

Peace in My Time

June in the field

at this latitude

let me be.


The field in June

at this altitude

let me be.

Dew and quiet fade

the morning immortal

let me go.

In the Bottom of a Barn

In the cool, dark bottom of a barn,

a great weight above me,

 enclosed silence,

I close my eyes,

and there we are again,

Tired and dirty at the end of the day,

satisfied by work and sweat

and the life we were building,

hearing the music of children in the yard,

gone now, memory like trampled earth,

powder on the sill I can write my name in,

or yours, our initials still there,

carved in a post forty years ago.

Even still there is music,

but I no longer know what it means,

our hearts spiked by errors and illusions,

yet still the heart beats on

as loud as ever. 

On the Continent

Photogravure by Gustave Marissiaux, b.1872-1929*

Fierce in the strengthening light

that burned through the smoke of morning,

True because it never failed

to lift the haze of night that was our void,

Real with risk and endings in disgrace,

We believed it for a time,

Long enough to scorch the land

and change the course of streams

and leave the hills steaming with aftermath.

And more than that

We will die remembering.

—courtesy of Paul Cava Fine Art

Isthmus

Back then is it

to the sea

the land of you

the surf of me?

Snapshot in a Fallow Field after Sunset

The light goes fast

beauty raw in halted flow

unframed unfocused

the moment pure

camera steals no soul

while adding to my own

atman photogravure.

Shelter

Black birch in easy rain,

Filtered sky

Touching your closed eyes,

Weighted leaves

 Filtering your rise.

No more lies.

Hommage

Death in the cities

senseless and cruel.

Bend to the meadow rose

fragile and brief

in the dark sun.