Burning Bright

Evening, 11 years later.

In Central Park

the shrouded carousel

sat silent and motionless

because it was April,

and she was gone.


Outside Roosevelt,

a few blocks away,

the magnolias were in bloom.

Heavy petals fell on stones,

and she was gone.


The living filled the streets,

New Yorkers moving fast

as New Yorkers do.

Taxis blew their horns,

and she was gone.


So much more I had to learn,

great cities of the world

she led me through,

London, Paris, and New York,

and she was gone.


She loved to show me

what she knew,

take me where I'd

never been to watch

my revelations with a grin,


I'd follow her to find myself

in Thompson's Square

where Ginsberg read,

or standing at Blake's grave,

or breathing the breath of the Seine.


I hesitate, it's hard to write...


She'd hold my collar

late at night when I'd come home

from evening work, pulling me close

without a word, under the stars

above her bed, not letting go.


Big dark eyes,

holding tight,

not letting go.

—In memory of Kelly Jean O'Brien, 12/13/1970 - 4/28/2008.

Sure of Nothing

Blackbirds gurgaleeing in a liquid dusk,

Rain as little gods upon the pond

Brief as hopes and lives

With intersecting rings

And still no heaven,

Aging well enough alone,

Water covering the earth

With mystery.

The shower stops,

The surface of the world

Goes calm, sets me adrift

Toward the darkened house

To draw solitude about me

On my irretrievable way

Into the enormous night,

Every moment a best guess.

Atlantic Tanka: Thinking of You, Too

What fresh way to write

Of the ocean's dark power?

Here's just another

Melancholy old poet,

Wind-sheared by what he can't have.

Storm Passes Over Swan Beach

Unattributed, from the pages of the New York Review, 4/18/19

I didn't come up just to pull you down,

I didn't surface just to pull you under,

But the rain on the sea is a powerful song,

The young violins of the wind and the rain,

The old cellos of the sea, the minor chords,

Cymbalflash lighting the seaclouds,

Restoring the curve of the earth,


And you,

Leaning into the gale,

Long hair aluff and the wind

Stealing my voice,

Helpless to stop you from going.


Weather moves quickly

Crossing the bar.

Mauve twilight in clouds,

Mauve riding the backs of the swells,

A hundred thousand reflections.


The beach dims empty and pocked.

Across the sound at my back

A thin young moon

Settles into red ash

Engulfing the darkening mainland.

Ocean

Please click to expand

It dreams in the deepest sleep, it remembers the last storm or it feels the far storm and the lash of sea rain.

It is never mournful or wise, and takes the magical misrule of the sleep world with strong tolerance, its depth is not moved from where the green sun fails.

It told me to be faithful in storm, patient of fools, tolerant of memories and the muttering prophets, it is needful to have night in one's body.

—a shortening of Robinson Jeffers' poem of the same name.