Because the Rain

     

Because the rain comes through the roof,

                    and there you are again,

rain behind the chimney flashing in the wind and flashing,

pooling on the attic boards

                    where your things are boxed,

spreading dark into the tongues and grooves,

dripping through the ceiling tile to find me

                    where i sleep alone,

works of the poets and Irish plays above me,

the handwriting of friends, your ball glove and your globe,

your thimbles and your dolls, things I cannot hold,

                    where grief is stored,

because the rain comes through the roof,

                    and there you are again.

As Andromeda Approaches

NASA illustration of Andromeda nearing our Milky Way in 3.75 billion years

     

The galaxies won't merge

for five billion years

but I like to think about it

makes this worrisome year

almost nothing at all

and this moment big

for it is mine

whatever age i am

still with my dreams

staring back at me

from every leaf and stone

still waiting to be born

in a little while.

—with lines by Ralph Angel

Miniatures

Focusing down

Warhol's Polaroid "Eggs"

framed

in a field of white

isolation

my aesthetic

your remove

my abstraction

— "Eggs," circa 1984, Andy Warhol, Polaroid print.

The Chair

 

The chair

at the back of the field

is small and low

hard

to get out of

Sit tight

the sea

is in the trees

Thank you

for hearing it

A Study in Yellow

     

The vacancy

in the shape of a hawk

against the cloud

atop the pole

where the hawk used to be

fearsome stylite

to the small warmths

scuttling in the corn.

The vacancy

in the shape of you

on the far side of the bed

and the signs

in our transit

I should've seen sooner

wagging yellow

in rising wind.

August Self

    

A few yellowed ash leaves on the porch roof,

And so it begins,

The willow sheds on the driveway stones,

Some birds fly in flocks,

Elderberries ripen,

This the 3 p.m. of the year,

The earth has absorbed the most heat,

And we step through the berryfield

Staining our fingers as we go,

Feeding our souls

In the calm of the natural day

Under an untracked sky, the wind in our ears,

Finding our occasion in ourselves,

For the universe is built around us,

And we are central still.

— Dipping into Thoreau's mid-August journal entries, 1841-1855

Night Kindnesses

                                                                          Dale Brandt photo, Pea Island, NC

Lampblack hours.

The scent of animals.

Don't pity the one tuned by obsession,

that old begging.

Tell me something about mercy.

–a cento composed of lines from Yusef Komunyakaa's chapbook, "Night Animals."

Telepathy in August

 

   

"Wait," I say, running after.

"Why you?"

"Night rain," you answer without speaking

with a wave toward the field

arched with thorns,

"On blood-black berries."

Watching yellow dust

settle in your wake.

Cut Zinnias

chores of morning

 

Cutting zinnias in the early heat,

Celtic music and air conditioning

buoying me through the tasks of morning,

when here comes her ghost again.

This is what it's like to be Irish.

She could not speak, but if she could

I do not think she would have said

anything about death being part of life,

still surprised by facing the finish so soon.

No, I think she would've said, perhaps,

I love you, Dad, as she did the night

before as I left intensive care,

But she could not speak

she was just sleeping and then

she died and then

something I had never seen before

left her and I could see that it

was gone and I look even now

and I can't see it anywhere

and I had never seen it before

it was gone from my daughter's face.

The music is beautiful and sad.

The day is hot and passing.

Cut zinnias last as long

as any of us can expect.

—with lines by Shane McCrae

Her Songs

Her iPod: A 60 GB iPod can hold 15,000 songs.

 

How can you have been dead 12 years

and this still

—the complete text of a Jane Hirshfield poem, retitled.

Authors

    

Years and years and years

Loyalty of a book

To its place on the shelf

Like that

The old loves continue

—incorporating a poem by Jane Hirshfield

Rain Is Coming

 

Rain is coming,

and every leaf is applauding,

the maples showing their frosted palms.

I hear the train whistle at the crossings

from deep in the wooded valley.

Rain is coming,

wordless, but not silent,

a sighing in the crowns,

unless to say love,

unless to say loss,

the wind clattering in the corn,

a simplified beginning.

Poetry is a sky giving a performance.

The west is darkening,

silver veils far off against the gray.

Rain is coming.

Say something to me.

Down Lephart Road

Enlarge until you move down the road.

   

Traveling the surface of the earth

as if moving through a Hopper painting,

rising and falling

as the planet's contours pass under,

in the company of those

who loved me innately,

kin — such a little word

for that volume of souls,

mostly the kindnesses of women

who thought the best of me,

and for whom I lived to please,

I still feel their touch,

and now for whom

speed is no challenge,

weightless and formless

but not without force,

winds in the mind and heart,

going with,

I haven't forgotten.

For Kelly, Mildred, Elsie, Aileen, Linda, Margie, Cecil, Nettie and Ruth.