Earned Wonder

 

Just because the sky is stunning

doesn't mean

there is a heaven.

Just because your heart is clenching

doesn't mean

you have a soul.

The flashing day divides

against itself, cold wind, warm sun,

under gilded malts and molten golds

the earth rolls back

with you on it

into its own shadow.

You smell rain coming, maybe,

you've lost your certainty,

you've earned your age,

welcoming a world

of ordinary wonder,

and you like it just because.

High Wind Warning

          

The willow greens by the hour as the woods roars.

We're here now. Not much more is given.

This as it is and this as it shall be.

You as you are and you as you shall be.

Flinching with memory.

—with lines from Rowan Richard Phillips' first collection, The Ground.

Moon Again

It's the moon again,

making an appearance,

here to let us know,

sometimes love returns.

Dressed in the patina

of reflection,

let us stand

and cast a shadow.

Dark Field

Waxing gibbous

 

In a fallow field

in the owled dark

you'd never know

the world was sinking

weighted down

with people garbage guns

In a fallow field

in the owled dark

only the voices of clouds

dripping moonlight

only the engines of moths

staggering south

In a fallow field

in the owled dark

everything in silhouette

indistinct unforeseen

everything poorly illuminated

what he liked about the night

Not people

in the owled dark

you'd never know.

Sanity

Foster's Island, For Bravo

Arno Rafael Minkkinen 

It is vital 

at this time

to connect with creation,

to complete your own circuit.

Ephemera in, ephemera out, ephemera

lost to the erstwhile world.

—two lines by Jake Crist.

—photo from The Three Penny Review, Spring 2021

Planting Onions

 

I planted onions

in the rain

          the mud

clung heavy

          to my shoes

I texted then

allowed myself

          no call

just careful type

         with no reply

I've kept my word

my fingers cold

          the soil's rich

 the heart

          grows old

A promise made

to save us both

          we came so close

tenderness aligned

          took root

Growing toward light

may we speak

          in whispers then

when love

         breaks ground again.

Rural Present Tense

He who I was.

Here is a photograph

I took while I was alive.

You see one can live

Without having survived.

Here are the monuments.

—A cento from the works of Carolyn Forche

Handwerk Road

On a sepia hill

in the blue hour of lost time

a simmer of blackbirds

roosts under a smoldering sky

smoke without flame

embers at the tips of the signal towers

gone red on the ridges in a cold wind

but the fire has eyes

and a pen in its left hand

snug as a gun

to say so.

—penultimate line is Seamus Heaney's 

Cold Flow

A stream too small

to name

clear light

the mind's true nature

The Pounding in Your Chest

Calming fears in the open air,

existential,

self-aware,

timor mortis conturbat me,

each clouded sky

a one-time thing,

never to be seen again,

timor mortis conturbat me,

the dignity of space, of room,

a clean horizon's peace,

the moon,

timor mortis conturbat me,

the truth, the truth writ lovingly,

you love, they love,

the he, the she,

timor mortis conturbat me.

—lines 4, 8, 12, 16 - fear of death confounds me, a repetitive Latinate line

from "Lament for the Makers," William Dunbar, c. 1505

Because We Vanish

 

Erosions of March

Sea stone

Mountain stone

The work you leave

Stones of a life

Becoming earth

The forces of water and wind

The time you think you have left

Working Artiste

Sort of the color of birches

 

Rising with notes

from the tangle of night

to a dull meandering snow (he yawns)

and little support,

he listens with coffee for the voice

of his muse or his ghost or the wind off the hill.

The clouds are (sort of) the color of birches.

The sky is as blue as (he shrugs) the sky.

And there! The scuttle of claws in the wall—

mice in their itchy pink kingdom.

He reads to the dog with her chin on her paws.

At the word walk, her tail slaps the floor.

Encouraged, logged in, he begins:

Rising with notes from the tangle of night...

Held In Place

The mud road

Nevertheless

he is alive there

          the mud road

How is it possible

the sun and the wind

          the sopping field

The trunk in the garage

no one will open

         her empty clothes

The heavy mirror

framed like a masterpiece

          no one will unwrap

Reflections

held in their places

          his life intact

Cohabiting the Hollow

     

Steaming snow

fogged blue

Old letters in a box

silence at the table

Mists the sun

destroys