The Few We Can Keep

In the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City.

We make few promises we can keep

You with a muse of your own

In the raw city

That profile of grave beauty

I see in dreams

That voice of true feeling

I hear in storms

Those postcards we answered

Rereading now

To say only this.

Morning Glories

on the porch post

 

Today for an hour

I shall sit beside morning glories

in the miracle of light

as the sun floats out of the oaks

where the red-tailed hawk

takes flight

and I shall suffer no deceit.

Dark Screened

Click to enlarge

 

Last cutting with Post-its

Flags admonishments consolations

On a dark screen

Regrets and reminders

A morning's reflection

Passwords to paradise

In a ravaged garden

Unnatural Order

In a fallow field

The order of autumn

How well we know it

Goldenrod then asters then witch hazel late

How the birds leave us

Killdeer then redwings then hawks on their glidepaths

What falls around us

Ashes and cherries then maples then oaks

Walnuts' indelible husks smack the earth

Things as we know them each in its time

Cycles repeating in a rational universe

Ordered by a mysterious intelligence

The turning of spheres the living the dying

Grandparents parents old friends then us

The natural order accepted expected

An orderly fall

Never a child never no never a child

 

Thrift

Mountain woods late September

Firewood stacked on the porch

Nowhere to be

No plastic no cash

Only time to spend

Loving this life

As rich as it is.

 

Shelter

Inward I turn

Pure instinct.

Native bees

Curl under blooms

Before the rain

Gives leaves a voice.

I am not alone.

Human

 The valley fills with moonlight

And the music of the train.

I go back.

The Going and the Gone

A lock of hair

In a metal drawer

A crucifix

A ring that turned my finger green

A hundred monarchs in succession

Stutter southward

Across the blooming clover field

The red-wings have abandoned

The German word is Zugunruhe

 

Drops Every Four Hours

Stylized from Earth & Sky

 

I've been in love many times

But I only fell once

With a redhead

And never recovered

The moon comes up early

pale and unrealized

A hawk flies the wire

Tinctured with sunset

As is my right eye

As is the cascading mane

Of the masked physician with intelligent eyes

Who says it's nothing to worry about

Argiope

 

Stops me in my tracks

With all of her eyes

Wasps hung like sausages

Pittsburgh girl

In a satin jacket.

Out the Window

The stars in their places

 

Orion strong as ever

hunter above the woods

high-jumping over the oaks

where he is supposed to be

the stars in their places

a comfort as I lean

out the open window

upstairs into the night

me with my thoughts

unable to sleep again

the heat from the house

rushing out around me

haunted by childhood

hunting for certainty

as if it exists

She escaped into our room

where we lay awake

blankets pulled tight

through the window we fled

me first as the oldest

then my brother then her

and left him to his rage

and his drunken slumber

and his eventual remorse

or what I took to be remorse

returning from the refuge 

of a neighbor's house

to find him brushing his teeth

getting ready for work

with no eye contact

and nothing to say

And nothing more

ever to be said

in childhood's memory

nothing of the fright

nothing of the shame

nothing of the betrayal

by one who should've loved us most

nothing but the brightness of blood

and the darkness of night

and the reassurance of Orion

rising from the woods

the leap in adulthood

the same as in childhood

even as the distances increase

farther away everlasting.

A Reading in the Aftermath

 

The Big Events

 

So, your years are less than forty

and now you have your Big Event to cherish.

Congratulations, proud new owner,

begrudge no more the grizzled rest of us

our Kennedy or King or sinking of the Arizona,

you have A Day of Infamy

to call your own.

It comes as no surprise,

man’s inhumanity to man,

but neither does his love.

Bend closer to the earth.

Draw near to me

my wide-eyed love

beneath this quiet, jetless sky.

 

The crickets sing, the katydids

file down the ragged edge of day

to night, the birds fly to their roosts

as they have done, and do, and will

–– we are the short-term visitors.

 

The truly big events make no explosion,

the great events to which all things consent,

they make no stir, no vacuum to be filled,

for they are gradual,

like soaking rain.

 

Draw near to me

my wide-eyed love.

Lying drenched on the side of some bare hill

we watch the globes descend,

and love the rain again,

your shining face in both my broken hands.

–– J. O'Brien, read at Club Cafe, Pitsburgh, September, 2001.

The Heart Is 73% Water

Dusk is coming

Rain is moving east over the hills

Ironweed and goldenrod

Bowing to ground

Pantlegs soaked to the knees

I listen to hear what I've lost

The breath of September

High in the crowns

The breath of the living

Risen to cloud

The days winding back

Each of us waiting alone

In the cycle of rain

For our own evanescence.

Once More on Willowbrook Hill

Midday Passage, Chaim Soutine, c. 1919

 

The least thing

can make the present hold

can make the past a cancelled season

A man shaking out a match

smoke rising in ribbons

candles burning on the cabin desk

The woods around him

dark and glittering

in a sun-splashed mountain breeze

The sound of it

an envelope of hush and quiver

the calm of it

childhood's healing quiet

Middays after school

deep in goldenrod he'd cross

the fallow field toward the trees

before his peace was broken

Both his working parents due

in the house's white confinement

one in a rant of slights and grievances

one long-suffering to create supper

And stay until he found once more

in the shelter of the trees

the courage to go home.

Post-Tropical Depression

 

Seeker,

Close your eyes and wait,

The mind is a broad country.