Cellos

Relentless wind

Cold rain

Dew on cobwebs

Frost on panes

Sunsets, tides

An endless loop

Of minor keys

Ten thousand lines

In fallow fields

A thousand poems

With you in them

And not a word.

In Winter Woods

 

Once we were great,

Aflame in our world,

Walking the path we'd cleared,

Arm-in-arm under the Milky Way,

Looking up through bare trees,

Gasping at meteors

As they flared themselves out on the earth,

The only paradise we knew

Flinging itself into the emptiness.

—after Galway Kinnell's "On The Frozen Field"

Older than Imagined

 

I open a window in the dark

to feel the wind in the room

and listen to the hills

Pandora murmuring on the stand

New Age Relaxing Sounds, as if.

If you could see me in phone light

you would turn away

as I do each night

To write my last poem

in praise of long life.

—with lines by Emily Berry

The Visions of Septimus Smith

              

The table drawer was full of writings,

Some very beautiful,

Some made no sense.

He looked over the edge of the sofa down into the sea,

The air buffeted his cheek like the wings of a bird,

The dead were with him.

In a pocket of warmth at the edge of the woods,

The lighted house where the door stood open,

A bright woman descended, a match burning in a crocus.

Trees dragged their limbs through the depths of the air,

The sound of the waves was in the room, sea birds calling,

Far away on the shore he heard the singing of dogs.

Every power poured its treasures on his head,

Fear no more, said the heart in the body, Fear no more.

The soul must be brave to endure.

—Virginia Woolf enters the mind of a character

she created who suffers from PTSD

In February

 

Cornfield, treeline, hayfield, sky,

now in the pause

before the return of the birds,

layers of serenity and wind

just right for recording the atoms

as they fall upon the mind,

disconnected from the transmissions

of a fearful paradise,

taking the cure,

cornfield, treeline, hayfield, sky.

Understanding in the Off Season

Duck, NC

Our bestial hungers

Are not what they once were

When last we walked the surf

Yet here we are

Giving it a go

Barefoot in the calm and hissing night

Looking into our own hearts

Sharing what we see there

The Atlantic saying

Yes        Yes

Each footfall in wet sand

a bloom of phosphorescence

Yes        Yes        Yes

Rolls from pier to pier

A soft collapse and a recession

A soft collapse and a concession

A soft collapse and a confession

Untitled

Broken glass

In the opacities of evening

You can't forget

Windows you've climbed through

Old sadnesses within

An Invective on Form

                     

Pressing hard up a hill in the drizzling dusk,

storm-colored doves spaced on a wire

between the transformers,

road water roostering into my face,

grackles swirl up from the stubble

to circle the red-roofed white church

against the clumped gray sky,

a train in the valley promising more rain.

Should I ride more miles toward night?

Will it help me feel better after refusal?

What has happened to supporting the arts?

The train echos No, No, No,

but down the other side I sail,

mud in my mouth, headed for crows

bitching after an owl in the swale,

in a narrative mood, far from lyric.

Spilling the Beans

You always rose first

To grind the coffee

Scaring the dog

Sometimes we think

We hear you again

Singing in the kitchen

But it's only Pandora

And nothing is going

Back in the box.

The Fields are Soft and the People are Sad

Too warm for February

 

Flattened by the weight

of winter of living

of the day itself

I read in books

how things used to be

when it was colder

when families and lovers

huddled close to the fire

warm on one side

not a soul thinking

run, hide, fight,

those were the days,

Valentine.

Acclimature

Dun arc of a wooded hill

Where the wind sighs

Under a curdled sky,

An empty bowl

Has its history.

Warm in old wool,

Waiting for truth

In a reduced world,

You begin to understand,

You will never be finished.

Not the Moon

Not the moon

but like the moon

watched from a hilltop,

his grief rose within him

ghostly and beautiful

with light from a sunken sky.

There above him it hangs.

Forgive him his seclusion.

Some kinds of damage

provide their own defense,

secure in the ruins

with the privileges of solitude.

And if you see him

in the ash field

ragged and gesturing

as you round the bend,

do not be mistaken,

he is not signaling for rescue.

                         —a cento composed of lines from Virginia Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway," and Richard Shelton's "Local Knowledge."

While We Can

The wind pushed against us,

A Micro Moon, she said,

correct as ever.

Even so, I should have said,

having seen 300 more,

Let us stand and cast a shadow.

Universe

Moon among trees

Man among stars

Why not a dream?

Shrine

 

I could fix the old corn crib

I built fifty years ago

that became a child's playhouse

now slowly sinking

into the earth

but I like it as it is

now slowly sinking

into the earth