Bad Dream

Outside at first light

shaking off the night

with its accusers

its wet pillow

its sad-eyed judge

asking if I understood

I did not

I did not want

to see you everywhere

walking the hill at sunrise

calling your name

but I did.

The Abstraction of Things

On a nightstand somewhere in Pennsylvania

If, in a world of things

objects not relative

exist in abstraction,

Then what of you and me

of me and you?

The time will come

when even stones

need each other.

Light and shadow

shadow and light.

Roadside Androgyne

Buckthorn plantain

She bore the grace

of common beauty

overlooked by men,

crown and beard and stem.

Returning an Instant Camera

Photos from a Fujifilm Instax Mini 12

Circling back,

woodland wind and rain,

slatted dusk fading in a fan,

What is lost,

and what is gained,

the seasons coming 'round again,

The moment stilled,

time detained,

developed as the past,

And I am left

repackaging,

returning what remains.

Just Like Carlo

 

Like Emily's Carlo,

Roxy knows,

But she won't say.

Molten

 

Flame of the poppy

Core of the earth

Hidden in you

Runaway

This way through ferns

as out of the woods

night crawled on its belly

Safety found in the dark

under the fronds

and one day

You would never

have to go back

to the small house

Loud with blame and ridicule

and you didn't

until it was over for ill

Old enough then

to understand

you could never leave.

Zazen

Sitting still for a moment,

awaiting silence,

clouds behind the hill,

wind whispering

in the hollows of my face,

wanting little for a moment

in a world all flourish and perish,

gazing deep into the cloud and the wind,

this precious existence,

one dream flowing into another.

—after Hsei Ling-yün, circa 423 C.E.

Beauty Happens

May apple

a flower

opened

in the storm

take heart

children

of the rain

Near the End of the Day

I have the world to myself

Most of my days,

Blackbirds settling into the rye,

The sun low and red.

It just happens this way,

Each of us in a small boat

On a desolate sea,

No land in sight,

Big red sun.

—with an image from the poetry of Charles Simic, 1938 - 2023.

The Rope Pit

Adobe stock photo

In the crushing enormity,

in the smoke and the clang

of Duquesne Works' No. 6 Bar Mill,

a young husband, night student,

helmeted, goggled, gauntleted,

an oiler, son of a failed-artist-roller,

cast the long shadow of a steelworker

over the blur of the 30-foot wheel

into the grease of the abyss

under the speeding ropes

that drove the great rolls

as rebar snaked through its trough,

neon and lethal.

His father, too, dreamed artists' dreams.

On payday they knew it meant little.

Earthling

 

Under all day the cloud fleet

Under all night the Flower Moon

Paling the dark firmament

Where the bear and the lion roam

Man on his globe

Troubled with wonder

Impermanent.

Doglife

Click to enlarge

          

Running free

In spring woods

I might come back

If you called

Eventually.

Inkwell

Books, a failed Instax photo

Stop erasing,

Mrs. Walker scolded in sixth grade

After I'd rubbed through paper.

Use the mistake, she said.

Therefore,

Having spilled the ink

Over too much of my life,

Poetry.