The Incomplete Works of

Mid-winter in Upper Turkeyfoot

Oh God the failure of prayers in the idiot days

—Siri Hustvedt

1.

A live-in love.

Nothing physical.

A suitable arrangement.

I made that up. I live alone.

No one in my bed but me,

And you, once upon a time.

You can say I made that up, too.

Could be, poetic license being what it is,

Tie-dyeing my oeuvre,

Three decades of songs,

Each with its image,

Mostly hills, mostly trees, mostly skies,

And you. My way of seeing,

Largely unseen,

Cherishing memory.

Let someone else be judge,

Long after. Then let it be said,

He never forgot, and tenderly.

2.

In the mind there is no chronology,

Impressions of a life, not as a stream,

but compartments disordered,

existence a pastiche, a jumbled

amalgam of blended sensations,

the vivid colors of movement and act

faded to weak pastels,

profered piecemeal

as art.

Poetry Lover Asks for a RIde

Club Cafe in Pittsburgh's trendy South Side (from the public domain)

After the reading

she bit into my lip

and vanished into the night

I drove around lost

in her paved-over hills

trying to find my way back  

Where the road ends

I kissed the stone

and carry the scar in my mouth

Flow

Thirty years on

the wine we poured into the snow

leaving the woods together

reaches the Gulf.

—an adaption of James Richardson/s "The Touch"

Alvarez Has Many Pictures

 

Alvarez has many pictures

of his daughter

dark eyes wide

with love and heartache

the only thing he paints

behind the river and the wall

self portraits.

How It Is

No way to prepare

for the transient world

you are sad you are happy

then sad again

and on it goes

You fix the fire

and the cat wants in

you fix the fire

and the cat wants out

and on it goes

You step outside

under a starless sky

in the chalky dark

and the naked cold

and you shrug

Wisdom

if it comes at all

comes too late

to do you much good

ask the old

Mortal

Back from the city. Please click to expand.

Adjustments

since returning

from the city

Lists and cancellations

what goes

what stays

in an empty house

music in my pocket

fluid notes sustained

strings and slow pianos

that eased me through the night

carried now in insulated jeans

where my wallet used to ride

in the days of requisition

Preparations

since returning

from the city

The need to simplify

more flashlights fewer rugs

three quilts on the bed

readers in each room

the heating pad

careful on the stairs

a bright chrome rail

anchored to the shower wall

a blanket on the chair

before the fire

a friend at the door

Music in my pocket

since returning

from the city.

Radiology

Click to enlarge

Reading the ghosts in the image

is the other side of the hill

the toll of living made visible

where the wind pushes against you

even the brave hold their breath

honing the drifts into edges

waiting to hear

against the bare trees

the buzz of the phone is a blade.

Settler

In that blue hour

between sunset and night

as the trees gather 'round in deep snow

you know you did right

not to leave.

The Sound of Time in Long Winter's Night

The sound of time,

the swing of it, 

its passage disturbs you,

yet how it comforts me,

there on the mantle,

as it was in Will Hall's sitting room

in the village of Neshannock Falls,

four generations mostly quiet, firelight

lambent on the faces and the hands

I remember well, the lamps turned down

to save on oil, the youngest of us

silent and attentive

as the oldest told their stories.

Outside in the cold dark,

the rush of the creek

braided up the night —

when I listen, I can hear it,

and I feel once more

the warmth of family at the hearth,

the youngest of us oldest now,

together ever still.