ducking under fallen trees
as if you'd never said
you'd never leave him
as if we'd had a life
as if we'd never aged
as if we'd never stopped
as if I'd never sailed
on foolish dreams
as if as if as if
my thoughts were days
and memories
were years to come.
to cross the valley
in playful flight,
riding the gusts
with seeming joy,
familial creatures
aloft in each other's company,
and why you are not here.
Eight billion human hearts
clenching on the earth,
souls trapped behind our eyes,
each of us the same,
love's intoxication,
work's obsession,
age's sorrow,
each of us alone,
and therefore, dogs.
The farmhouse is gone,
you can see where it was,
a level spot in the pinestraw,
the spring overgrown with cress.
The barn is gone, the coop, the crib,
the swaybacked shed, all gone,
the field beside the creek
now a parking lot for visitors
who walk inside the covered bridge
still spanning the shallow rapids
where we fished for bluegill
with 'crawlers we picked at night
after rain with flashlights quick
before they snapped back into the earth
where everything was before,
where you used to be.
The water irises have seen enough,
drawn up in the footlights of sunset.
The pond quivers with frogsong.
We light up, illumined on the grass
between the Earth and Venus,
silent and vanishing.
stopped down
in available light,
hold my hand
just in case,
floating
in the beauty of bokeh,
being there.
photo edited from the public domain
Living a single season
Mad for each other
photo edited from the public domain
 |
| National Wildlife Federation photo |
When I heard the learned surgeon,
When the pre-op, the nerve block, the anesthesia
were described to me,
When the incision and the sutures were traced
with a finger on my flesh,
When I sitting on the sterile paper heard the surgeon
in the examination room,
How soon I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding home into the hills,
I walked the fallow field by myself
In the mystical moist night air with fireflies floating,
and from time to time,
Looked up in perfect silence at the stars.
—Walt Whitman's "When I Heard the Learned Astronomer"adapted to circumstance
 |
| Aaron Groen photo |
The firefly on the pane
throws my shadow
throws my shadow
on the floor
The neon hands
ten-fiftysix
ten-fiftysix
on the nightstand
The Milky Way
over the house
horizon to horizon
nothing stirs
My breathing loud
two fingers pressed
against her neck
nothing nothing
heliotropic
only if sun
tender faces
in the rising
solidago
look too deep
and see hexed
disappointment
think too deep
and find yourself
alone
unspoken love
shall remain
unspoken
staring too long
behind a facade
of happiness.
 |
| fodder |
Wedged into form
Desperate for praise
Instead
Good effort
But it's not a poem
Without an ache in it
I felt it then
Bare truth.
