in something close to silence
in something close to wisdom
 |
| Aloft |
guardians of solitude
protectors of each other
in the charm of magnetic fields
respectful in our ways.
The mind holds many truths
we've learned not to name
in something close to wisdom
in something close to silence
in something close to tragedy
we feel the same.
—photo edited from the public domain
What tragic shapes
We have become
In the wreckage
of the rural dark
What harmonies of grief
Black coffee in a tin cup
on a board porch in the March woods
with crows announcing the end of winter,
I'm thinking heaven can exist on the earth
a few moments at a time, rocking
in my great grandmother's mission rocker
included free with a new cook stove
she bought for the family farm,
my great grandfather off in the oil fields
drilling another dry hole, dreaming of wealth,
not yet defeated, maybe still thinking,
as Thoreau wrote in his journal in 1842,
Heaven is to come, because this can't be it.
But it can, it can be, it can be black coffee
in a tin cup on a board porch
for a few minutes in March.
 |
No such luck. Tidioute, PA, c. 1860s (from a family album) |
I have a strained relationship
With sleep
Sometimes in dreams
I sense your touch
But always
When I wake
You're never there
Here comes the day again,
creeping out of the west woods,
creeping yellow across fallow fields,
devouring the shallow snow as it comes,
scaring off the night
that hides in the old farmhouse
as a chill in the cellar stones,
that hides in the mind of the sleepless
as a reckoning
with the failures of a life
marching mute
through the goldenrod bones.
 |
| Central Park carousel, NYC |
When the worst happens,
silence arrives.
We sat in the park
in our out-of-town coats,
her brother, her mother, and me,
without, without a word.
It was spring in New York,
cold, cold and bright,
the gears of the carousel
still wrapped for winter,
the painted wooden horses
motionless on their poles,
frozen in mid-gallop.
Silence, silence was the whole story.
—first lines by Jane Hirschfield
 |
| (Solo Practice University photo) |
Prow
into the wind
little boat
no land in sight
—After Simic. Title from Dylan's Tangled Up in Blue
Now that there is no light,
Take a good look around.
We've been arranged in rows,
All zeros and ones,
Frozen in a moment
That shall remain fixed,
Opaque,
And yet to be named.
Some call it reform,
Some call it revenge,
Some call it sabotage.
 |
| 4WD country, Swan Beach, Outer Banks, NC |
I loved you,
and you loved him,
and he loved her,
and on and on it goes,
pelagic, ever soon.
And so I leaned upon the wind
and looked for reciprocity
and saw it on the rising swells,
the golden apples of the sun,
the silver apples of the moon.
—last two lines from Yeats
 |
| (Marzia Bertelli photo) |
The older poets
move me the most
nearing the end of their days
in a different kind of weather
closer to the basics of living
the flight of the crow
the warmth of the sun
the touch of the beloved
accepting long silences
the errors and estrangements
each to each to each
accepting the losses
at peace with regret
they have much to teach.
 |
| Pileated woodpecker (Nikon Cafe photo) |
 |
| Spines |
The stiff-spined poets
Are keeping an eye on us
By looking away
* — Mina Loy's description of poetry.
Shingles flew like birds
Across this land of turkeys
In turkey weather
—a haiku based on a poem by Wallace Stevens
 |
| Shoes of children murdered at Auschwitz |
So strange an era
The slaughter of innocents
The flight to the moon
—For those over eighty,
from a series of haiku based on the poetry of Charles Simic
(photo from the public domain)
 |
| from the public domain |
It doesn't matter
We thought about other things
That was the whole show
—from a series of haiku based on the poetry of Charles Simic
You with your quick mind
simmering in these dark weeks
will you never come again
down drifted back roads
to lead me out of one maze
into another?
—after Charles Simic's White Labyrinth
 |
| Midnight, January |
Up from under down
at midnight in the mountains
to feed a log into the fire
and free the cat
who vanishes
into the dwindling woodpile.
Stubble in parallel rows
bends over the hill
to where the snow devils rage
against black woods.
Hear the trees moan.
In times of lies and violence
he likes the black keys best,
the cellos and French horns,
he likes the lights down low,
the alto requiems.
In vintage wool
he can forget,
watching the squall,
snow piling up
on his shoulders.
 |
| W. Eugene Smith, Walnut Street, Pittsburgh, 1950s. |
Surely it was too much
to expect our fragment of time
to become eternity
But the card you sent
showed something of yourself
with so few words
And you quoted Neruda
as we rode out of the tunnel
into the propellers of sunset
Everything
seemed possible
I thought
this would be easier
My soul is created
by thousands of images
I cannot erase.
On a clear cold night in January
Good for radio reception from distant stations
Some saver of souls in the middle of the continent
Drifts like crushed glass in moonlight
I think of you too.
The shape of the wind
When the wind dies
Her wry smile
Her love without condition
Snow and shadow
On a fallow field
Our days are numbered
 |
Sad and wild enough Sergio Larrain, untitled, London 1958 Aperture, Paris, 2013 |
When you finally called
and didn't speak,
I knew it was you,
it could be only you,
who else would call
and say nothing
and know I'd know
so many years later,
who else is sad enough,
who else is wild enough,
who else would call
and not speak,
who else would say nothing,
who else besides me?
 |
| Turkeyfoot Trail, Native American Path |
