Finding Balance

Pileated woodpecker (Nikon Cafe photo)

I heard instead

the pileate

in winter woods

drumming for a mate.*

*— among the earliest signs of spring.

 

Prose Bewitched *

Spines

 The stiff-spined poets

 Are keeping an eye on us

 By looking away

* — Mina Loy's description of poetry.

Windchill

Shingles flew like birds

Across this land of turkeys

In turkey weather

—a haiku based on a poem by Wallace Stevens

To Be Continued

Day like a secret

Icicles dropped from the eaves

And didn't kill us.

—from a series of haiku based on the poetry of Charles Simic

In Our Time

 

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)

If You MIssed the Five-Legged Dog Pick Up a Stick

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

January Dusk

He loves the silence

the taste of the infinite

in the snow-filled woods

Soup

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

January Allegory

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.

Watching the Squall

 

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.

A Mirror Held to Music

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.

Born Again

 

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.

(Winter)

 

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

Burner Phone Sonnet

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

Turkeyfoot Trail, Native American Path

Wind haunts the distances,

open, dormant fields

where once great forests stood,

an ancient, silver sound

of souls who passed this way

from mountain glades 

to where the waters meet,

beings in animal skins

trying hard to stay alive,

needing food and warmth and love,

caring for each other, fearing death,

not so different from ourselves—

stop and listen by their path—

we will be among them soon enough,

silver, singing wind.