Heartsick

jo'b

This way                        

old friend                        

if you're still willing                        

we'll call it a triumph                       

of memory                       

Writing by Candlelight in an Icestorm

jo'b

          

Night masked an ill wind     

That kicked in the cabin door     

And murdered the light     

Sky

jo'b

I never tire

of looking at the sky

for surely that's where she went

she who is lighter than air

which is why the Irish

leave the window open

to make it easier

for all

All Perfecto and No Bike

SchottNYC.com photo

               He sold his last motorcycle

               after a spill,

               a concession to age

               and to circumstance,

               but he kept the jacket.

               He thought he could

               defeat time, and desire,

               and the need to be loved

               if he just geared down,

               but the weather clears,

               and the sun warms his back,

               and he feels it again,

               the wild urge of speed,

               of freedom, of living,

               and, oh, to go down swinging.

Incantation

jo'b

I spoke your name                    

To the rising Wolf Moon                    

And I wait                    

Elegy in the Dark

jo'b

Awake again

in the deep night of winter,

watching the storm.

Darkness swallows light.

I can't see the field, but I know

it's there, under snow in the dark,

the field where my children ran

with sunlight in their hair.

Like the fallen goldenrod

buried in snow, like the young

bare maples sighing with wind,

I, too, am rooted in the dark,

Soon to take my place

among the ended promises

of these few fallow acres

mistaken for paradise.

Harsh Winter Haiku

A path through fresh snow                

To the mailbox is enough                

For deliverance                

Seeing Sally Mann: A Progression

   Photographer Sally Mann near Lexington, Virginia  (Erinn Springer for the NYT)
Please click photo to enlarge.

We stood in long silence

Facing her bravery

The nameless abstractions

Quirks of an antique process

Her first way of seeing

Then the avalanche

A photograph is two things:

What it says to the world

And what it says to you

We've built too close to the river

The next flood will take us as well

–– With extractions from a Walker Mimms interview

with the photographer Sally Mann, published

in the New York Times, September, 2025.

Primitive

Edited from the public domain

 

Trapped in the time loop          

as the numbers turn over          

kneeling to the flame          

Living in the Wind

Path to the woodpile                  jo'b   

A cold and angry wind

passes through the country,

shaking this old farmhouse,

its posts and beams creaking,

its mortices and tenons

pushing against each other,

giving a little to keep from falling.

Late, I read the news and tend the fire

to keep my bones from chilling,

all night I let the faucet drip

to keep the pipes from bursting—

the wind is a passing thing,

passing through a passing thing,

which is my life. I am old.

I go slowly to grow older.

I pull down my cap and turn my collar up,

heading for the woodpile through the drifting snow,

each step a crunching underfoot, less of a sound

in my head than a vibration in my soul.

I lean into the wind, sometimes

turning sideways in the stronger gusts,

giving a little, still standing.