“Cedar” is the second section of the fifth poem in I Have a Bird to Whistle (7 Palinodes), my new chapbook.
The book is available here to U.S. residents for $7.50, shipping included.
Non-U.S. purchasers can order it directly from me by emailing aBirdtoWhistle@yahoo.com.
As Breath Defines Constriction (Solar Wind)
The snake swallows itself, integrating the opposite. Or, illustrating the
nature of earthquakes, encourages conjecture.
Wind meditation. The practice of circling mountains, of emptying oneself.
Matter accelerating away from the sun. The prickly pear on the roof.
The Tendai monks of Hiei run 40 kilometers each day for 100 consecutive days.
Only then may they petition to complete the thousand-day trial.
Coronal mass ejections temporarily deform the Earth’s magnetic field.
I sweat while driving to the store for cold beer.
The heliopause is the point at which the solar wind’s strength is no longer
sufficient to push back the interstellar medium.
No matter its destination, a comet’s tail always points away from the sun.
At which point does one hear the sound of sunlight entering stone?
They must complete the thousand-day challenge or die. To this end,
each monk carries a knife and length of rope on his journey.
A map is simply paper. Solar wind, cord of death.
Stones in the path, quivering earth. Eyes focused ahead.
***
“As Breath Defines Constriction” is included in The Circumference of Other, my offering in the Silver Birch Press publication, IDES: A Collection of Poetry Chapbooks, available on Amazon.
Gulf
for M.V.
Which looms wider, its sky or water? The birds, here, too,
reconvene in greater streaks. This morning I stomped around
Paisano, examining the grasses and soil, the rocks and various
configurations of clouds, and listened to experts discuss
prescribed burns and how the land’s contours can determine
sequence and efficacy. The mockingbird whose territory
we occupy has disappeared. Perhaps he’s just moved on.
I heard a red-bellied woodpecker yesterday, but never saw it,
and of course the rattlers at the ranch are still underfoot, just
less apparent this time of year. I looked closely, as always,
but never spied one. What else did I miss? The rich people
on the bluffs bulldoze habitat, poison creeks and erect their
Italianate villas, caring not a whit for the breeding warblers
or the landscape, although they might pony up a few bucks
for an environmental charity if sucked-up to properly. Given
a choice between the two, I’d pick the snakes every time;
they don’t smile or offer spiked drinks and stories of their
conquests, and usually warn before striking. Even a minor
deity might take offense and crack open a new fault in the
earth between this place and theirs, widening it by inches
with each presumption, every falsehood, whether shaded
in unrelated facts or illogic, until that shifting space could
be spanned solely by a bridge planked with truth and good
manners, and, yes, by mutual consent. Looking back, I
find many examples of these bridges collapsing in utero,
but we keep trying. Your story of the gulf coast storm
reminded me of weeks spent on calm water, and seeing,
no matter where I turned, blue meeting blue, from horizon
to horizon, the sky never broken by bird or cloud, born
anew each day, always looking between, never down.
“Gulf” was published in West Texas Literary Review in March 2017.
“Texas” is the first section of the fifth poem in I Have a Bird to Whistle (7 Palinodes), my new chapbook.
The book is available here to U.S. residents for $7.50, shipping included.
Non-U.S. purchasers can order it directly from me by emailing aBirdtoWhistle@yahoo.com.
The publication date for I Have a Bird to Whistle (7 Palinodes) is February 25, and Luminous Press is currently offering copies for $7.50, shipping included, to U.S. addresses, through the 24th. Unfortunately, Luminous doesn’t ship internationally, but I will take care of those orders myself.
Order link for U.S. shipping addresses.
Contact me at aBirdtoWhistle@yahoo.com for orders to be shipped outside the U.S.
“Leaf” is the third section of the third poem in I Have a Bird to Whistle (7 Palinodes), my new chapbook.
The book is available here to U.S. residents for $7.50, shipping included.
Non-U.S. purchasers can order it directly from me by emailing aBirdtoWhistle@yahoo.com.
Night Smoke
Incomplete, it rises
only to dissipate
like the griefs we shape,
somehow unnoticed,
beyond reach but felt.
Last night’s moon, the glance.
Forgotten stars, a withheld
kiss, words we never formed.
How difficult to be lost.
So easy to remain unseen.
* * *
“Night Smoke” last appeared here in March 2018.
With These Nine Figures
… and with the sign 0…any number may be written.
Leonardo of Pisa (Fibonacci)
We attain from emptiness and the Sanskrit shoonya, from safira and sifr, zero.
As in unoccupied, as in void, as in what brims the homeland of null.
I once counted thirty-four black vultures orbiting my neighbor’s hill.
Despite appearing in Mayan codices, they neither sing nor cipher.
Fibonacci’s Book of the Abacus introduced the decimal system to Europe.
Regarding the tyranny of mathematics, is nothing something?
From alterity to belonging, its provenance assumes an absence of being.
Which is not to suggest xenophobia or superiority in order.
Whether depicted by empty space, wedges, or hooks, it held place.
Representation not of the object, but of its purpose, its path.
Black vultures do not smell carrion, but pillage from those that can.
Obliterative in the west wind, subtractive, unbound, they spiral.
Are the circlers in the sky symptomatic or merely symbolic?
Comparing negative infinity to its positive sister, I observe their way.
* * *
“With These Nine Figures” originally appeared, with a companion recording, in Clade Song in summer, 2013. I had asked a friend for five or six words to use in a poem. She provided tyranny, emptiness, xenophobia, pillage and at least one other that I’ve forgotten. But it wasn’t nothing.
“Plenum” is the second section of the third poem in I Have a Bird to Whistle (7 Palinodes), my new chapbook.
The book is available here to U.S. residents for $7.50, shipping included.
Non-U.S. purchasers can order it directly from me by emailing aBirdtoWhistle@yahoo.com.
This gallery contains 2 photos.
Originally posted on SLHARPERPOETRY:
Painted Chickens Twenty years ago I received a birthday gift from a close college buddy-slash-sometime lover (What on earth were we thinking?). Back then, our past was already in the past & twenty-four was already not…
O at the Edges 