Monthly Archives: May 2019

Mother’s Day (with recording)

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Mother’s Day

The dog is my shadow and I fear his loss. My loss.
I cook for him daily, in hope of retaining him.

Each regret is a thread woven around the oak’s branches.
Each day lived is one less to live.

Soon the rabbits will be safe, and the squirrels.
As if they were not. One morning

I’ll greet an empty space and walk alone,
toss the ball into the yard, where it will remain.

It is Mother’s Day.
Why did I not weep at my mother’s grave?

I unravel the threads and place them around the dog.
The wind carries them aloft.

“Mother’s Day” was published in The Lake in July 2016, and last appeared here in May 2018.

Hours

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Hours

who remembers can
the blur of
flowers be so

unpleasant if as
Creeley says “imagination
is the wonder

of the real”
what then is
presence obtained from

nothing the mere
transformation of shape
to glory incessant

as the night
raining in through
the long hours

 

* * * *

A poem from the mid-80s. I don’t recall where the Creeley quote came from.

Coyote

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Coyote

What makes the coyote yip
at three in the afternoon,

after the rain
but before the hunt?

Today
I am alone.

 

 

Hummingbird (3)

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file0001815455590(1)

 

Hummingbird (3)

Arriving from nowhere,
its mouth opens

but what escapes
comes not from within

and is never complete.
Words, too, falter

in this space,
struggling to remain

aloft, challenged yet free,
an exchange

between air and wing,
of sound and thought,

occurring as it must
without design

or desire, simply
there, then gone,

a presence one notices
in its absence.

 

* * *

“Hummingbird (3) made its first appearance  on the blog in December 2014.

words

 

Mole (Pipian)

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Mole (Pipian)

Always the search beneath texture,
layers captured in subsidence,
the drift to interpretation: a mixture, meaning

sauce, and its journey from seed to mouth,
the careful blend of herb and fire,

dismembered chiles,
the crushed and scorched fruit
rendered to preserve for consumption
the most tender qualities

and their enhancement towards art.

 

* * *

This is of course not about the mammal with the subterranean lifestyle, but rather a version of the Mexican sauce, pronounced “mo-lay,” which includes, as a main ingredient, pumpkin seeds. It takes a while to put together, but is well worth the effort. “Mole (Pipian)” first appeared here in February 2015.

 

file000720697612

 

In the Place of Cold Doors

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cold doors


In the Place of Cold Doors

We have a word for everything,
or seven for nothing. Soon

you’ll enter and I’ll talk
on the other side,

watch for signs in every
dropped crumb,

every nailhead and
embedded phrase remembered

in another’s voice. The light
will dim and I’ll look for rain and

go on speaking. My words will wander
unnoticed. You hear only yesterday.

 

 

“In the Place of Cold Doors” first appeared in Gossamer: An Anthology of Contemporary World Poetry, published by Kindle Magazine in Kolkata, India. I was thrilled to have several poems included in the anthology.

 

nailhead

 

And to Sleep

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And to Sleep

and what we
sense if not
of our selves

or within this
space we contain
may be of

no thing touched
by one’s fluttering
eye as if

awake we see
even less the
dreams of course

real though we
hold them only
in our sleep

 

Another poem from the 80s. “And to Sleep” first appeared here in February 2015.

Ghazal of the Half

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Ghazal of the Half  

Singing virtues, she swings to the east, claims half,
accepts what’s given, smiles, nods, names half.

What stone lies unturned in this bluest of graves?
Where love’s darkest lancet intrudes, inflames half.

The beauty of intercession and the divided become
one. Pushing them into two piles, she blames half.

Incomplete, I ride the lost memory’s pale vein,
as the motion of capture, of trickling, maims half.

You read the history of driftwood in its scars.
“Never whole. Always,” she exclaims, “half.”

My other name is a hill in a windstorm of sleep.
Forever apart and uneven, just the surname’s half.

 

“Ghazal of the Half” first appeared in Manzano Mountain Review in November, 2018. Many thanks to editors Justin Bendell and Kristian Macaron for taking this piece.

 

Transduced Ruin

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desolate

 

Transduced Ruin

From bad to worse.
The hospital’s walls, shredded.

A turning back, the retrieval.
Frayed edges, unraveling, pulled down.

Conveyance and change, or, conversion.
Tying the knot, I think of home.

Things fallen apart.
She stands alone under the sky’s umbrella.

“Destroy infrastructure, destroy livelihood. Destroy.”
Water leaking from the cistern’s wounds.

Wind to voltage; passive to active.
My church is the sky, the earth below, and everything between.

The center of one, of two.
Rounds, piercing armor.

A spiritual hole, leakage.
“It was easier to view them as targets, not human.”

Sequences: from water to ice, to vapor and back again.
I will surrender to flame and be scattered.

Firewing, starbolt, tearmaker.
Guided from afar, they sense but cannot feel.

Recursive death.
Counting graves, he considers relief.

The road to everywhere.
Looking back, I discover that I had already arrived.

 

* * *

I’d forgotten about “Transduced Ruin,” which was written during the August 2016 Tupelo Press 30/30 Project, a fundraiser for the non-profit literary publisher, Tupelo Press. I am grateful to Atomic Geography, who sponsored the poem and provided the title and these three words: spiritual, sequences, things. 

 

Poem in Brave Voices

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My poem “The Gift” was published in Brave Voices in January 2019. I somehow missed it…

Many thanks to Audrey Bowers and her editorial staff for taking this piece.