Monthly Archives: August 2021

The Resonance of No (with recording)

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dishes

 

 

 The Resonance of No

Yes, yes, we’ve heard. The dishwasher wastes less
and cleans better. But Kenk­ō believed in the beauty
of leisure, and how better to make nothing
while standing with hands in soapy water, thoughts
skipping from Miles Davis’s languid notes to the spider
ascending to safe shelter under the sill (after I blow
on her to amuse myself), washing my favorite knife
and wondering if I should hone it, not to mention
my skills on the six-string or the potato peeler.
And if I linger at the plates, even the chipped one,
admiring their gleam after hot water rinses away
the soap residue, who could question the quick gulp
of ale or the shuffle of an almost-but-not-quite
dance step-or-stumble while arranging them on the
ribbed rack, back-to-back, in time to Coltrane’s
solo. Then the forgotten food processor’s blade
bites my palm, and I remember that I’ve outgrown
the dark suit, the cut branches still need bundling
and none of the words I’ve conjured and shaped
over decades and miles will extend their comfort
when I stand at my father’s grave this week or next.

 

“The Resonance of No,” was published in December 2016 in Gravel, and is included in my chapbook, From Every Moment a Second.

Daniel Schnee wrote about this poem here.

Music Credit: Cool Vibes Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

 

All the Little Pieces

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broken-glass

 

All the Little Pieces

How to rewind
broken,

the subtle shift of shard
and floor

laid between night’s
fall

and the morning’s first
glow. Take this

lantern. Set it
on the wall. Remove

the glass. Do not
light the candle.

Wait.

 

lantern

 

 

Inheritance

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2

lightning jar

Inheritance

All this is mine and I praise the sky
offering surcease
in the form of vapor and a darkening

of its measure, accrued
in the way of interest owed,

increasing like vermin, circling back
then beginning anew.

I count each drop delivered.

The window’s eye blinks
and a lone flash stitches the day.

Each rumble is a coffin’s lid slammed shut.
Wanting nothing, I demand more
and receive only what I want,
a reckoning of desire and
needs ignored.

I have buried your demands.
I have delivered each counted drop.

All this is mine.

* * *

“Inheritance” first appeared in The Closed Eye Open, a publication focusing on consciousness. Many thanks to editors Daniel A. Morgan, Maya Highland and Aaron Lelito for taking this piece.

A Musical Prayer

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Yesterday I received an email, completely out of the blue, from Peter Campbell-Kelly, a musician and writer from the UK. We’ve never met, never corresponded, but somehow he saw fit to send me a link to a “little film,” as he calls it, that he put together during the lockdown. “It is a sort of musical prayer, intended somehow for the well-being of all of us, in this desperately difficult pandemic,” he says. And indeed it is: 10 minutes of bliss, Peter playing Biber’s Mystery Sonata No. 16 ‘Passacaglia.’ I’m grateful that he shared this with me, and hope that you find it as peaceful and beautiful as I do. 

When to Say Goodbye (with recording)

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dried

 

 

When to Say Goodbye

 If all goes well it will never happen.
The dry grass in the shade whispers

while the vines crunch underfoot,
releasing a bitter odor. A year ago

I led my dog to his death, the third
in five years. How such counting

precedes affection, dwindles ever
so slowly, one star winking out after

another, till only the morning gray
hangs above us, solemn, indefinite.

Voiceless. If I could cock my head
to howl, who would understand? Not

one dog or three, neither mother nor
mentor, not my friend’s sister nor her

father and his nephews, the two boys
belted safely in the back seat. No.

I walk downhill and closer to the creek,
where the vines are still green.

In the shade of a large cedar, a turtle
slips into the water and eases away.

 

* * *

 

“When to Say Goodbye,” drafted during the August 2015 Tupelo Press 30-30 challenge, was published by Oxidant | Engine in May 2017, and subsequently nominated for a Best of the Net 2017 award.

 

Why I Hate Mowing the Lawn

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lawnmower

Why I Hate Mowing the Lawn

The unmowed green reveals its secrets
blade by blade, shadowed and fresh.
Don’t look, it says, whisper deep
into my chlorophyll. Save this blue.
It unveils other nuances, confiding in
contrast and symmetry, employing
your eyes and their measures. The quiet,
all-encompassing and subtle. So true.

* * *

“Why I Hate Mowing the Lawn” was first published at Buddhist Poetry Review.. Thank you, Jason Barber, for taking this poem.

Dashi

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Dashi

I make dashi with water, dried bonito and seaweed,
and maybe a few drops of soy sauce for added flavor.

A simple broth, assembled by hand to enhance, a
concept mislaid in this pre-packaged world.

Today I have blown three notes through the shakuhachi,
each one separate, but all gathered under one roof

for no tangible purpose, released to entropy
and the drops coalescing on the window.

We never know what stew will result from the day’s
efforts, whose lips will force air through which root

end. I close my eyes and imagine the second note’s
shape, how it bells over raindrops to absorb

their sound, bending into the third note spiraling up
and away from my hands, my eyes, my breath.

* * *

“Dashi” and “Inheritance” first appeared in The Closed Eye Open, a publication focusing on consciousness. Many thanks to editors Daniel A. Morgan, Maya Highland and Aaron Lelito for taking this piece.

Wherein the Book Implies Source

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book

 

Wherein the Book Implies Source 

And words form the vessel by which we traverse centuries, the river
stitched across the valley’s floor, easing access.

Accession by choice. Inorganic memory.

Vellum conveys its origin: of a calf.

How like an entrance it appears, a doorway to a lighted space.
Closed, it resembles a block of beech wood.

To serve as conveyance, to impart without reciprocity.

Framing the conversation in space, immediacy fades.

The average calfskin may provide three and a half sheets of writing material.
Confined by spatial limitation, we consider scale in terms of the absolute.

The antithesis of scroll; random entry; codex.

A quaternion equalled four folded sheets, or eight leaves: sixteen sides.

Reader and read: each endures the other’s role.
Pippins prevented tearing during the drying and scraping process.

Text first, then illumination.

Once opened, the memory palace diminished.

 

* * *
This originally appeared in April 2014 as part of Boston Review’s National Poetry Month Celebration, and is included in The Circumference of Other, my offering in the Silver Birch Press chapbook collection, IDES, published in 2015.

ides front cover 92915

As Blue Fades

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As Blue Fades

Which defines you best, a creaking lid or the light-turned flower?

The coffee’s steam or smoke wafting from your hand.

Your bowls color my shelves; I touch them daily.

Sound fills their bodies with memory.

The lighter’s click invokes your name.

And the stepping stones to nowhere, your current address.

If the moon could breathe would its breath flavor our nights?

I picture a separate one above your clouded island.

The dissipating blue in filtered light.

Above the coral. Above the waves and ocean floor far below.

Above the space your ashes should share.

Where the boats rise and fall, like chests, like the waning years.

Like a tide carrying me towards yesterday’s reef.

Or the black-tailed gull spinning in the updraft.

 

 

“As Blue Fades” first appeared in Underfoot Poetry in October 2017, and is included in my most recent chapbook, My Mother’s Ghost Scrubs the Floor at 2 a.m., published by Etchings Press, and available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and elsewhere.