Nocturne with a Line after Kees
I close my eyes and see nothing but rain.
And after, take pity
for what turns beyond sight: the wretched
flower, a hiss from the road. Last night the wind
stole sleep from my body,
leaving me alone, wordless, listening
for her next breath. An alchemist,
I transmute the memories of old wounds laid open.
*****
This first appeared in Ijagun Poetry Journal, in December 2013.
Feeling Squeezed at the Grocery Store I Conclude that the Propensity to Ignore Pain is Not Necessarily Virtuous, but Continue Shopping and Gather the Ingredients for Ham Fried Rice because That’s What I Cook When My Wife is Out-of-Town and I’m Not in the Mood for Italian, and Dammit I’m Not Ill, Merely a Little Inconvenienced, and Hey, in the 70’s I Played Football in Texas, and When the Going Gets Tough…
I answer work email in the checkout line. Drive home, take two aspirin.
Place perishables in refrigerator. Consider collapsing in bed. Call wife.
Let in dog. Drive to ER, park. Provide phone numbers. Inhale. Exhale.
Repeat. Accept fate and morphine. Ask for lights and sirens, imagine the
seas parting. On the table, consider fissures and cold air, windows and
hagfish. Calculate arm-length, distance and time. Expect one insertion,
receive another. Dissonance in perception, in reality. Turn head when
asked. Try reciting Kinnell’s “The Bear.” Try again, silently this time.
Give up. Attempt “Ozymandias.” Think of dark highways. Wonder about
the femoral, when and how they’ll remove my jeans. Shiver uncontrollably.
Staircase at Fifteen
Ascending, her centrifugal
influence captures me
and I follow,
breathless,
witless, wordless,
despite all longing
and shared
discretions, despite
the thundering
pulse
and the incessant
demand to act
or run.
She pauses, looks
down, sees
nothing.
Suddenly freed,
spinning off
and slowing down,
shrinking,
far below, on equal
footing but so
apart,
never to meet
in truth, unable
to define direction or
motive, I remain
fixed as she moves
higher, far away, close
but up,
always up.
Nocturne (Fall 1983)
Tall weeds block
the view. Remove
sound from sight,
the guitar becomes
kindling. I stretch
my hands toward
the burning wood,
hearing the echo
and the woman.
December Moon (1999)
If loneliness breathes,
then rain is its heart,
always falling to its lowest point
before receding. Water graces us
daily in all its forms – the slowest
drop, the line of ice on the wall,
your breath, so soft and even
in the cool night. But no one,
no thing, can fill the void of
departure. You exhale and turn
away, and the air, with its empty
arms, embraces the space
you’ve left. I feel this daily,
whenever we part. At forty-one
I’ve known you half my life
but have loved you even longer,
through the millennium’s demise
and all that preceded or follows.
The brightest moon for a century to come
is but a shadow in your light.
It’s hard to believe that I wrote this nearly sixteen years ago. Busy with books, work and life, I didn’t write much in the nineties. But this, the last poem of that decade, recently surfaced. The sentiments are as true today as they were then. I am a lucky man.
Jackboy’s Lament
We define ourselves in movement,
in the uncertain light and forms
shuddering by: fences, the nameless
wave, odors, dark water.
Look at the hills, their lines stretched taut like
smiles, or voices torn from the earth.
Or the creek below us – how its mouth never closes
yet nothing emerges but a shadow
on the wind. Two questions arise,
leaving only the abandoned to consider.
In our solitude, only my self is missing.
I started this piece about ten years ago, after a drive through the Texas hill country with Jackboy the cattledog, who was quite the philosopher and humorist. This is what emerged after several conversations and much reflection over his circumstances (abused, abandoned, rescued). Jack didn’t talk much, but he thought. Oh, how he thought.
It has been sixteen months. We still miss him.
Originally posted in February, 2014.
This is my first attempt at a haibun. Please forgive my transgressions.
Texas Haibun
I dream of poetry in all its forms, rising and flowing and subsiding without end, much like ice shrugging within itself. Last winter a hard freeze split a valve on the downstream side of the cistern. Had it cracked even a few inches up-line there would have been no need to replace the valve.
captive rain recalls
its journey towards the ground
the garden returns
The well terminates at 280 feet. The water is hard, but cool, and tastes of dark limestone and ancient rains.
Even the gnarled live oaks have dropped their leaves. Grass crunches underfoot and smells like dead insects and dried herbs. Mosquitoes have vanished. Only the prickly pears thrive. Their flowers are bright yellow and bloom a few days each year.
sauteed with garlic
nopalitos on my plate
their thorns, forgiven
I wipe sweat from my forehead with the back of the glove, and wonder how many ounces of fluid have passed through my body this year, how the rain navigates from clouds through layers of soil and stone, only to return, how a cold beer might feel sliding down my throat.
stoking the fire
winter rain whispers to me
forget tomorrow
I Have Misplaced Entire Languages
Neither this tongue nor that still dwells in my house.
The hole of remembrance constricts, leaving behind only debris.
As a child I mixed three languages in family discourse.
Now only one is comprehensible, and I abuse it daily.
The woman in the blue dress stands alone on the pier, weeping.
A pidgin is a simplified language developed between groups with no
common tongue. Sounds form easily, but meanings struggle.
My father is shipped to Korea without warning.
Some words insert epenthetic consonants to separate vowels. Years
later we arrive in Italy and my mother starts receding.
A fourth language emerges.
This morning I asked, “Ame?” “Yes,” she said, “but just drizzling.”
Some families share no common language and must forge without.
We have used pain, pane and pan without reference to etymology.
Having abandoned the familiar, she chose another, never accepting the loss.
These forms we can’t articulate, these memories we have not traced.
This originally appeared in April 2014 as part of Boston Review‘s National Poetry Month Celebration.
Memoir (Cento)
Your hands touched
everything. Will you
be a fountain
or a sea?
A woman sleeps next to me
on the earth. Now
nothing else keeps my eyes
in the cloud.
Each rock is news.
A cento is composed of lines from poems by other
poets. This cento originated from pieces in:
77 Poems, Alberto de Lacerda
Because the Sea is Black, Blaga Dimitrova
Body Rags, Galway Kinnell
Song of the Simple Truth, Julia de Burgos
Love Poems, Anne Sexton
For further information and examples of the form, you might peruse the Academy of American Poets site: http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/poetic-form-cento
My poem “Ashes,” which appeared in Extract(s) two years ago, has been reprinted on The Reverie Poetry Journal‘s blog:
O at the Edges 