On Air Conditioning
The man who owns everything wants more.
Another offers his sandwich,
accepting grace with a smile.
Like vapor condensing in a coil
to remove heat from the air.
Difficult to comprehend.
Harder to live.
Self-Portrait with Umeboshi
Our resemblance strengthens each day.
Reddened by sun and shiso,
seasoned with salt,
we preside, finding
comfort in failure. Or does
the subjugation of one’s flavor for another’s
define defeat? The bitter, the sour, the sweet
attract and repel
like lovers separated by distances
too subtle to see.
Filling space becomes the end.
What do you learn when you look through the glass?
Knowing my fate, I say fallen. I say earth.
Ah, simplicity! When I was a child my mother would occasionally serve rice balls in which a single mouth-puckering umeboshi rested at the center. These have long been a favorite, but I admit that umeboshi might be an acquired taste. Commonly called “pickled plums,” ume aren’t really plums but are more closely related to apricots. I cherish them.
“Self-Portrait with Umeboshi” first appeared in the Silver Birch Press Self-Portrait Series (August 2014), was included in the subsequent print anthology, Self-Portrait Poetry Collection, and also appears in my chapbook, If Your Matter Could Reform.
Music: “Senbazuru” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Letter from Insomnia
Accepting Li Po’s tragedy,
apocryphal or not,
we embrace her imperfect
reflection
rippling in the breeze,
but manage to surface.
I once thought I would name a child Luna
and she would glow at night
and like Hendrix, kiss the sky.
But that was whimsy
and only candles light this room
at this hour
on this particular day
in this year of the snake.
And what fool would reach for a stone orbiting at
1,023 meters per second?
There are clouds to consider, the stars
and the scattering rain
and of course wine
and the possibilities within each glass
and the drops therein.
We must discuss these matters
under her gaze, where smallness gathers.
* * *
This originally appeared in Middle Gray in October, 2013. It was written in response to a poem my friend Michael sent me, replying to this poem.
Letter to Marshall from the Scarecrow’s Pocket
Dear Daniel: How fortunate we are to tap into this medium of ether
and zeros and ones and all the combinations employed in our paperless
context. I am drawn to the concept of text as textile, as an entity
woven into the fabric of communication. Who knew that simple lines,
dots, dashes and squiggles would someday depict so well our
abstract beginnings and fingered desires, from counted goats and
jars of oil to the tattoo on a beloved’s inner thigh. The gap between
thought and graphic representation, whether on paper or glowing
screen, seems heightened these days, in spite of their ubiquitous
presences. I scratched my name onto the frozen creek’s surface,
only to watch it subsume as the mercury rose. I report this only
because you’ve scribed too well that feeling of treading on uncertain
surfaces, of words expanding in meaning and dragging us along
separate byways, fork into fork, under and through what we
never considered. That is our fate – to emerge from the pocket,
folded, wrinkled and smudged, smelling of makkoli and fish
markets and unwritten phrases stored in rice jars, our personal
creases expanding as we inspect the characters found there, some
crimped, others elongated, still others nearly invisible but apparent
through indentation. Translate these and what have you but a history
of glorious failures and unfelt victories in marks, on white,
somehow of note, if only to oneself. Success is a stranger’s smile,
an omelet cooked to order and eaten with gusto. It pulses
in the doing, in the unsteady drip from the faucet with a desiccated
washer, and the ink staining the page symbol by line. I know only
what I know, which ain’t much, but I keep trying to learn, to
cobble together these odd symbols into assemblages greater than
myself. As if anyone would notice. Say hello to the marred, the
cracked and disheveled of Jeju, and I’ll return the favor from
my hideaway in the Texas hills. As always, believe. Bob.
“Letter to Marshall from the Scarecrow’s Pocket” first appeared on Vox Populi in July 2018. I am grateful to Michael Simms for publishing this piece (and others).
Which is an Eye or a Bowl, a Dream
Or well-placed mirror in a sunburnt room, shivering through shifted
images: that hand, blackened and stout, opened like a dark peony;
the tattooed chin; shovel and torch; hook and owl. You say no one
chooses one fist over another, that bread’s rise completes its cycle
and begins anew, pressed flat and rounded. Take this heart and seal
its chambers. Note the anterior descent. Compression, lesion. Plaque.
Consequence. And your friend, who slept, never to awaken. Lying
in that strange bed, you taste salt, acknowledge change, whisper
to no one: audible house…audible tree, knowing that time’s limit
remains unclear. The air swirls and you accept this new light.
Note: “Audible house…audible tree” is from Jane Hirshfield’s “Not Moving Even One Step,” from The Lives of the Heart.
Icarus
the answer is
not the history
of flight but
a question of
wings a notion
born of desperation
and fright each
quill ruffled by
the delicate tongue
of air can
only reflect this
fortune a dream
but never a
tragedy the gift
of gravity’s denial
Written probably in 1985 or 1986, this is the first poem I titled “Icarus.” After lurking in a drawer for decades, it made its first public appearance here on the blog in December 2017.
Shadow
walking,
crushing juniper berries
at dusk
the dog shadows me
in his absence
* * *
“Shadow” first appeared here in April, 2015. It could be considered a companion piece to “Mother’s Day,” which is included in the July 2016 edition of The Lake.
Music: “Thunderbird” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Aubade (Inca Dove)
Such delicacy
evokes the evolution of hand
and wing, a growth
reflecting all we’ve come
to know. Two doves
sit on the fence, cold wind ruffling
their feathers. What brings them
to this place of no
shelter, of wind and rain
and clarity defied? Fingers
often remember what the mind
cannot. Silence
complicates our mornings.
This was originally published in The Balcones Review in 1987. Seems I was enthralled with birds back then, too…
Because You Cook
You know the pleasure of
hunger, of patience
and a task well done.
Dice onion, peppers – one hot,
one sweet – saute them in olive oil,
fold them into an egg
cooked flat. Add
crumbled goat cheese, basil.
Look away.
Morning ascends, then declines,
but night drifts in, confident,
ferrying these odors among others.
Accept what comes but choose wisely.
Light the candle. Shift the burden.
* * *
“Because You Cook” first appeared in Ristau: A Journal of Being in January 2018. I am grateful to editor Robert L. Penick for taking this piece.
Aleppo
A father sings to his son,
dead two days,
and the platitudes persist.
Widow of night. Lantern’s trick.
What trace, you wonder,
exists of humanity in these etched
walls? Light bleeds through a crack
like rules unheeded and scattered.
Another sheer looming of hours.
The song, continued.
“Aleppo” was first published in Vox Populi in August 2018. I am grateful to editor Michael Simms for his continuing support of my work.
O at the Edges 