Truchas (Elevation 8,000 Feet)
Climbing
these stairs,
I resemble
a trout
flopping
in dry air,
another gasp
and a ratcheting
heart rate, up,
out, and through
that opening,
into the pale glow.
I spent a glorious four days in New Mexico, in the company of poets. The Tupelo Press Truchas Conference outdid itself again.
Everything is nothing, but afterwards.
I rise and the moon disturbs the darkness,
revealing symbols, a few stolen words
on the bureau. Tomorrow I’ll express
my gratitude by disappearing be-
fore I’m found, which is to say goodbye
before hello, a paradigm for the
prepossessed. Compton tells us to imply
what’s missing, like Van Gogh or Bill Monroe,
but why listen to the dead before they’ve
stopped speaking? Unfortunately we throw
out the bad with the good, only to save
the worst. I return to bed, and the floor
spins. Nothing is everything, but before.
This first appeared in The Blue Hour Magazine in December 2014, and is also included in my chapbook, If Your Matter Could Reform. The line “Everything is nothing, but afterwards” comes from Antonio Porchia’s Voices, translated by W.S. Merwin. Porchia wrote one book in his lifetime, but what a book it was! Often described as a collection of aphorisms, Voices is so much more – each time I open the book, I find new meaning in old lines.
Thunderstorm Below the Mountain
(after Hokusai)
Lacking humility, I take without thinking.
How far we’ve come, to look below for
lightning, the valleys shaken
with thunder, answers
like pebbles flung outward,
each to its own arc, separate
yet of one source, shaded into the question.
Is it for the scarcity of reach,
the reverse view through the bamboo rings
well out of sight, that
breath in the wave’s tuck or
smoke mingling with the clouds
and figures collecting salt,
that I edge myself closer, again,
to this place? To be nothing
presumes presence in absence.
Lacking humility, I accept without thinking.
“Thunderstorm Below the Mountain” first appeared here in March 2016.
I have the honor of being the featured poet in Volume 3, Issue 2 of MockingHeart Review. I am grateful to editor Clare Martin and her tireless dedication. She is a blessing!
Deborah Brasket shows us connections between a poem, music and starlings.
Zdislaw Beksinski
I came across this poem on one of my favorite blogs O at the Edges.
I love the image of the wave losing itself in dispersal only to rise again, just as music does in the playing, even in the inner repetitions, remaking itself.
Just as memory does, rising from mysterious depths only to disappear again.
Like murmuring starlings, spilling patterns across the sky.
So much “self-similarity” weaving this world together.
I leave you with three gifts: the poem that inspired me, the music that inspired him, and the wonder of murmuring birds.
By Robert Ojaki
That it begins.
And like a wave which appears
only to lose itself
in dispersal, rising whole again
yet incomplete in all but
form, it returns.
Music. The true magic.
Each day the sun passes over the river,
bringing warmth to it. Such
devotion inspires movement: a cello in the
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In this interview, Jane Hirshfield reads her poem “My Eyes” from The Beauty, and discusses the “window moment” in poetry. I can’t remember when I first fell in love with her poetry (2000? 2001?), but she remains one of those writers essential to my life.
Ode to Bacon
How you lend
yourself
to others,
enhancing even
the sweetest fig
in your embrace
over coals,
or consider
your rendered
self, how it
deepens flavor
with piggish
essence, coating
or absorbed,
blended or
sopped. O belly
of delight, o wonder
of tongues,
how could I not
love you
and your infinite
charms, even
when you resist
my efforts and
shoot sizzling bits
of yourself
onto my naked
hands? I pay
this toll
gladly,
today and
next year
and all those
days to follow,
till the last piece
is swallowed
and our sun
goes dark.
Hyperbole
becomes you,
smoked beauty,
salted love,
and I shall never
put you down
or leave you
behind
on a plate
to be discarded
or forgotten,
unloved.
“Ode to Bacon” first appeared here in July 2017, thanks to T.S. Wright’s challenge.
