My poem “Scarecrow Sees” is live at Vox Populi. It was drafted during the August 2015 Tupelo Press 30-30 Challenge, and first published by The High Window in December 2016. Thank you, Michael Simms, for supporting my work!
Every Wind
Every wind loses itself,
no matter where
it starts. I want
a little piece of you.
No.
I want your atmosphere
bundled in a small rice paper packet
and labeled with strings of new rain
and stepping stones.
I want
the grace of silence
blowing in through the cracked
window, disturbing only
the shadows.
Everywhere I go, bits of me linger,
searching for you.
Grief ages one thread at a time,
lurking like an odor
among the lost
things,
or your breath,
still out there,
drifting.
* * *
Music: “Gymnopedie No. 1” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
“Every Wind” first appeared in The Lake in July 2016, and is included in my chapbook, From Every Moment a Second, available for order now via Amazon.com and Finishing Line Press.
I’m looking forward to participating in “The Larger Geometry: poems for peace” reading at 4:00 p.m. on Tuesday, February 5, 2019 at Texas State University. We’ll read our own poems, but will share others from the anthology as well.
If you’re able to attend, we’d love to see you.
While Walking My Dog’s Ghost
I spot a baby rabbit
lying still in a clump of grass
no wider than my hand.
It quivers, but I pretend
not to have seen, for fear
that the dog, ghost or not,
will frighten and chase it
into the brush, beyond
its mother’s range,
perhaps to become lost
and thirsty, malnourished,
filthy, desperate, much
like the dog when we
found each other that hot,
dry evening so long ago.
This first appeared here in September 2016.
Glass with Memory
When I remember you
glass comes to mind,
but nothing so transparent
as an unclothed thought
or warmth trickling in
through the pipes or
under the haze of
the second night’s sheet,
no two alike except
in appearance, but under
the lamp’s unconscious glare
I find warmth spreading
across the hard surface,
telling me all is
not lost, that smoothness
persists beyond our reflection.
“Glass with Memory” made its first appearance on the blog in February 2017.
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.
Forced By This Title to Write a Poem in Third Person About Himself, the Poet Considers the Phenomena of Standing Waves, Dreams Involving Long-Lost Cats (Even If He Has Not Had Such a Dream Himself), And the Amazing Durability of Various Forms of Weakness
Five White cat always made sure no rats gnawed my books.
— Mei Yao-ch’en
His brain is squirming like a toad.
— Jim Morrison
Standing by the water, the poet wonders if,
as in this dream, his dead dog and Five White
might seize the separate ends of a rope and blend
their tugs, matching highs and lows, growls and purrs,
with near stillness, dawn to dusk and back again,
always equal, sharing through death their love
of work and honor. He throws a small branch
and asks the dog’s ghost to fetch, but it remains
at his side, as if reluctant to leave. How to release
what you no longer hold? Shadows disappear in direct
light, but always return at its departure. The
raindrop remains intact through its long plummet.
Words, though unspoken, hang like lofted kites
awaiting a new wind, a separate rhythm,
beyond compassion. He cannot hear it
but joins his dog in singing. The cat yowls along.
This piece first appeared in deLuge in fall 2016, and was drafted during the August 2015 30-30 challenge. Thanks to Jeff Schwaner for providing the title (which I edited for publication).
Even the Light
You look out and the sunbeam blinks –
a difference in brightness
on the drooping seeds.
Some days nothing gets done.
We live with the unwashed,
with stacks of mail, the unfolded,
the incomplete. Phrases pop out
only to crawl away, and later,
reincarnated in other forms,
embed themselves just under
the skin, calcifying. Scratch
as you might, no relief appears.
Your tongue grows heavy
from shaping these words.
Even the light subtracts.
* * *
“Even the Light” was published in the May 2017 issue of La Presa.
What Happens Next
Another night with the frost,
she says, and you’ll know
the half-life of cold.
Which is not to say enjoy,
or pity, or pretend.
It is the sheath of God’s
gaze, an unsuspected lump.
The harvested curse.
You grasp what happens next.
“What Happens Next” first appeared here in November 2017.
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.
O at the Edges 