Tag Archives: death

Musing on My New Chapbook (4)

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I Have a Bird to Whistle is available for purchase now.

From where do these poems come?

The seventh poem in the chapbook, (salt, mask, descent), was begun two months after I’d survived a heart attack, a particular type known commonly as the “widow maker,” and only a few hours after I’d learned a friend had died. The questions that arose from both events have never been answered.

The book is available here to U.S. residents for $7.50, shipping included.

Non-U.S. purchasers can order it directly from me by emailing aBirdtoWhistle@yahoo.com.

Thanks very much for supporting my work. I can’t begin to describe how grateful I am to you all.

Countdown, #4: The Stone Remains Silent Even When Disturbed

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My last five posts of 2018 are reruns of five of the most viewed posts on this site during the year.

 

The Stone Remains Silent Even When Disturbed

In whose tongue
do you dream?
I fall closer to death

than birth, yet
the moon’s sliver
still parts the bare

branches and an unfilled
trench divides the
ground. Bit by bit,

we separate – you
remain in the earth,
recumbent, as I gather

years in stride.
Even the rain
leaves us alone.

 

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This first appeared in December 2015.

Two Poems Up at Defuncted

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I’ve two poems up at Defuncted, a journal dedicated to reprinting pieces from defunct publications. All too often our work simply disappears when a publication ceases operating, so I’m particularly grateful to editor Roo Black for providing writers with the opportunity to rejuvenate their work.

Editor’s Choice poem up at Vita Brevis.

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I’m honored that editor Brian Geiger of Vita Brevis has republished my poem “Bone Music” as an editor’s choice selection.

Not Blame Your Pleasure

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bike

Not Blame Your Pleasure

Because vision limits options, I close my eyes.

Becoming urges patience.

The morning after I didn’t die, I took breakfast in bed.

Arrival stamps the difference between waiting and choice.

Expectation, too, extends its squeeze, rendering sleep impossible.

I ride the bike and go nowhere, or walk steadily, covering the same ground.

Which will claim me first? An occlusion, gravity or unchecked growth?

Anticipation replaces one sigh with another: I have three falls from two roofs.

A friend has named me executor of his estate, and now the race is on.

The path to the void seems straight only near its end.

My ashes will one day soil someone’s morning.

ladder

“Not Blame Your Pleasure” first appeared here in November 2015.

Wasp

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wasp

Wasp

Outward, the quest for
space and the wings’

hunger to unfold and
shed this home of dark
flesh and encompassing desire.

And each thing remembered, the broken
sheath, the flowering desert’s return,

reflects the notion of being, of intent
in action and its corollary,

the gift of living through death.

* * *

“Wasp” last appeared here in January 2017.

flowers-in-the-desert

The Body Gives

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The Body Gives

Sometimes the body gives too much.
A tendon frays, the heart mumbles
and no one sees the damaged parts.

Ignoring pain, we continue climbing ladders,
sandpaper breath rasping the morning light.

Little bits of us crumble all the time,
yet we stumble on, pretending.

Then the body kills us with its enthusiasm.

Cells duplicate wildly, plaque explodes.
This enmity within? Defensive maneuvers.

Working alone, I wonder where I might end.

On the floor. In a field. Atop the bed.
Under the surface of a rippling pond
or drifting with smoke

through a snow-clad afternoon
at eight thousand feet. Among
the grocery’s tomatoes and squash
approaching the end of a long list.

At the bar, glass in hand, or in a truck
at a four-way stop, the radio blaring.

Time enough for speculation, they say.
But I wonder: when I jump,

does the earth always rise to greet me?

“The Body Gives” first appeared in The New Reader Magazine, in March 2018.

“Love Poem” by Dorothea Lasky

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This is probably not the poem that I would offer my beloved, but then again maybe I would. It’s brilliant. Love Poem

Another Bird, Rising

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Another Bird, Rising

The shadow behind you slides over
the ceiling, up and gone,

a wingless silence. The drafted swirl.
One morning shifts into two, and still

you won’t give in, each moment’s
gasp another one earned, a measurable

notch on the table’s edge, quarters
in the magic purse. They all count.

Pills, chemo, radiation. Ocean to sky.
Houses to ash. Your eyes see black.

“Another Bird, Rising” first appeared in deLuge in fall 2016.

Poem Up at Vita Brevis

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My poem, “Bone Music,” which originally appeared in Gossamer: An Anthology of Contemporary World Poetry, published by Kindle Magazine in Kolkata, India, has been reprinted on Vita Brevis.

I am grateful to editor Brian Geiger for offering a second home to this poem.