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.
When to Say Goodbye
If all goes well it will never happen.
The dry grass in the shade whispers
while the vines crunch underfoot,
releasing a bitter odor. A year ago
I led my dog to his death, the third
in five years. How such counting
precedes affection, dwindles ever
so slowly, one star winking out after
another, till only the morning gray
hangs above us, solemn, indefinite.
Voiceless. If I could cock my head
to howl, who would understand? Not
one dog or three, neither mother nor
mentor, not my friend’s sister nor her
father and his nephews, the two boys
belted safely in the back seat. No.
I walk downhill and closer to the creek,
where the vines are still green.
In the shade of a large cedar, a turtle
slips into the water and eases away.
* * *
“When to Say Goodbye,” drafted during the August 2015 Tupelo Press 30-30 challenge, was published by Oxidant | Engine in May 2017, and subsequently nominated for a Best of the Net 2017 award.
Letter to Geis from This Side of the Glass
Dear Greg: I can’t help but think about windows, their
function, their meanings, intended and otherwise, how
they block some entities but allow others entrance. A
black vulture feather lies just on the other side of this
pane, but the laws of material and physics prevent me
from reaching through and claiming it. Maybe I’d
sharpen the end, dip it into squid ink and write letters.
Or not. Cephalopods are scarce in the hill country,
unlike carrion birds, wild hogs and scorpions, and frankly,
ballpoint pens require less maintenance. Lately, the
opaque has redirected my attention — no matter which
government agency speaks, I feel surrounded by their
pseudomorphs, those little indistinct clouds of mucus and
dark pigment released to confuse and numb me. A common
occurrence, I hear, and all the more frightening for it. I
think of where we’re headed, collectively and individually,
and even knowing that our destination remains unchanged
offers small comfort. One foot at a time, the steps matter,
and though it appears we won’t share those planned brews
in Bandera, I’ll chuckle over our last meeting there and
dream up a conversation about futility and compromise,
and yes, success. I’ve just spent twenty minutes trying to
help a yellow jacket escape. It wouldn’t leave the glass even
after I left the door ajar, allowing a fly to enter. Instead,
it gazed out at the hazy morning, seeking a way through
refraction’s oblique path. Finally, shepherded with my bare
hand, it reluctantly skittered to the jamb, and I coaxed it
the final few inches by pushing it with the door. Such
are my days. A little faith, some hope, luck and a great
unknowing. This window seems cloudy, or is it just
my eyes? I miss you, buddy, as do the hills and the sky
and everything nestled and bustling between. Bob
This first appeared in May 2020 in the Taos Journal of International Poetry & Art. D.G. Geis was a friend, a larger than life poet, and a fellow Texan. We were both finalists for the Slippery Elm poetry prize in 2017, and after learning that we didn’t win, decided to have a “losers’ lunch” in Bandera, Texas, the closest town to our respective rural properties. Much laughter ensued, and we made plans to get together for a beer in the coming months. Alas, that was not to be.
The Color of Water
Eyes the color of water. The tree I cut down
returns: fallen leaves, smoke, the missing
shade, memory come to reflect
emotion. Once the blue grosbeak
hid in its branches, calling but refusing
to appear, the voice our only consolation.
Now rain streaks the empty space.
Those things we touch often bruise,
but to leave them untouched may harm us
even more. Two days ago the sky cleared.
Changes, how often we see them for what
they are not. An essential falsity. Those eyes.
Words, ever-changing. Shadows of lovers
whose bodies merge but never touch.
This first appeared on the blog in March 2015.
The Loneliness of the Last
Always exposed, never sharing the comfort
of between, you see only the departed
diminishing with each second’s passage, blurring,
shrinking, and finally blinking out, all points
erased in the null, an eye closing in the tunnel.
Or, inhaling the fragrance of an unseen orange
grove filtered through coal and thick, black
coils, you accept the limits of possibility,
known only by edges flowing past, lost
to touch and forever beyond reach in the draft
of the inadmissible. Departure defines
you. What lies ahead is not yours to embrace.
* * *
“The Loneliness of the Last” was published as a mini-broadside by ELJ Editions in February 2017.
“Trem Abandonado” by Rafael Vianna Croffi
(https://www.flickr.com/photos/rvc/29472173566)
Morning Covers You
1
We extract
light, bleeding
it out one
diamond-shaped
hole after
another.
Finger the results.
Remediation
in form
or placement
to best
advantage?
At night
loneliness cradles
our bones.
2
You arrange our bodies to greater effect,
presuming lesser horrors
to be less.
A list emerges.
Refuting one,
accepting another.
Choices fixed.
Ecstasies of failure
purged.
Morning covers you
like a blue
shroud, so pale.
So cold
and bitter.
This originally appeared in Boston Poetry Magazine in April, 2014, and on this blog in October 2015.
Scarecrow Dreams
If by night I move without aid,
what then? Precious flesh, precious
bone, never mine to lose – the difference
between nothingness and no thing. A
pity that my friends fly at the merest
movement, but when the air’s breath
stills, they sing and rattle among the
grain, scribing their days in song
and footprints, seeking the available
on the ground. And what scrolls lower
than the sound of sunflowers turning?
The laughing daughter runs around
my lattice spine, scattering joy like so
many seeds, and when my hollow
fingers clench, the earth quivers, or
so it seems. Then midnight returns
and I disengage and stalk about,
scaring rodents and their predators,
hooting in harmony with the owls
reveling in the night air, remembering
the holy shirt, a yellow glove, corn
silk’s gleam at noon and the warmth
of your fingers against my burlap skin.
I do not breathe, I say, but I exist. By
morning what joins me but the tune
of yet another bird, unseen, melodious,
the pulse of morning’s dew. Eternity.
How my straw tongue longs to sip it.
“Scarecrow Dreams” first appeared in the summer 2017 edition of Eclectica. Many thanks to poetry editor Jen Finstrom, for publishing several of my scarecrow poems.
Flame
Drifting, she passes through the frame.
Reshapes borders, edges.
The way smoke scribes a letter in the sky with
gases and particulates. Intractable. Impermanent.
But not like a risen corpse
yet to accept its body’s stilling, or
the flooded creek’s waters taking
a house and the family within. Some things
are explainable. This morning you drained
the sink, and thunder set off a neighbor’s alarm.
From every moment, a second emerges.
Picture a man lighting a candle where a home once stood.
* * *
“Flame” was published in Poppy Road Review in February 2019 and is included in my chapbook, From Every Moment a Second, available for order via Amazon.com and Finishing Line Press.
Something Lost, Something Trivial
Another word, another bewildered
moment in transition: the phrase
barely emerges from your mouth
before crumbling back into a half-opened
drawer in the loneliest room of a house
that died seventeen years ago.
I nod as if in understanding, and stoop
to pick up a crushed drinking straw,
the kind with the accordion elbow
that facilitates adjustment.
From a rooftop across the street,
a mockingbird warbles his
early morning medley of unrelated
songs, and you say left oblique,
followed by matches, then
collapse on a bench,
winded. I sit next to you
and we both enjoy the warmth
and birdsong, though I know
this only through the uplifted
corner of your mouth, which
these days is how you indicate
either deep pleasure or
fear. I have to leave soon,
I say, and you grab my wrist
and stare into my eyes.
Broom, you reply. And more
emphatically, Broom!
Though I cannot follow you
directly, knowing both path
and destination, I pick my way
carefully through the years
stacked high like cardboard
banker’s boxes stuffed with
papers and receipts no one
will ever see. I know, I say.
I love you, too. Broom.
* * *
“Something Lost, Something Trivial” was published in January 2016 in the first issue of MockingHeart Review. Many thanks to founding editor Clare L. Martin, for her multiple kindnesses.
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.
O at the Edges 