This first appeared in 1988, in Aileron. At the time I was experimenting with movement and breath and line, and wrote quite a few of these meditations in this form, some more successful than others.
* * *
where breath begins
it ends consider
light its secret
structure the sense
of limit defined
if a hand
recalls what the
eye cannot which
is the source
of remembrance one
touches more deeply
or allows itself
to be touched
a difference only
in the approach
His Softness
What name would survive
had you not stepped into the water
that day? Memory assigned
a separate word, another given,
and the face I’d placed with you
appeared in front of me
fifteen years later, in another
setting, miles away
and still breathing. How
may I honor you
if not by name? I recall
the gray ocean and how
umbrellas struggled in
the wind, and reading
in the weekly newspaper
a month after
that you had never emerged.
Now your name still lies there,
somewhere, under the surface,
unattached yet moving with
the current, and I,
no matter how I strain,
can’t grab it. Time after time,
it slips away. Just slips away.
.* * *
“His Softness” was published in January 2016 in the inaugural edition of MockingHeart Review.
Prentiss Moore, 1947-1998
I’d been so busy with the bookstore that we’d not been in touch. I always thought we’d have time for that breakfast, for those drinks, for that laughter. I heard about his death only minutes before the memorial gathering was to begin. Stunned, and dressed in my standard bookseller’s uniform of jeans and wrinkled shirt, unshaven, I felt inadequate to the occasion, betrayed, embarrassed. The clear sky pressed uncomfortably close. How dare he die! Why did I not know? The ground shifted underfoot and I walked like a man underwater. I swatted at a buzzing wasp, not caring if it retaliated. And for the first time I realized that I, too, was dying. We all were. We all are. The gathering was lovely, memorable. Friends, family, acquaintances and even strangers spoke. I could not.
I once said that I hoped to become half the poet that Prentiss was. I may finally be approaching that elusive mark, but I’m still angry. How dare he die!
To read one of his most memorable poems, please look here:
And my poem for Prentiss can be found on this blog:
Portrait in Ash
In summer, sweet crushed ice, and crickets pulsing through the night.
Brake lights, and always the blurred memory of nicotine.
I recall running through the glow, laughing, fingers splayed forward,
and the ensuing sharp admonishment.
Steel, flint and spark. Blackened linings and diminishment.
How many washings must one endure to accept an indelible soiling?
In retrospect, your body still resists.
Lovely smoke uncoiling towards the moon, residue of impurities
and substance. Desire, freed and returning.
You dwell underground. I gaze at the cloud-marred sky.
* * *
“Portrait in Ash” appears in Interval’s Night, a mini-digital chapbook, available for free download from Platypus Press.
Empty Cup
I set down my cup, pour
tea and think this day, too,
may never end.
With what do we quantify love? How does grief measure us? Nine days ago I wrote “My father is dying and I’m sipping a beer.” More words followed, but I did not write them, choosing instead to let them gather where they would – among the darkening fringe at light’s edge, in that space between the shakuhachi’s notes, in the fragrance of spices toasting in the skillet. In unwept tears. Everywhere. Nowhere.
Seven days ago I wrote “My father is dead.” Again, I chose to let the unwritten words gather and linger, allowing them to spread in their own time, attaching themselves to one another, long chains of emptiness dragging through the days.
If experience reflects truth, sorrow’s scroll will unravel slowly for me, and will never stop. I feel it beginning to quiver, but only the tiniest edge emerges. I am nothing, I say. I am voice, I am loss, I am name. I am memory. I am son.
I have fifty-nine years
and no wisdom to show for it.
Never enough. Too much.
* * *
I don’t usually repeat recent posts so soon, but this one seems appropriate for Father’s Day. I miss you, Dad.
Somewhere: 28 Rue St. Jacques
Or eating spam fried rice in the courtyard
after kindergarten, and playing cowboys
with Thierry, the kid next-door. We shared toys,
but not comics. Written language was hard
to decipher, unlike the spoken. I
never captured the nuances, and lost
the rest over the years. Today the cost
eludes me, like moths fluttering by. Try
to recall that particular morning light,
how it glanced off the French snow, and the
way our mother smiled at breakfast, no trace
of sadness, yet, the lines marking our heights
rising along the wall, limbs of a tree
we’d never climb, out there, somewhere, in space.
* * *
This was originally drafted during the August 2015 Tupelo Press 30/30 Challenge. I was never satisfied with it, and didn’t see any reason to revise. But those memories are worth sharing!
In This I Find You Again
If there is truth to be found
let someone find it. The yellow
rose rests in its jar. Day and
night it looks out through the glass
at the world of altered
lines, sensing, perhaps, beauty
through its failure to prevent
fading. Each morning I wake
and think of you. The hibiscus
on our patio readies itself to blossom,
but pauses as if to prolong
the moment, waiting for a reason
to end its denial. Then it unfolds.
You are all I care to find.
* * *
Written in the 80s, this last appeared here in December 2016.
My poem, “The Trees are Burning at Midnight,” is live at Fourth and Sycamore, the literary journal of the Greenville Public Library, located in Greenville, Ohio. This piece was originally drafted during the August 2016 Tupelo Press 30-30 Challenge. Many thanks to Charlotte Hamrick for sponsoring the poem and offering the title.
The Box
Opened or closed, the mood
descends
with the pull of tooth and
tongue
and discarded sound in wet
grass,
its odor mingling with
cordite
by summer pavement under the
canopy,
six plastic flowers faded by the
sun,
and photographs scattered over scraped
earth,
where we stand bound and
apart,
I reach toward
you
and find only
air.
“The Box” first appeared here in May 2015.
O at the Edges 