I Have Answers
But the questions remain.
A little pepper, some salt,
butter. Our rosemary needs pruning
and the music’s too loud
to hear. The lizard basks in sunlight
eight minutes old, but I forget to ask
what else we need. Or want. Just this,
she says. Red, like your favorite sky,
the in-between, the misplaced one.
“I Have Answers” is included in From Every Moment a Second. Available at Amazon.Com and Here
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.
Curtain
Adept at withdrawal, it retreats.
How appropriate, we think,
that its body curls
with the wind’s
tug, offering
only the
slightest
resistance. Then
it returns,
bringing to mind
the habitual offender
whose discomfiture
lies in choice,
the fear
of enclosure
removed. The
forward glance.
And back again,
whispering its
edict: concede, reclaim.
Give and take. We are as one.
“Curtain” last appeared on the blog in July 2017.
“Roast Chicken” was first published in Kindle Magazine in December 2015, and also appeared in Gossamer: An Anthology of Contemporary World Poetry.
Roast Chicken
Contemplating the afterlife of birds,
I empty the carcass. My wife
offers rosemary sprigs,
which I stuff into the cavity
with whole garlic cloves
and seared lemon halves,
and then I compact it by tucking
the wings under and pushing
one leg through a slit in the other,
lessening the surface. One might
debate the shape of a bird’s
soul, the sanctity of structure
and limitation, of ritual and
the weight of fire’s gifts in
human brain development,
but trussing is essential
to the goal of proper
temperature attainment.
I pat it dry, sprinkle kosher salt
on the skin, put it in the oven,
set the timer for an hour, pour wine.
Following custom, we eat
without saying grace.
Piece by tender piece, it descends.
Chipotle
Sometimes it pauses and the light
translates what we’ve lost,
momentarily framing the taste
entering our bodies through
mouth and nose and eye,
the knowledge of dissolution
enhanced. One bite
and it all returns: fire, peat,
water, the retracted
flesh become another’s
endeavor, as if giving form
to the world of air.
Without remorse,
we steal its most intimate self.
“Chipotle” first appeared here in January 2015.
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
Political Haibun
The wind knows impermanence but does not trust it.
Dependent upon atmospheric pressure, absorption
and rotation, who can blame the wind? We, too,
lend ourselves illusions, only to barter them away.
Three miles for a beer. Seven seconds for a fresh look.
A dollar extended for every five stolen. Empathy,
but only for the wealthy. Electing liars to office,
we justify our actions with more untruths. Nothing
improves. Even the quality of lies diminishes.
yellowed grass bending
under the sun’s weight
god’s will, they say
Knots
Who you are not seldom rises
beyond midnight’s
sum: one strand thrown over
another, looped through
and pulled taut, achieving
tension and a sour taste
at the back of your throat.
Everyone believes this
doesn’t bleed. I lock the
windows, draw the shades,
twist the cord. Even distracted,
nothing comes undone.
“Knots” first appeared here in June 2016.
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.
He thought much of these disembodied hands, pictured them moving to the light of the burnished lantern, weaving patterns intricate as those in the most delicate hummingbird nest, textures and shades of light with traces of webs and soft fibers of unknown origin, making knots of shadows and their companions.
*
It was not that they were so very much like his; they were hands of another sort, hands that touched nothing held by another, hands that knew no lips or wooden hearts or curves in a quiet moment, hands that knew only themselves in the community of unnatural hands.
waking to the rain
he hears a far-off whistle
oh, the neighbor’s tea!
* * *
“Community of Hands” first appeared here in April 2017.
O at the Edges 