Cantilever
1
Night skitters over the mounds,
avoiding the blue flowers
She bears the horizon’s gold.
2
No one stands alone.
Our sky is of earth, dark
soil packed with the living.
3
I do not seek mercy.
The cliff frog chirps its song
and the fog closes in.
4
Suspended, hope
wraps around her,
one foot on the ground.
Scarecrow Sings the High Lonesome
Nothing about me shines or sparkles. If asked,
I would place myself among the discarded —
remnant cloth and straw, worn, inedible,
useless, if not for packaging intended to
convey a certain message, which I of course
have subverted to “Welcome, corvids!” Even
my voice lies stranded in the refuse, silent
yet harmonious, clear yet strangled, whole
and unheard, dispersed, like tiny drops of
vapor listing above the ocean’s swell, enduring
gray skies and gulls and those solemn rocks
bearing their weight against the white crush.
Why do I persist? What tethers a shadow
to its body? How do we hear by implication
what isn’t there? Bill Monroe hammered
his mandolin, chopping chords, muting,
droning, banging out incomplete minors
to expectant ears, constructing more than
a ladder of notes climbing past the rafters
into the smoky sky. What I sing is not
heard but implied: the high lonesome, blue
and old-time, repealed. Crushed limestone
underfoot. Stolen names, borrowed sounds.
Dark words subsumed by light, yellowed,
whitened, faded to obscurity, to obscenity.
“Scarecrow Sings the High Lonesome” first appeared in Crannóg, in June 2017.
Shadow’s Tale
If I call,
will you
reply?
Questions
left unwritten
shape
themselves
like words
we see
but don’t
read. Signs
fade then
reappear,
and the oaks
droop
in the still
heat.
No rain
again. If
you call,
will I
reply?
“Shadow’s Tale” first appeared here in June 2015.
Huazi Ridge
Limitless birds merging
with the autumn-colored hills
all along Huazi Ridge
this sadness, too, without end
Another adaptation. I hope that I’ve not strayed too far from the original’s tone.
The transliteration on Chinese-Poems.com offers:
Fly bird go no limit
Join mountain again autumn colour
Up down Huazi Ridge
Melancholy feeling what extreme
“Huazi Ridge” last appeared on the blog in June 2016.
Self-Portrait with Knife
Lacking benefit of prayer or belief,
it slips through flesh,
praising its temerity. Or,
parting the onion’s core, reclaims
the right to weep.
How many nights have we shared
these pleasures? I smooth the blade
with steel, listening to the fine hum.
“Self-Portrait with Knife” first appeared here in January 2015.
New Year
How transparent you’ve become:
even the leaves blow through
your pockets, and penitents
line up, awaiting the latest word.
Those who have, fear the most.
Each day collapses under its own
weight, rising again into the new.
Surgery brooks no illusions;
this house, too, will fail.
Owning little, I pour tea and wait.
“New Year” first appeared here on January 1, 2017.
My poem “Hunger is Hunger” is up at Spider Mirror.
The poem was drafted during the August 2015 Tupelo Press 30-30 challenge.
My last five posts of 2017 are reruns of five of the most viewed posts on this site during the year.
The Draft
All memories ignite, he says, recalling
the odor of accelerants and charred
friends. Yesterday I walked to the sea
and looking into its deep crush
sensed something unseen washing
out, between tides and a shell-cut foot,
sand and the gull’s drift, or the early names
I assign to faces. This is not sadness.
Somewhere the called numbers meet.
* * *
“The Draft” first appeared in Taos Journal of International Poetry & Art.
By far, the most popular post on the blog in 2017, bolstered, no doubt, by a plug on WordPress’s Discover.
My last five posts of 2017 are reruns of the five most viewed posts on this site during the year. This one appeared in June.
How to Do Nothing
First you must wash the window to observe more clearly
the dandelion seed heads bobbing in the wind. Next,
announce on Facebook and Twitter that you will be offline
for the next two days, if not forever. Heat water for tea.
Remember the bill you forgot to pay, and then cleanse
your mind of all regret. Consider industrial solvents
and the smoothness of sand-scoured stone, the miracle
of erasure. Eliminate all thought, but remember
the water. Hitch a ride on a Miles Davis solo and float
away on a raft of bluesy notes and lions’ teeth,
and wonder how to sabotage your neighbor’s leaf blower,
but nicely, of course. She’s a widow with a gun.
Now it is time to empty yourself. Close your eyes.
Become a single drop of dew on a constellation of petals.
Evaporate, share the bliss. Stuff that dog’s bark
into a lock box alongside the tapping at the door,
the phone’s vibration, the neighbor’s rumbling bass,
and the nagging, forgotten something that won’t
solidify until three in the morning, keeping you awake.
But don’t ignore the whistling. You must steep the tea.
* * *
“How to Do Nothing” was published in Volume 4 of Steel Toe Review, available for purchase here.
My last five posts of 2017 are reruns of five of the most viewed posts on this site during the year. I was surprised and pleased to find this one made the list.
Mushrooms I Have Known
Reticent and tired, withdrawn,
dejected, I return.
Emerging overnight from nothing,
then withering back to zero.
Does light incite you?
The shade?
I walk by and say hello.
You do not speak.
O at the Edges 