This is Not Just to Say
Okay. I ate the damned
plums. But it’s not my
fault you left them
sitting there on the top
shelf, so sweet, so cold,
enticing me, as only
you, or perhaps a ripe
peach, or strawberries,
or Asian pears or even
pomegranates, can do.
Besides, you need
something substantial
for breakfast. How about
donuts, or bacon, instead?
* * *
My apologies to WCW, but I couldn’t resist. You can find the original Williams poem here. The poem first appeared here in September 2015.
Let It Remain
Comfort of name,
of pleasure
freshened in
repetition, unformed
pears falling, and
the mockingbird’s
inability
to complete
another’s song.
I will take no
moment
from this day
but let it remain
here in the knowing,
in the tyranny
of the absolute
and its enforced
rhythm desiring
both flight and
maturation,
the ecstasy
of fruit grown full.
“Let It Remain” first appeared here in September 2015.
Dark Rain Ahead, Hummingbird
The black-chinned hummer buzzes my flowered shirt,
bringing to mind the letter H, its history of an inferior life among
letters, and a Phoenician origin signifying fence.
An aspirate dependent upon others, or a line strung between posts,
even whispered, H does not contain itself.
Disconsolate or annoyed, the bird moves on.
Do names depend upon the power of symbols, or do they power the symbols?
In the 6th century A.D., Priscian disparaged H, saying it existed only to accompany.
Clouds shade the way.
The black-chin extends its grooved tongue at a rate of 15 licks per second.
Alone, the H’s voice is barely audible.
Through the trees, across the crushed rock driveway and beyond the barbed wire
and chain link, I hear deadfall snapping under hooves.
At rest, its heart beats an average of 480 beats per minute.
Modern Greek denies its existence.
Say khet, say honor and where. Say hinge, sigh and horse. Say depth.
Originally published in Prime Number Magazine, one of my favorite online literary journals, in 2013, it subsequently appeared here in June 2015.
Two years with no word.
The stick you planted
sprouted leaves last spring,
restoring hope. We had long
thought it dead. Two leaves
and a bud. A note
scrawled on a dollar bill,
unsigned and smuggled out
by some kindly stranger.
This is not much.
We can do little
but watch the tree grow
while you count steps
and deny the walls of a room
that light never touches.
“Return (El Salvador, 1983)” first appeared here in June 2015.
You Are the Wind That Trusted
The barriers I could not place, the incomplete lines and unmouthed
verbs registered in stone, saying I am here,
as if taw were born in evil, and not the fruit of the need to mark.
At what velocity must sand scour these walls to obliterate the hand’s
intent? How may we gauge design? Galileo’s thermoscope
crudely measured temperature variation, but in 1612 Santorio added a numerical scale.
For centuries, T did not produce a miniscule and stood tall in its singular representation.
Hydrated iron oxide, mixed with bone marrow and charcoal, yields
ochre, a formula that predates writing.
Development, not invention.
T’s varying structure may be one of sequence and slippage.
Thermoscopes were open ended tubes dependent upon air pressure.
Celsius originally proposed a scale with 0 at the boiling point.
A cruciform. The capped spike. Blended tongues.
Complexity intrudes with every step: smoke-darkened ceiling.
***
This appeared on the blog in February 2016. A slightly different version appeared in Otolith in fall 2013.
After Reading That Dogs Relieve Themselves in Alignment with the Earth’s Magnetic Field, I Observe and Take Notes
Perhaps Ozymandias is an anomaly. He shows no
preference for the north-south axis while pooping,
and may hedge his bets slightly to the east when
urinating, especially at twilight. Clara the miniature
Schnauzer, ever Germanic in her manner, preferred
true north, always, while blind, deaf, humpbacked
Maury pointed his rear right leg forward, to the south.
Jackboy the cattledog was an omnidirectional reliever,
as is the Chihuahua, Apollonia, although she twists and
snaps at blinking fireflies in mid-squat, never connecting
with the dancing, lighted beetles. I do not recall the
bulldog’s habits, but Scotch trended towards the untidy
in all else, and expended as little energy as possible,
often leaning against the house while peeing on it. I
cannot say which direction my next scientific inquiry
will take, but I will, as always, follow the dogs’ lead.
This poem last appeared here in December 2017, and was written during the August 2016 Tupelo Press 30-30 Challenge. Many thanks to Susan Nefzger for sponsoring the poem. She is NOT to blame for the title or the contents of the poem…
Hummingbird (3)
Arriving from nowhere,
its mouth opens
but what escapes
comes not from within
and is never complete.
Words, too, falter
in this space,
struggling to remain
aloft, challenged yet free,
an exchange
between air and wing,
of sound and thought,
occurring as it must
without design
or desire, simply
there, then gone,
a presence one notices
in its absence.
* * *
“Hummingbird (3) made its first appearance on the blog in December 2014.
Forever
Our dogs hide under the bed,
escaping thunder.
But the sun shatters
a cloud and I know
we will live forever.
Each hour is the sky,
every day, another
star. Now the trees
join the wind
in rejoicing. This
is what we make,
they say. Only this.
* * *
“Forever” made its last appearance here in April 2018.
Hummingbird (2)
It embraces what the mind cannot.
To touch, to be
acquired in the way that light
is drawn to the seed’s
core, one must imagine
silence in the purity of
space – that emptiness between
thought and utterance – filled
with what precedes
intent. The movement
has no end; it is
the breath inhaling us all.
Elegies for the Night (2002)
for W
1
You might palm a small token, damp and misshapen as the words
you expel, never admitting the dark truth.
Or the plundered life, neither black nor white, invisible yet whole.
Someone prays, yet all around silence reigns and the snow melts.
Possibilities cleansed in the light of misplaced certainty.
2
The charred wind’s fruit bears little resemblance to its predecessor.
And later, within the garden’s stones, what remains
but an acrid taste on the tongues of the speechless?
And if the bones have dispersed where might their thoughts reside?
The wind takes nothing it does not want.
The wind wants nothing.
Nothing remains.
I am afraid, she said. Please tell me.
3
Though the moon returns in its diminished
state, I shall not listen. Words
turn back and eat
themselves, exposing intent
behind form, consonants beneath
vowels lying in wait. Abandonment.
And further senseless
debates: gain from loss, shock and awe,
the incessant demand for others to do
not what you would do but what you would have them do.
I claim no insight,
but even the light you reveal burns unclean.
4
Despair and its siblings fall to mind.
Scarcities: clean water, air, the simplest meal
when ashes swirl and fingers burn long after
the rain. My son, my son,
and other cries lost in the sand.
If he listened what sounds could he bear,
what sights, which odors? I tremble and lie still.
* * *
“Elegies for the Night” first appeared in Boston Poetry Magazine in April 2014.
O at the Edges 
