Flowers
How they share our
desires, shape
our days.
Passion to hope,
fingertips to
lips. Some bud
easily, others
struggle. A little
water, light, a kind
voice. Sometimes so
little achieves
so much. Yesterday’s
sunflower droops on
the sill. Today’s promise
arrives with rain.
“Flowers” last appeared on the blog in July 2017.
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
Interiors Continue reading
Nine Variations of a Cloud
1
Looking up, I renounce pity and the sadness of wind.
2
Only lust pulls and shapes more, diminishing your integrity.
3
It slips through whenever I try to grab it.
4
Every phrase is a window glowing at night, surrendered to its frame.
5
Water in another form is still water.
6
In whose ruins must you survive?
7
Another shape, another moment desperately spent.
8
And still you thrive in diminishment.
9
Bearing nothing, it conceals.
* * *
“Nine Variations of a Cloud” first appeared in Kindle Magazine in December 2015, and was also included in Gossamer: An Anthology of Contemporary World Poetry.
End of the Road (2002)
Neither expected nor sought, truth arrives.
One phrase, a minute turn of the
wrist, and the beginning reverses itself, becomes
vessel versus point, illuminating
the reach: one sign, two paths. The agave.
How far we’ve come to affect this place.
Last season the flowers were gray and we knew nothing.
Even the stones quivered with laughter.
And then it rained. And the creeks rose, and the bedrock
appeared as if to say your efforts lack
substance. Look underfoot. There lies the truth.
Neither expected nor sought, it arrives.
“End of the Road” last appeared here in April 2017.
Simplify, as in Forget
To turn off the stove
or close the refrigerator door,
such brazen attempts to win
the aging contest or blur the mirror
of clarity — you won’t say
which to blame or praise
or whether intent is implicit in
action or if I should hold my breath.
What is the freezing point of love?
When you were cold, whose
belly did you curl into, whose ear
gathered your breath and returned it
warm and with the promise of bees
producing honey? Your name floats
above my outstretched hand,
and unable to grab it, I blink and turn
away. Nothing works as it should.
I exhale. You push the door shut.
* * *
“Simplify, as in Forget” first appeared in the print journal Good Works Review in February 2018.
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.
Another untitled poem from the 80s…
wood and water
the wave of
fragrance so perfect
we seek to
obtain it as
if we could
be windows open
to a light
the gentlest cloud
would obscure still
spreading like one’s
final exhalation which
travels only to
disperse and become
at last another’s
This first appeared here in June 2017.
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.
My poem, “Bone Music,” which originally appeared in Gossamer: An Anthology of Contemporary World Poetry, published by Kindle Magazine in Kolkata, India, has been reprinted on Vita Brevis.
I am grateful to editor Brian Geiger for offering a second home to this poem.
O at the Edges 