When you place your mouth
to my ear
how does the ocean know
which wave
to relinquish?
In your darkness I find teeth.
Blessings of the meek-throated.
A ribbed tunnel. Codicil.
Your tongue scrawls: too late,
the unsaid nerve-sparked and
dilated too late
And my skin replies: with
lightning all strikes
count to each its charge
Mother’s Day
The dog is my shadow and I fear his loss. My loss.
I cook for him daily, in hope of retaining him.
Each regret is a thread woven around the oak’s branches.
Each day lived is one less to live.
Soon the rabbits will be safe, and the squirrels.
As if they were not. One morning
I’ll greet an empty space and walk alone,
toss the ball into the yard, where it will remain.
It is Mother’s Day.
Why did I not weep at my mother’s grave?
I unravel the threads and place them around the dog.
The wind carries them aloft.
“Mother’s Day” was published in The Lake in July 2016, and subsequently appeared here in May 2017.
My latest micro-chapbook, Only This, is available via free download from Origami Poems Project. Many thanks to editor Jan Keough for taking this!
Find folding hints here.
Even the Darkness
We must, she said,
open ourselves.
Like desert
to the night
sky, like a baby’s
mouth. Or words
in the unread book.
I nod, say
I understand, turn
and close the door.
Even the darkness
knows better.
Deborah Brasket shows us connections between a poem, music and starlings.
Zdislaw Beksinski
I came across this poem on one of my favorite blogs O at the Edges.
I love the image of the wave losing itself in dispersal only to rise again, just as music does in the playing, even in the inner repetitions, remaking itself.
Just as memory does, rising from mysterious depths only to disappear again.
Like murmuring starlings, spilling patterns across the sky.
So much “self-similarity” weaving this world together.
I leave you with three gifts: the poem that inspired me, the music that inspired him, and the wonder of murmuring birds.
By Robert Ojaki
That it begins.
And like a wave which appears
only to lose itself
in dispersal, rising whole again
yet incomplete in all but
form, it returns.
Music. The true magic.
Each day the sun passes over the river,
bringing warmth to it. Such
devotion inspires movement: a cello in the
View original post 40 more words
Acceptance Charm
She’ll take the river’s trace
over curl and leaf
and the street’s
dead end,
riveting eyes
even as they blink.
The narcotic’s benediction.
Renewal. Sleep.
That bed remains unmade,
stripped of purpose: no
caress a thigh would
recognize
dark fingers writing in air
“Acceptance Charm” last appeared here in December 2016.
River Carry Me
I approach the window with closed eyes.
In this case, the between dissolves.
Without form and weight, still you linger.
A ticketless morning unfolds.
The water flows in braids, through stone and air.
Before my limits enact pity, before falling fruit.
Images condensed throughout the night.
An inheritance of trees curving towards the horizon.
One exactly as another’s, only different.
* * *
“River Carry Me” first appeared in Underfoot in October 2017.
My poem “Helsinki” can be found at Panoply. It was inspired in part by a Facebook thread on which editors commented on what caused them to instantly reject poems. One said beginning a poem at a window was cause for rejection. Hence the first line.
Some Answers You Never Considered
At the cusp of night, before the sun steams out in the ocean,
and blues abandon the reds.
Nothing rests at the core of zero.
Cerulean blue was first marketed as coerulium.
What we consider sky includes only its lowest reaches.
Even considering a dense history with kites, I humbly concede,
and admit sacrifice as atonement, with grace.
No. I say it again. No.
Your visual system constructs the colors you see.
Only when the wind unbuttons its greatcoat, or at the tip
of an icicle, just before the drop catches itself.
Release the line and know the freedom of loss.
Transparent yet wide, unfolded like a fist freeing
a swarm of bees into honeyed air, it contains us.
Your inability to see it does not refute the horizon’s base.
If I knew I’d tell you.
* * *
“Some Answers You Never Considered” first appeared in Underfoot in October 2017.
Ghost, with a Line from Porchia
In my dreams you manifest in a younger form.
If I were to give you life, what could I give you?
Your hands never touched these walls, yet you inhabit them.
As my language inters you, I am absorbed in yours.
Some gifts are simply not proffered, others are released.
My fingers retrace your name in both sun and shade.
The rain taps out regrets, regrets on the metal roof.
Dim spirit, faint soul. Root-land. Shoal. Mother.
Each visit signals the darkness waiting.
Your battle with language, with silence, invoked.
I stretch the word and weave this dirge for you.
* * *
Note: “If I were to give you life, what could I give you?” is from Antonio Porchia’s Voices, translated by W.S. Merwin.
“Ghost, with a Line from Porchia” first appeared in Underfoot in October 2017.
O at the Edges 