Ruins

outside of Cairo
there's an open air restaurant
where there are sphinxes
too many skinny cats beg
cold chicken from your chipped plate

where do deer lie in winter?
is endurance for them the same badge?
is morning's violet dusk a joy?

how many years do they cling to an impossible love?
what would they surrender?

driving home Christmas night
the only colors black and white
a badly broken deer

do they have sacred places?

remember the blackberries by the edge of that pond?

at the sink

you cup water in your hands
    and it runs through your fingers

maybe we are all exiles

offering

lone winter maple

            in whiteness 

                          empty black branches 

      scribbles

   distant clouds

the motions of planets

Amid the stab of night
in a break of winter clouds
I look past constellations to forgotten stars
find Venus waiting beyond sliding glass

I used to own a telescope
the odor of machine oil lubricating its focus
dust on the lens

Once I bought a red filter
forced my old man from the TV to observe an opposition of Mars
never again so close in his lifetime

I took my remarried aunt's new husband
bent him down before Jupiter
the odor of vermouth
two billion light years to Andromeda
repeated in a southern drawl

Summer slipped away
even my Mother learned the motions of planets
it's the only thing I gave her of me to love

The loosening

I woke last night
for the first time ever
pulled down one of my poems
floating away on a gust of wind
everything chained to it—

The screen door laying on the porch
leftover chicken scattered in the lawn
a trail of broken dinnerware strewn across a damp field
knives spoons forks
worse than hail

I pulled a fork out of my arm
cut the poem loose
watched it blow toward the lake

If you find it buried in the sand
an address stuck to it with masking tape
don't attempt to read it
don't send it back
winds are still blowing
let it loose before it maims you
it's not my fault

alittle further

it's alright
you can only go so far
before the red dirt road turns to mud
and you get your dress pants dirty
they'll wear out long before you give them up for gone

I wonder if my voice is tired
it seems so hard to coax
maybe I'm looking in the wrong places
asking the wrong questions
I want it to say what I mean
instead it tells me
things I don't want to hear

who really cares about a rain storm
or how the cut hay smelled in boyhood's summer
why do they want to remember salamanders under logs
where are all the women I tried to love?
I used to tell myself one day, one day
like a promise

12.14.12

Is that my child's shoe?
The space inside too tiny now to hold any hope.
How can I be thankful that it isn't when another found it was?

the night is sure

even when seas are calm
 when breezes pause as if
   considering

even when oceans rage
 when gales cast before them waves
   stars still shine

regardless

the direct route

walk the          straight line
cut off all the       branches
drag them
burn them
if you find a     robin's nest
if one fleck of      turquoise
would regret
would remorse
does a crack begin to form
is it already       absolutely
destroyed
yellow of a yolk
isn't that enough to   know
and if you go another  way
let branches be
are all of these
would you
will you          ever arrive

Nameless

When did I forget the full moon really had no face?
She was beautiful anyways
her black shadow hair glimmering with shards of stolen white diamonds
she danced in a buckskin dress made from the ghost of a deer
it had no bead-work.

She used to whisper lies
frostbitten kisses burned my cheeks
oh her lips against mine
what I thought was lapis lazuli was turquoise instead
I valued it still.

Some nights I go back
sit alone on those hilltops
among long grasses bent with the burden of seed
watch waters below mirror endlessness
until her weeping ripples the sky.

abyss

i query the Database
it keeps returning nulls

invalid parameter
subscript out of range
script timeout
404
404
page not found

you will not find a tiger in this poem.
the night has not yet come.
it is not cold.
you are laughing
but have you seen the sun?
have you tasted it?
or something like it
orange in the desert
some salt in your blood?
the light that comes with sunrise
it's not in the sun
but in the clouds
not in the clouds
but in the not-clouds
not in the scars of claw marks
you do not have
but in the scars you do.

early winter shore

winds blow through a worn and barkless beech buried in receding dunes
what weight is there in hollowness wrapped within a tree?
gray sky clouds drag their shadows where tourists used to stand
where does a shadow go? which color are the pebbles that remain?
what is their number? how are they arranged?
what determines where the grass will grow?
the vertebrae of fish have gone
seagull skulls lay staring
eyeless though feasting on eyes
none of them see
overhead glide high in the wind
echoes of screeching
the slap of waves
draws mountians
on the shore 
one after
another
erases
heels
toes
all
of
it

why

can't i hang on
to just one thread
one sun-bleached thread
that flower dress
you have thrown away

just a single breath
faintest echo of that song
we tried to share

no you're right- it isn't there

then why summer still clinging so
to my winter coat?

your words

a crumpled page
my rigid fist
as if to wring out truth
and ink could run
like blood that's dried

the place I thought you were

cupped in hands

big lake's cold
washes nothing away

roar of surf
echoing over hills

dunes beneath growth and rot
never again to see
cruel burning sun unless
land- a torn wound

none of this
enough to save

I speak as if I know you
certainly I don't

only these trails of words
we leave each other

and if I believe it's possible
can't you

where is that wooden boat
blue paint peeling
dingy yellow patches

so what
if the oars are frayed
if waves are fierce

I need the wind
to sting my ears and dull my grip
I won't let go
those useless oars
I'll reach the other side

that's where you're wrong
you see
I will

not if it doesn't kill me
it will never kill me
only the part
that won't be whole

Pi

they sundered all things

moon into shadow
jupiter steeped in light
some said they should
others that they shouldn't
circumference of a circle
no beginning
no end

what then?

shall I be satisfied with this?
yes it is wonderful
but doesn't tomorrow always offer something new?
haven't I ruined everything I've ever tried to preserve?

leaves fall from that dying ash
pileated woodpeckers feast
I am not yet dust
so let me kick it up.

back

in snow dusted hills
among rattling branches

bare against winds off the lake
the west- a roar of waves

we blow cupped hands
warm our fingers

- - -

beneath hemlocks I tell the boys 
this is shelter in a blizzard

I point out hoof prints of a startled deer
we follow them backwards

lay our fingers in white pressed coolness
smooth twin teardrops

maybe she's watching us
she too knows the utility of hemlock's shade

- - -

cresting a ridge
we spot the furrow below

that's our trail
it takes us to a place I know well

boyhood's rusted nails
buried in a swell of bark

how impossible this clutter

a photo of a river through a forest

a painting of a child lifting his hand to his mother
she balances a jar of water on her head

three white stones on what's left of a gray worn limb
from a land that has ceased to exist
the vista from that tree

a camel carrying a tourist to the pyramids

silent victrola
cigarette burns on its lid
left by teenagers old when I was young
for many years abandoned
reclaimed from a shed covered in pine needles

shelves of books
bindings bleached by seldom light
how many do I still refuse to surrender?
those pages I once turned
telling myself stories of adventure
trying to unfurl the language of love
walking the tangled trails beyond love
to solemn places in unknowable deserts
standing naked and shivering before a scent of holiness

I still can't rid myself of these

beer in a bar

birds (which birds?) in branches
the strongest hug one another and smile
(do)n't love this beer this red bloody beer
it makes no handwriting I understand
answers no answer to the calling of words
burned in black windows
dead brown leaves
eating through massive nothingness of universe
of unity so confusing I can't read
nor was I meant to see
to believe or disbelieve
to dive off cliffs
if or if not
water below

Advent

"Can you could teach me the mysteries?" he asks.
She does not understand,
he can't tell what her eyes are saying.

A breeze arises,
carries no birdsong,
just the din of traffic.

An hour later he realizes he loves her,
she sees it in his eyes,
but her bus has come.

She waves goodbye.
He does not notice,
has already concluded

she's from some distant shore of heaven-
a messenger,
but she's from Cleveland.

forty nine leather straps

face pressed against face
bound from neck to knee
constricting breath
you both struggle against suffocation

if you inhale together
her ribs will crack
if you are methodical
careful
synchronized
you can undo the straps
working from top to bottom


you feel incapable
doomed
she so helpless
it's her life you try to save
yours is nothing
she pays for your every mistake

the first straps are easy
but near the end you stop attempting to unbuckle them
try to tear them off
all the while your breaths shallower
quickening

at the waist
your fingers still struggling with straps
she lays her hands on yours
whispers in your ear
you've undone enough

Digging

I saw you last night
looking right at me
I sat at a folding table
you stood at the mic
musicians played jazz
your voice as i remembered it
a beat poet
when you finished
I clapped louder than the rest
I wanted to go next
but got lost in cigarette smoke

haze

the sun is out this afternoon if only briefly low in hazy sky not gray nor blue but white a worn-out tissue something in my eye i hesitate not sure if it's remorse or longing or whether these are both the same i stand in what used to be my garden forgetting it's already november remembering how in '95 so many crossed wide valleys in cold rain living in swamps and how that cargo plane rattled tin roofs plowing up all that sod i only know the flies were bad that year

Not only this

What is it exactly that has passed through my fingers without me even knowing? I still feel its brush against my aging check. I dreamt of it last night. It startled me awake and when I fell back to sleep I lost it. All that remains is the shape of hollowness. It lingers even now at the end of this day that has taken more than I had in me to give it. I do not blame others for how much they want from me of what I can't give them and what they seem incapable of giving me, nor do I blame myself for this. I only want these few moments I have stolen from the day and horded in this folded napkin stuffed in my pocket.  I unfold it now, examine it in the stillness of this quiet room. It's not that I am glad that they have fallen asleep so I may stay awake these few more minutes. It's just that there's no other way for me. I don't know why this act of lamentation brings such peace. I only know it is singular to me in this moment and if not now poured out then not only this but everything is lost.

Is this what wonder is?

I am fishing for small pickles
sour in the greenness of a jar

until I read

indigo buntings migrate by night
follow patterns of stars
to south america

an image of them
burns through darkness

oddly when I close my eyes
I see small shadows

goldfish without color
burnt-out holes swimming deep

cerulean seas
where in soundless fathoms

mysteries like bright stars
shine

Astronauts, Lunatics

"HERE MEN FROM THE PLANET EARTH FIRST SET FOOT UPON THE MOON JULY 1969, A.D. WE CAME IN PEACE FOR ALL MANKIND" - a plaque on the Moon

While Jim Lovell's wife and children prayed for his safe return to Earth
Idi Amin beat prisoners to death with sledgehammers.

When John F Kennedy announced we were going to the Moon
Belgians dissolved Patrice Lumumba's body in sulfuric acid
they kept teeth for souvenirs.

After returning from orbit
Lisa Nowak drove from Houston to Orlando in adult diapers
they found a steel mallet in her trunk.

northward

through wandering ways
into long quiet evening

the particular route unimportant
only heading far away

around an unintentional shoreline
where waves wear away pebbles

meandering through stony elevations

along a ridge
across ravines

the exact route unfolds itself
speaks to me

miles yet
before arriving

whisperings
in shadows of a forest

not my destination
as of yet unknown

how could I not know

many years ago
you swam for me

in that swimming pool
beyond poverty

everywhere outside
the open hands of dusty children

men with leprosy
wide toothless smiles of old women

they'd thank me
for a few useless coins

you swimming
in chlorinated azure waters

your bikini
brought from the States

just that once
for me

the journey home

we send them out
in lifeboats with broken oars
leaking hulls we patched with pitch

into the open sea
beyond the old courageous
they so young how would they know?

that great shadow in the depths
they pass over
there is no other way

not for us
as we have said
it is their only hope

we but ask for them the sun
a steady breeze
to see them through

and yet

this is still this and that is still that
the waves come rolling in and rolling in
or they don't
the water's a mirror
until a bass leaps
what were you looking at anyway?
and what can you see?

winds

all through the night
trees moan
the bay roars
the house creaks

so many voices
so much condemnation

this morning
whitecaps on the bay
the old locust tree bending
little yellow leaves
cast across the highway
turbid waters
milky turquoise mixed with tan

a little sunlight
in the beginning
but now it's gone away

A Riddle for Hitchhikers

There's a truck driver, a policeman, a New Zealand VSO, and a Peace Corps Volunteer driving across the African savannah in the cab of a truck when a tsetse fly comes in the through the side window. Which one does it bite?

-None of them. They're all so busy trying to kill it that nobody drives the truck...

late

driving
near midnight
sand blows in from shore
hotel after hotel
vacancy in neon
shoreline serenity
all along the bay
lights glimmer dim like stars
not a soul
its been dark for hours
twenty seven degrees
earlier a halo around the moon
leaves have fallen in the driveway
clouds press down in deafening darkness
winds cut through my hat and jacket
the house a mass of shadow
porch light's out 
inside everyone is sleeping
I haunt the empty rooms
my toes ache
sliding in thin socks
across the cold hard floor

and yet there is a solace
in the silence of this hour

turning 49

setting sun upon the heights of a great oak
a golden light upon the clinging leaves
one by one they circle far across the sky
branches rattle in chill gusts coming off the bay

cornucopia

the oaks
once again a black scribbling
scrawled across gray sky

nearly all the words exhausted
unspoken promises
but grackles flying off

great vessels of dark clouds crowded out stars
dead brown leaves poured out from their bellies
locusts eating what was left of the very little that had been real

a sisal sack split unraveled
weight of hope spilled out
dry kernels of stale corn that even mice abandoned

recompence

"All that came out of them, came quietly
 like the four seasons." -Chuang Tzu

all the stones and pebbles
you've spent your life collecting

fling them back into the waters
the dead sea

cast them off the rim of chaco canyon
return them to the mountain of the rising sun

let them fall from your hands
unbearable

a trail of them
leads home

that crumbling foundation
overgrown with poplars

the pink granite boulder your father plowed up
it had a vein of quartz

from that same field
a stone axe head broken

the sharpness of its edge
made by those who came before

return these to their places

traversing a swamp

jumble of branches
brown damp grasses

poplar leaves
rattle yellow

pastel blue
dying day's sky

flutter of wings
pileated woodpecker

closer to earth
starkness of white against gray

milkweed pod
loosening seed

just pluck it
and blow

the arrow of time

all there is a constant trickle of words that mean nothing   maples bud may leaves such tender green by august darkened october yellowed november papery brown leaf after leaf fallen returned to the earth as if they never were and this is true they never were   these letters these pixels forming the characters you read they are the same meaningless thing going on and on as if they were taking you somewhere besides your useless grave who cares?  words flow like water carrying with them all things   all things erode   you are born live and die the swifter the current the faster things move but after all the time is inconsequential

leaden

yellow leaves
turning brown

cover
dark hills

black fingers of branchs
claw the gray sky

old forest
silent

posion of overipe berries
rotting away

through the crisscross
of tree limbs

still waters
color of steel

i cannot bear this cold
and much less me

Cartography

He told me how in the 1600's a Japanese cartographer devised a means of measuring great distances so accurately that he committed suicide because he couldn't account for errors which were due to the Earth being round. I suggested it was because their women were flat chested that he could not conceive of a spherical Earth. The fire was blazing on the shore, and stars burned brilliantly.  We were drinking whiskey. Going on, I claimed that God was a large-breasted woman playing a tuba, and the universe a song.

undaunted

dust of the road
of years
that remain
much fallen away

traveled so many roads
all roads are one road
leading to wilderness
deteriorating
two track
trail
foot path
parting of grasses

i turn
look back
footprints in sand
don't give a damn where
go on and on
there is no way

many trails end
beyond them nothing
always turning to nowhere

i've grown accustomed
learned to appreciate
sought them out

where no one else goes
where i am not asked
where nothing is broken
because everything's broken

edges etched with erosion
water wind blowing
sand eats away

gray trunks
twisted trees
grooved liveless wood
smooth worn rock
some solace

crevices through mountains
canyons across long desolate plains
i follow the winds
shit wherever
move on

from my shelf

i read it one last time i told myself i don't want to part with it i would have said to her keep it if it's useful but if it isn't let me have it back i would have said keep it until it you're done with it then give it away but she wasn't there and i still have it and i don't want to read it anymore

putting back the sun

if you stop your hand for but a moment
slipping out of present into past

pink wisps of clouds linger
over waters

if in the middle of the river
on this island where you live

you let a hundred years settle
like evening dew on your shoulders

if over and over
dull twilight coalesces into pin pricks of stars

remember the dream
from childhood

how the sun fell one afternoon
and landed in mud

you held it in your hands
a dingy cardboard disk

even after all these years 
you cannot put it back

still covered by those useless feathers
buried in the bottom of that broken steamer trunk

I was

a landscape
through which a river flowed

my arms trees
fingers boughs
from which branches grew
and from them leaves

my head a hill
eyes rocks
mouth a cave
where strange things lived

even I lived there

emerged into sunlight shining
through branches
rusted leaves
strewn like a shroud

nudged a few
into the waters

watched the current
carry me away

This is the crap i come up with

The thing is- I don't care, all there is is the writing and if the writing stops- well let's just agree that the writing will never stop, that it will go on and on maybe even if it shouldn't, it can't be plugged, it can't be turned off no matter how bad it gets. It does get bad, terribly bad, horribly bad, its just that it's all there is see- and if it ends well the trees will loose their leaves, the stars will fizzle away in dried up ponds where there won't even be a carcass, not even the fossil of anything that never was, nothing will have gone to seed so nothing else can grow, the black soil will have become a colorless dust, Jim would utter pelagic not upon eager ears but to the dry hollow husk of a dead anemone shell and even the shell would be not a shell but a few calciferous shards laying in a dusty wooden bowl and the bowl but a pile of sawdust in a black and white photograph of a woodcarver's shop and the woodcarver just the memory of a buried infant boy and the boy just an amorous glint in someone's eye who never saw a thing.

I'm signing off for tuesday

north winds and echoes of winds
rain running down the window
I'm turning off the lights
locking the doors
going home for
the evening
it's dark
getting
cold
out
so
-

East East

at the end of the world
impenetrable as bwindi's forests
tasteless as dust
as cobwebs of pate
as lost as legends of kilwa
eaten by salty mists
on the indian coast
to bathe in tourquise
to feed on beryl
not mold-eaten limestone
to climb across the riddled boulders until
looking down on socotra's diminishing shores
by hands and knees reaching
the shadow of the dragon's blood 
and there beneath the cruel arab sun
plunge into the dark robe of that sandal-less sultana
have her over and over
upon a foundation of sweet sweet chrysolite
until even the stones are spent

Each

leaf falls down tomato slips past ripening cloud collides wave pommels shore dark drop fills cup of day poured out runs through crack in smooth surface cool degree of temperature a penny slipping through hole in pocket of broken hour until there is no more

Scorched

So the Earth burns in my wake. It has always done that. I cannot hold things without breaking them, I cannot leave things be. I attempt to understand them and often through that process destroy the things I seek to know, but I have come to see that before anything new can be created, what exists must burn away. So I keep moving because if I don't, even I myself will be consumed by the very fire I pursue.

Color

Things are as they are and I cannot change them,but still nothing will ever diminish the splendor of the October woods. The maple so singular, so arresting, consuming all of vision until you begin to believe that you can even feel the color saturating your skin. In those last moments before the Sun passes beyond the western horizon you are looking east and the forests are ablaze, it is only later in the gray dusk that something startles you and you find that you cannot account for the period of time that has passed or for any of the living you have ever done and the only thing you know is that you are now alive and everything is new.

Called

Near midnight the moon called me like it used to do down that old trail through the woods I wandered as a child. I paused at the cage where we used to keep the dogs and stood for a time until one by one all their ghosts came panting at the door. I opened it and watched them leap with freedom one more time. I said goodbye as they fled into the shadows of the pines and then I followed. I crossed over that gate which once held back the woods from the yard now overrun with willows. I entered into darkness beneath the oaks that had always been and in that blackness there was no moon no trail except the trail I had always known. Cold mists lingered over the swamp where a few crickets chirped their lonesome songs. Further down the trail echoed the barking of the dogs fainter and fainter. Patches of moonlight burned here and there in the darkness. Atop the ridge ran the crumbling tombstones of the cemetery that held two hundred years of bones. Some of the ancient oaks had fallen across the trail gargantuan trunks and mighty limbs barred my way, but I wove through them, over and under and around the smooth and bark-less wood. As I passed they tore away the years.  Then the leaves before me rustled and I felt the air explode, an invisible mass beating its heavy wings off into the heights. I did not know at first if I was still all there, if it hadn't carried most of me away, but I moved on, and as I did moonlight dotted more and more of my way. I stood at last in a clearing at the edge of the swamp. The moon so brilliant shone I squinted at its light, my clothes so pale, and then I turned. Beyond the ridge the cemetery glowed and down from the hill around shadows of towering trees wove all the apparitions. Awakened by the barking of the dogs they'd come to stand with me and gaze across the swamps at the brilliance of the moon. One by one they rose and in a great V like geese they flew off towards the light. I alone remained in the moonlit forests of my youth.

Harvest Moon

I'd driven through traffic
was almost home

I'd come to the bay
hadn't noticed how quiet
the eerie light of dusk

The road curved northward
a great pine stood
looming on shore
there in its arms
dark shape of a crow
white circle of moon

Was it night already?
Where had September gone?

Just this morning
the sky such a brilliant shade of blue
clouds like kingdoms rose
the din of children living at the beach

Sails were billowing and when I swam
I swam for hours beneath the burning sun
the breeze was warm and steady
upon my browning chest
sunset forever
stars fell overhead

It's evening now
I put my sweater on
go out in the garden

I've known for months
the pumpkins wouldn't come
I look for signs of frost.
My fingers ache with cold.

Dirt

Days hollowed out like logs
from trees that once lived

Hollow winds blowing too long
striping away time and creation

All things get caught up in wind

Days have gone
so many gone
like dandelion seeds
fallen on sandy places

I should sit for a time
by the bank of that old pond I once found
deep in a now-forgotten forest
watching the water's surface
watching winds
across that still surface
broken in so many shards
shards of mirrors
wavelet upon wave

I should just listen
close my eyes and rest

I should go
far away from here
where the sun still glances
across tender stalks of grass
that bend and bend and bend
that cast their seeds and die and grow
cast their seeds and grow
flourishing in the rain
sleeping beneath snow

sending shoots skyward
in any weather

The sun is drifting southward everyday
night encroaches on the afternoon

I don't know what I'm after here
these words seem so weakly simple
like the grasses they go on and on

I'm not certain they bear seed
yet they flourish
as long as I'm their root

But is it me or something else
something needing voice
speaking itself into being
I only a furrow to be carved?

Yes I
the soil that must be turned
the soil life works
breaking the substance of me
dividing and subdividing
what I am
root coming from root coming from root
until I am just the sand
every nutrient extracted
until I am the dust
which wind and rain remove.

Dusk

oh the Sun

it's shining, it's burning
blistering away the day

the tree branches swaying
in the gales off the bay

flocks of swallows
dotting the yellow sky

as if Summer still had some sway

as if already
the light wasn't bleeding away

hulks of the maples
a growing shadow in the west

a streak of brilliant white
so luminescent

thrust at such a perilous angle
into the shoulders of the trees

a jet barely visible
nearly lost in the heights


its engine heating
compressing the air

using the atmosphere
against itself

to climb westward
so to appear

as if it's falling

into the ghost of the Sun

how wonderful to know
that light seeks after light

the peach edge
of a gray cloud

already eclipsing
that bright contrail

branches still buffeted
sway

the north winds
roaring hollow and bodiless

tearing, tearing
the world away from the day

Overtime

That's the thing. I should be developing GetHTML("CensusKey") but I'm sketching contour lines instead. I'm trying to get the edges right, an oval of a face, remembering a glance, trying to remember the corners of a smile. I'm not being analytical at all. The code keeps crashing, I keep running down rabbit trails, the outline of her hair, that knee length skirt, the band-aid on her toe. Why do I keep cutting and pasting the same variable, as if it's iterative? Its getting dark outside, the rain's incessant, so much code to write, so much.

This can't be true

She was born on the Autumnal Equinox. They remembered this was so even if, perhaps, there was some meager chance she wasn't. She would come and go so often on that day when Day and Night stood arms crossed saying, "We're the same you and I. You go one way and I the other."

Says Day, "This is your time. I know it as much as you, but do not think that I am less than you."

Says Night, "This I know so well, having watched you live these past few months; and you, you're no more than me."

You go your way; I go mine. That is how it is. Can't we go together? There's no particular reason, even if there is a purpose.

Last year a milkweed seed drifted through the open windows of my car. I'd pulled off in some sun-bleached country field; was just awakening from a nap. So quietly it drifted by, so delicately floating on nothing but the air. As it passed I knew it carried me away somewhere, and there you were, your hair so soft and cool against my sunburned cheek.

Ten Thousand Birds of an Unspecified Species

ten thousand birds
darken the sky
fill it with riotous noise
night has darkened day
clouds appear in the west
consume the stars
they still shine
the windows are open
i stand on the porch
watch them fly
fly out the door
rise to the sky
i am pinned to this Earth
mouth agape
watching them
watching them 
skyward fly

Return

Once there was a day when the forests were pure when the sun shone from an ever blue sky. Some days I still find it. Many years ago, a hundred million years ago it seemed, a white moon without blemish shone. Do not be afraid to return, to linger. Pause. Do not be afraid to seek it out.  For many days you will not find it no matter how hard you try, but please for me, for you, for all of us, do try. Don't surrender.  There are many ways we must surrender and when we do we know we must, but don't listen to this, my telling you what to do. The winds are pure, the sky is blue, the sun shall ever shine. That place in the forest waits for you, keeps waiting for you.

hope of summer, spent

acrid smelling shotgun shell
spinning through the air
smoke
and taste of smoke

regret

an empty plastic casing

pleasure so temporary
pulling the trigger

young boy
pointing the barrel
inches away from tiny white chest
a chickadee
the rest of his life
tasting the spatter of bird shit
mingled with gun smoke

young man
taking an eight point
nearly two hundred pounds

vertebrae shattering
turning
to face the sound
echoing off distant hills
still running 
on its side in the swamp

gray

gray clouds

a cold cold rain

Flight

Tonight as I kept repeating the melody stuck in my head, pounding it into the worn keys of a tired old piano, I went back to the time when I traveled for days by bus across the wastelands of central Tanzania. I was fleeing myself, putting kilometers between me and the places that had become too painful for me to stay any longer, where I was living out the lies I was telling myself. I was distancing myself from the whores and the old bartenders I surrounded myself with, who played along for profit, complicit for their own pitiful reasons, who would have rolled me over had I died to pick my pockets for the few useless Shillingi I lived off. I was escaping those of my own devices which I believed had already killed me, and had yet to come to gestation. I occupied my mind those days with fears of various forms of infectious disease that depended on such activities for their procreation. I had already known that I was going to run. I had the bus ticket and my bags in my room ready at the Y. It was on that last night of my envisioned destruction when the bartender had already stiffed me, and I let him just to see how far he would actually go, when J____ had finally given up her manipulations and suggested that I take the sixteen year old who was new. S____ had already thrown the beer bottle outside against the wall, and her friend speaking of love, trying to negotiate a settlement had given up too. She had in her hand a paperback of Gulliver’s Travels, which was fitting, for it seemed by that time they all had already tied various threads of their own contriving across my torso and limbs, and were clinging to them in attempts to pin me to some firm unmoving ground. The deal was made. I was to pay their ways into Jimmy Conners, and they would swing by the Y to drop me off so I could come later. All of us had come to separate independent realizations about how this would provide various opportunities of escape for any of us. Maybe no one understood but me that all of them would be enacted without exception so that early the next morning, head heavy and stomach rotting with too much beer I was sitting in the midst of villagers on a bus, sunlight searing through my eye sockets into the back of my skull, leaving in the dust that desperate city to waken without me.

when the Sun is out shining go turn your face to its light this is what I tell myself the sun will shine when it does and when it doesn’t maybe rain let it come when the moon is out shining wake stand beneath it whatever the hour of night let it tell you things that you’ve forgotten let its light paint familiar landscape strange summer fades there’ll be others or this may be the last no matter take the time wander a field find an unknown wilderness alone when vegetables in your garden ripen pick them the green beans die from rust let them go wake to leaden clouds of fall the day’s sudden coolness let cold brush against your lips winds redden your checks stars still shine progress in their mechanical way i suppose other things are like this too i showed up at the wrong funeral confronted by loss of someone i didn’t know i have to live within myself who else has the patience? each year my litany grows longer so many more reasons i will let things be if i am different so what i haven’t the words get beneath my skin September winds blow strong the quality of this day battled out in the sky above i’ve spent a whole succession of months chasing the light of the Sun there is never a day i seek the shadow of clouds

Words

I am not sure anymore if my writing is only a footpath through the forest where I've traveled, or if it's a way revealing itself into the depths of an as-of-yet-undiscovered wilderness. Maybe it's both or neither, just water flowing where it will, where this present landscape affords it passage. Perhaps it is only pooling in some concavity where the myriad forms of pond life thrive.

solitude

i went to the desert
it was like a sea

(you need a boat
to travel the sea)

walked for miles

had no sextant
lost my way

in the middle of nowhere
sat a Coupe de Ville

'58 or 9
a rusted husk

sky through bullet holes
hollows for headlights

no steering wheel
doors gone

i got in
sat on a stone

turned to
Father Anthony

“you got the keys?”
but he was gone

in the back seat
Athanasius

shouting
“drive you fool, drive.”

Autumn

In the dream a friend was telling me how in 1948 her grandmother was born on the Vernal Equinox, but September was near. "We've turned the corner. Summer's gone," She said. We stood in shadow beside an unfamiliar gas station. An old woman drove up in a rusty blue car. It skidded to a stop. The woman had crazy eyes. She came to me and buried my face in her chest, and when I looked up I saw she was a classmate from many years ago. She didn't look so old. I could see her nipples swelling behind the fabric of her cotton dress, and when I awoke I was a boy again sleeping in my old bed, trying to pull up the old wool blanket I used to use when I got cold.

bordering on cliche'

Inside the room
a painted cloud

music of
a violin

the flowers already
starting to fade

scent of incense
always masking

some odor
of death

Outside the window
clouds are real

so is
the sky

earlier
I walked

among the cut-up branches
of a beech

September
knocking at the door

I myself
am crawling out the window

dancing over
a distant hill

the grass so green
this summer

my body
in many ways denied

always telling me
it's there

telling
and telling

until at last
I have to listen

sunlight through
the window

so wonderful
this time of year

faith

inside a small adobe Church
air thick
smell of incense

a candle for Jesus
flickers in the darkness

outside
above the desert
the brilliance of clouds
whiteness of clouds
moves
across a stoic sky

in the distance
far from the empty Church
there's a skeleton
of a prehistoric fish
pressed into a layer
deep inside a stone

that darkness is no different