always making

dreams into poems
preams into doems
peams into droems
poeams into drems
poems into dreams

Clocks

city planners have devised these—
three great unblinking eyes
ensconced in height

one over knowledge
one over law
one over commerce

they gaze upon our urgencies
pupils pierced by iron shafts

two dark arms quantify subdivide
attempt to master
through mechanical means
that which is inscrutable

once

stumbling upon a hidden entrance
deep in an old abandoned wood
she wandered into a dark labyrinth
more ancient than trees.

running her gentle finger
along rough and dusty walls
turning this way and that
she found her way at last to me.

you do not belong here
my raised voice
how did you get through?

but by then it was too late—
every wall she'd touched had crumbled
light was coming in.

Mishap

As I set out on the path I worried that there might not be any more water in the well.  I never was very careful.  I didn't even see the snake, only heard its rattle. It bit me in the calf, through my jeans. I staggered into the well and fractured my femur.  The poison didn't kill me, but after a day in darkness a bucket struck my head.  Some woman overhead shouted, “Shit!”  There was no water so she left, and no one came back.  A week passed.  I had to eat myself to survive (methodically, first my legs, then my left arm, then my torso— I've carried a jack-knife since I was a young boy.) After I took the last bite I began to float.  How careless I thought, I've forgotten my knife, my keys. It didn't matter.  I had no weight.  I kept rising; out of the well, above the fields, heading to the stars. Earth from space is so beautiful, just a tiny ornament, a memory of a fading blue pinprick.  I'm not quite sure how many years passed before I started to fall again, pulled towards the center of the galaxy; converging in perfect silence with crowding stars, ashes of planets, and blinding light, but I arrived at last standing before a familiar door. It was locked as always.

biding

sun hangs low beyond a field
around the garden a rusted wire fence
dead branches for posts
sunflower stalk black against snow
bent-over head empty of seed

january

the children move among old apple trees
seeking shifts in elevation to sled

trees so many years burdened
trunks split with weight of un-pruned growth

branches now empty of wormy apples
some dead farmer has left for birds

why do you never come to this field?

the children lose themselves in its abandon
time has died

the sky pulls away from itself
wisps of clouds

in the west
a burning glow beyond the weight of gray

in diminishing light
you walk back

down a road
still muddy

applied physics

dull brown metal door
safety glass
cool to the touch
a low hum
reactor
cyclotron
madam curie dead
damned by curses
from shadows etched on walls
wernher von braun kidnapped for his mind
would the british castrate the son of a bitch
and yet we still turn over rocks on the shore
find beneath them pebbles
but sometimes
it is possible
more possible then you think
a child's tooth