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.