each new day

the threshed out
kernels of wheat
milled into flour

baked into bread
for strangers those
who would starve

without it who
always come back
in need of

more claiming it
with all manner
of hands each

misshapen by what
the years have
brought we all

must take this
burdened stalk of
wheat bent with

harvest broken for
us in every
field by those

whose names are
lost within this
silence of loaves

requiem

In this alley stinking of urine
littered with cigarette butts
waste-water pools,
mirrors the contours of clouds
blue sky
the sun--
a single point of brilliant light.

He could speak to this
until in shadow
beneath the bridge,
unacknowledged,
he was beaten to death
for a pint of gin.

heart as lesser creatures

dots darken and swell on pages
of a library book–
i worry about the rain

she uses the words gently fall
when she can just say
fall

i lay my hand
upon the bareness of her shoulder
instead of on her bare shoulder

grey beneath pines
a hummingbird appears
circling with eager drone

i want to knock it from the air
ask it
just what the fuck it's doing

fireflies in the forest
of my youth

shadow of the hills

returning

how surprised i am to find you
in your neighbor's bed of iris
(left untended many summers
before their cottage in the oaks)
you're on your knees
among the purple blossoms
a mound of wilting weeds behind you
there is sweat upon your brow
you look at me and smile
your hair as red as ever
as if you'd never lost it
i cannot help but help you
i bend to pull the final weed
you carry a whole armful
i have only one
i say it is a wild carrot
you lay your hand on mine
no, not wild carrots
all the misplaced years

jonah to the fish—

i knew i couldn’t save myself
so leapt into the unrelenting sea

resigned to death
i was well-pleased never to return

but who can speak
of the vastness of a sea

its unknown places
deep within darkness

your shadow passed
in silence

your measureless form
hidden in many waters

i was drowning and swallowed by waves
when you were called to take me in

and bear me down
to the bottom of the world

there
where there was no light

no hope
only one voice speaking

those unstirred waters
no warmth nor subsistence for you

yet you kept me
all the given days

as if your whole being meant nothing to you
until those words were spoken

and then in silence you ascended
through some uncharted way

to birth me on the blinding shore
of a new and sunlit land.

lost

and now you come back
with the rain
following the path of lightning
you beat on the door
in a landscape of flashes
i see all the drowned kittens
returned to life
mewing for milk
amidst inconsolable night
the yard is unraked
the house empty
what can i feed them
he is already here
waiting with ball peen and sack
is it only the weather
the way your wet dress
clings to your body
strands of dripping hair
the slightness of you
curling against me
as day begins to break

a bear and a boat

there's an old story
about a rowboat abandoned at sea
it's the same story
as the one about a wounded bear
staggering on a crag--
the spinning of the world
has been arrested
stars revolve without it
there are no tears which are not made
from parts of other stories
or rather there is only one story
told again and again
about how an oar cuts water
excavates a certain volume--
how much is removed
how much returned
what do you do with what's left over
there are no waters
that can fill a cavity
dug from fifty years of marriage
a man of ninety
tries to fill it with stories
too often retold
a bear in a boat
crosses an ocean
returns to the forest
where it was born
at midnight
when the night is cold
and overflowing with stars
the bear is summoned
by voices it has always known
called back again and again
by a name almost forgotten
the boat is empty and oarless
rocking on waves
the boat lies on shore
overturned
left for many years
its gray wooden frame
long surrendered to sand

orginality

Take Larry for instance,
he opened a service-station
in the middle of nowhere
and then added a bar--
for don't we all know those
whose car problems drive them to drink?
The paint has flaked
those years of sun have bleached
but who besides Larry
uses overturned pistons as cups?
Though some will tell you
his whiskey tastes like gasoline.

my contract with light

tell me which of the stars
have seared holes through all of my things—
or is it just the same quantum of light
returning again and again
now demanding the only bowl I have left

I confess in a whisper it is too late
thousands of years have already claimed it
white shards entwined by roots
that refuse to surrender
clinging black soil

but light is incessant
immutable
and wants everything back

apparitions

all the ukulele players
appearing out of fog
they walk by with their black cases
maybe forty men with beards
they vanish the same way

a violinist in a white dress
shining on the stage
she slides her bow and plays
back and forth
and back and forth

she's young enough
to be her daughter
and maybe not
a mathematician
but it doesn't matter
we're just dancing in a haze

what then?

shall the fissures of Earth actually win?
shall new continents form without our knowing?
how many dreams have already spilled from shaking hands?
and where do these dreams go,
washed away by rain
rattled into crevices by thunder
planted to be re-born as apples?
maybe all gardens are just the first garden
and the creme flesh of woman
shall once again have no fear of scales.
I cannot imagine a forest without rain,
life that doesn't feed off those that came before.
which falling star can claim to be an angel
or a bluebird with a broken wing?
don't cats already know each sparrow is numbered?
where is the factory of birds?
which politician could tell me?
I would vote for her
even if all the other candidates were women
just as clever.

Can any of this be denied?

Your very flesh
lying against the spillage of day
sky refusing light
promise of apricot--
a blush of red
against some yellow
never again to taste
pressed between lips
breaking taut skin
perfected edge
of worn down teeth.
They tell how kernels will settle
into August earth
long before autumn makes its claim.
If you do not believe in time
still it lays its reach of days
sings its strained melody.
Breathe its soft air
open your hungered mouth
to the nectar of lost fruit
apricots lifted into sky
beyond time's tale of centuries.
Who counts all these useless years? 
Why do so many demand them back
as if they could be bothered
for one last meal of love,
another's soft skin
pressed against your naked flesh,
can you not be warmed in any other way?

for those now dead

between a native's stone found in fields my father plowed
and a broken bough from a pine on a hill I climbed as a boy
I grind this fragrance from sprigs of lavender my mother planted
red stalks of rhubarb dug from her yard--
these I grow for pie 

sand

Rid yourself of all shattered glass
all the fucking bones
remove all the mirrors
excoriate all wood from the wastes.
Let the desert in
let winds eat everything away
even sound.
Let there be only sky
light
and crystalline sand.
Allow one single insect
a beetle clicking its wings
dying from want of water.
Let the poem contain only the word was
which indicates the past tense of to be
no more struggles with hope in the future tense.
Fill your mouth full of sand
spit it out
open your lips and breathe until they become
flakes of translucent skin.
Is it God that is nascent in desert?
What is this patten of shadowworn by a wandering Sun?
Nothing but light crossing an infinity
grain after grain
shifted by wind
into transecting crescents
rippling on and on.
All words are spelled there
and buried—
footprints eroded.
A young antelope
separated from its mother
finds her tracks and follows
but in the wrong direction.
The world itself is not cruel
hasn't God painted this desert?
The whole universe can be mapped
into a single grain of sand.
This is only circumstance.
We sift without knowing.
Not one is righteous.
Even the Moon
riddled with junk
is no longer holy.

passage

I was not given to the keeping of time
minutes   hours        days
continually spilling out of my pockets

I break a branch
and years bleed away

frozen lake
grey beneath a grey sky

water once flowed--
a visage

of a grandfather clock
deep in the cold

time

time beaten into a broken watch
rattling among branches that would not bud
a time of blood
tasting of burnt dirt
that kept spilling
out of my pockets
out of my hands
and into that part
of the past we both have discarded
time which no longer turned
which could not be seen
which shot like a wobbling stick
into the heart of a dog
that kept running
long after it was dead

dead like a bone
hollow and gray
carved into flute
carved into holes
through which no water flowed
holes that held air
holes holding breath
letting it go
but not without sound
offering only a path through the sands
a hollow    that shards used to bound
a hollow   which hands used to cup
a hollow  nobody whispers
half-tasting of fractured sky

if not for dust

if not for dust
settling on everything
how could I understand
this passage of days

scattered amongst time
that no longer keeps anything--
a few kind words

someone who lingers--
just to ask
to lay a hand without asking

even my phone is a minute behind
doesn't anyone see--
these minor anachronisms

a day ago
a week
this very same spot

just last year
pressing our legs into each other
as if in oath

the girl behind the bar
never sees a thing
I take back our glasses

she fills yours with water
I drink from it
as if you were still here

now   where there is no dust--
no measure of either
days passed nor days yet to come

remember the game

we used to play in June
while the maples were greening
and the sweet-cherries ripe

how one by one
I’d take those shiny dark—
the inside of your thigh—

each ripened fruit
worked cool in between

my fingers flat
easing the warmth of your—

when Christ was crucified
each red tributary
told of how they—

over your white—
against your—
until you’d squeeze them together

how juice of sweet-cherries seeped
from the press of your legs
soaked into dusk

how Mary did bathe
His tattered flesh
water and blood

beneath greening maples
I would suckle this juice
from the shade of your—

Magdalena as hollow as the tomb
tell me where they have taken him
and I will bring him back
there will come a day
maranatha!
when the dead shall rise into the sky

why can’t you remember
the game we used to play
when the maples were greening
and the sweet-cherries ripe

maranatha!
there will come a day

rake

how many seasons of grass
wound in spokes
and rusted rims

hollow hubs
where once-black grease
clung thick with odor

silent row of iron tines
rarely now do children come
to sit upon the high-raised seat

a long un-coupled hitch
settled into earth
gear and lever seized into a curiosity

poplars have taken back the fields—
when you slit the bark with fingernail
you loose a scent like fresh-cut hay

you were never meant for plenty

but to walk among the windswept pines
to pause before the swelling of wave after wave
sea washing over each solemn stone
to lose yourself in hair you shall never caress

each petal of crocus
surrenders its purple
each rose-colored tulip—
lost before summer

you come home to the shore
a familiar odor of death in the breeze
you come home but never arrive
you are always departing—