June Poem

It might be easier at the sea,

on a point, Atlantic or Pacific,

that commands a view 

in halcyon or storm-surge,

the wave on wave compulsion

that takes everything unmoored out 

bringing some things back in, 

much lost between tides,

always something to find,

though little of worth 

outside human sentiment,

to do as Jeffers suggests:

to unhumanize our views

and see more clearly 

our own worth, or lack of it.

Here, mid-continent bound,

sitting on this slight rise,

two familiar trees 

of relative height and girth—twins,

of different parentage 

but shared ecology—friends

to me, though they require work,

it is near to impossible

that I separate my struggles,

my joy, from their fullness, their wounds,

their calm, their longstanding-ness.

In this sultry June moment,

their leaves hang limp,

barely shaking in the faintest of breezes,

as a late robin still finds his worm

and the bluejay yips to chide 

some smaller singer’s warning.

I wonder where the rabbits have gone,

so much clover to graze, 

some many soft topped dandelions.

What have I done to deserve

such peace in the middle of such torment?

It would certainly be easier at the sea,

to forget the boundaries 

my own time has bought for me,

the accident of my birth, here—

landlocked and prairie-girt,

at the dull end of a rapturous century,

only to inherit a new millennium

seemingly determined to kill us all

before our three-score and ten.

Then, perhaps not.  I can almost 

smell the salt-air from here,

feel the current pulling at my feet.

The sea would not be good for forgetting.

Time must beat its shores, pebble-soft.

We must be content to grow old while we can.

There will be plenty of time for forgetting.

The rabbits will return;  I am sure of it.

Crete

*I finished Madeline Miller's gripping novel Crete yesterday. The novel's well-imagined plot was compelling; it was extraordinarily well-voiced, attuned to the rhythms, constructs, and themes of the epic tradition, and perfectly paced and rendered. A wonderful book. It also reminded me of a set of poems that I worked on last fall about the central characters of Crete. So here are Minos, the Minotaur, Theseus, and Ariadne, reimagined in our unfinished new world. 

“Let us wander forever / in the labyrinths of our self-esteem.” 

(Wendell Berry, “Let Us Pledge”)

I. Minos

It is easy to sit in judgement

over a world in which power

& privilege dictate that some-

one else’s suffering could 

always have been avoided

if only they saw it from your

hallowed (ad)vantage point.

It is infinitely more difficult

to climb down from the tower 

to gain the view from below,

to foot the rocky path,

to take no step for granted

knowing at any point 

ignorance of the rules

might trigger a fall,

might shift the weight

in such a way that the

whole earth breaks, toppling

tower and maze and temple

into a cruel sea of

self-doubt and fear of erasure.

II. The Minotaur

In the center of it all,

a heart beats in an

unfit body: half-this,

half-that, all hunger.

Even the heavy horns

point in divergent

directions and turning—

dizzying even desire

into a vortex of 

suffering, regret,

and satisfaction.

III. Theseus

Privilege is being

lost at birth and

finding out later

that your birthright

entitled you to the

throne of a kingdom

that you don’t even

want and whose

crown you can 

afford to give away

in the name of 

aristocracy.

IV. Ariadne

When it is all said and done,

it would have been better

to keep the thread for

yourself, weave a spider-

like web for a home,

render the minotaur’s

blood into ink, 

its hide into parchment,

and write your own myth,

sew it together into

a bible of reasons

to mistrust the gods,

or a manual of self-help 

for abandoned heroes

whose savior-women

and wounded sirens

decided to spend their

time serving themselves

instead of waiting to be

rescued, deceived, or

destroyed.

A Storm at Sea on Whitman's 200th Birthday

Oak Island, NC 

May 31, 2019

At mid-afternoon it was visible off-shore to east and west.

Before sunset, the sheets fell sidewise in a stiff north wind,

as we gathered to witness from the top deck of the house.

As rain swelled, winds dropped to naught for the first time in days

only to return to gale when the rain came to a temporary halt.

The sun in the southwest hung a double-arcing bow—

bridging road and house and sea, diverting all eyes.

But it was after dark that the show began in earnest—
a pulsating sky alive with electricity.

For hours, the night beach was lit up by flashing clouds

and the forked tongues of sky-fire—allowing the beach, 

empty of its human play, to be realized as in daylight.  

I lay awake in the night and listened as the thunder hummed:

This is a world alive with the possibility of perfection.

Temporary Pleasure

I enjoy writing poetry. I find pleasure in the struggle to follow a poetic idea to some tentative conclusion. I feel personally empowered while composing a poem that charts a course for some idea, some emotion, or some imagining. I am proud, though always anxious, to share a new poem, or a rare old one, with the people closest to me, but I have no confidence my poems will have much value outside of a handful of people who know and love me already. I am more than fine with this knowledge. 

I know and believe in the power of a poem to transport or even transform a reader. I have personally experienced this thousands of times, often daily, and many lucky times with my students and colleagues. But this is not the experience I expect from my poems and a larger audience. I lack something as a poet, probably many things, that keep my poetry from reaching a larger audience. I am an avid reader of poetry, and I understand the talent, intelligence, and wit it takes to be a poet. And I know the time, patience, and perseverance it takes to make even one great and lasting poem. It takes much more discipline and craft than I have to give to be a working and publishing poet. For now, I am satisfied with the temporary pleasure of the invention of a poem. I do not need more than this for my poetry, but I do have an urge to share, so I will go back out on this limb. I hope you find some temporary pleasure in it too.

A Long Hiatus

By the blessings of luck, location, and isolation, my family has remained healthy during this pandemic. Like many who have remained safe from the virus, this upheaval of the everyday has led me to much contemplation. As a result, I have been watching the birds more closely (now with the help of one more little, two not-so littles, and one great in-betweener) and I have been reading more by personal choice rather than by career. Curiously, I have not been attempting to write more often. I have decided to remedy that; I have decided to bring back this foolhardy blog. I have no hopes of a wider audience than it once had (maybe half a dozen?), but I am hopeful that it will provide the necessary impetus to start writing again. Wish me luck.

Thursday, After Ashes

“ […] How absurd

to still have a body in this rainbow-gored,

crickety world and how ridiculous to be given one

in the first place […]” Dean Young

Today’s epiphany is my own eyes

drawn to what might make them blind

a perfect orange marble, brightly hanging

& slowly rising toward every eventuality.

What a gift it is to see what you seek

& to know that it is something else as well,

before it disappears.

                                  Before the eyes

go finally blind; before the body, gifted,

is returned to dust—needed to feed

the orange glow for the eyes of others.

The Years Without (A Start?)

[The desire to have said something is not the same as having something to say.]

Somehow, the years without
fill up in ways that preserve
the serene emptiness
of physical loss.

Emotion is conserved,
or converted
into something else--
sometimes tears,
other times words,
often dispersed without
acknowledgement:
an unannounced shiver,
a prolonged look,
something unsuspecting,
suddenly realized across
dull time.

Just recently,
I've noticed the coyote
somehow less shy of the roadside--
and twice the saintly heron
has returned
to the once dry pond,
now silky with tall reeds,
crowding the center
like some green castle
rising up from its moat.

The comfort of the familiar,
slowly displaces what was;
what has disappeared
is only traceable as echo,
recorded in doubtful memory,
seared in scar tissue,
too easily hidden away.

Let there be ghosts.

May they return
as lights for us
to read one another's
upturned faces by.

Cinerum

“Now ravel up the roots of workman oak trees” Merton

Consider the root,
Instead of the branch:
Left to wither?

Each symbolic sacrifice
Traces a shadow circumference:
Ignoring the growth-ring?

If you were to see me,
Ash-carrier, brow-beat,
What story would construct itself?

As it is, there is only forgetfulness,
& a choice to struggle through:
a doubter hanging on to skeptical confidence.

All this while:
The root still clutches & the branch is yet to break,
Where come all these ashes?

Advent 1

Dumb as Oaks

It is wind that speaks,
not the branch, the leaves
now gone, silent unless
trampled. Cry out.

When the branch breaks
it is the ice that sounds
the crack. Its tiny fingers
cannot help but hold or fall.

Melt will be months coming,
a long hibernation, unslept,
beard grown to length,
urge quieted down to resolve.

What is it we wait for,
dumb as oaks, gone as the grass
beneath swayed hills of snowdrift?
Certainly, there is something in that light.

The slant the birds know means:
nearly there, just wait for the
winds to shift, the familiar call
of that place is home too:

That branch that won't break.

Empty Handed

The pleasure of
people standing
empty handed:

voices carrying
between bodies
or silence curling,

smoky breath, exhaling
into a thousand
possible utterances.

Exiting a building,
near sundown:
This world glows.

Fidelity

Secondly, I am not afraid because I love you,
But because I love you, I am afraid: what comes
Upon us all, sometime comes to one of us. It
Would not be fair to want it either way, the
Suffering internal, held up as sacrifice, or
External, to serve as best I could while you
Bear the burden for us both. An act of infidelity
Either way. Too much to ask for all to be well?
But when it strikes, it may not conquer, then:
Let it be me. Some part of me longs to suffer.
Only a fool admits this, in a poem or otherwise.
Worse still, with strength hardly tested beyond
Ache or strain. Then again, first things first,
How else can we know the limits of love than to
Make the promise that the body could never keep?

Letter 1, October 17th

Particularly when

turning the corner

around the pond,

dried by half—

even now—from

summer drought,

I am compelled

to expect to see

you :  magically

reflected in the

darkest shadow

of wing in water.

Sometimes a dream

sneaks through a

morning haze,

sun a quarter hour

high in the rounded

distance, like a

foggy road slow

to burn, your

face appears,

as saintly as

the tall blue bird

keeping warm

in the golden

slice of new light

in preparation

for a long flight.

Let me beg you:

don’t stay gone

too long this year.

Contemplation

Brother Leopold appeared to be stuck.

"Get the Prior."

"Get Fr. Thomas."

He just smiled. Looking at nothing. As if a set of scales covered his eyes. It was a strange look, but the smile was stranger.

When he came to, still smiling, he said: "We've been wrong all along."

--------
I'm practicing. Foundling Review is holding a 50 word story contest this summer. Details: http://www.foundlingreview.com/PachaasContest2.html

Proof

”[...] Everything in me
Wanted to bow down, to offer up,
To go barefoot, foetal and penitential,

And pray at the water's edge.”
[Seamus Heaney, ”Triptych” III: At the Water's Edge]


It wasn't the picture I was after,
the picture was proof.
The truth is: proximity was all
I desired.

That somehow closeness could prove
friendship, connection,community
led me to the side of the road,
against the barbed fence,
to the edge of the water.

Sometimes seeing is all prayer is.
Or is it: prayer is what seeing is?

Of the three prayers:
praise, forgive, & need,
I prefer the blue heron,
two legs in the water,
bill stabbing southward,
crown raised or fallen.

The moment wings stretch
into lazy flight is
prayer answered
& prayer denied.

There is no sense in waving
as you disappear.
But I have this picture,
& this poem as proof
against the slow current
of doubt.

The Heart Does Not Turn to a Stone

“I have always wondered about the leftover 

energy, water rushing down a hill

long after the rains have stopped”

[Adrienne Rich (1929-2012), “For the Dead” 1972]

what we love persists,
a body once known remains,

hangs about,

                      like a veil of prophecy:

an open window moves the spirit

& all the bodies dance, voices sing

the sounds accumulate,

how moss  gathers,  

memory assimilates into a life.

if energy is conserved,

what happens to our vital potential

when the kinetic slumps, slows, & stops?

who’s to say that to die is to conform to friction,

might momentum simply be transferred?

(let us remain silent about ghosts.)

let the rain roll & the dark be broken

by the flash that reminds us:

night is not the end of blue,

only a temporary failure of vision.

what we love remains,

though bodies are removed

(as the rain steals the soil)

love softens all hearts

& nothing is taken

that is etched into cortex,

that settles like moss

on  the northernmost face

of a life well shared.

Two Poems

Allusion, Illusion, Delusion

“The joke, which we seldom see, is on us;

For only true hearts know how little it matters

What the secret is they keep…”

   [ Auden, “Secrets”]

There sits, now, a thing on my heart,

a secret not so much protected as denied:

that there’s a loneliness I crave, I dread.

Not that I have wasted my life, the part

though never the whole, but pretended

too much to ever be happy in public, alone.

This trick never works:

where you’re convinced

that walls papered with

rejection do not repeat

the words: thankfailure

you failureopportunity

failurefailfailureagain.

It was always dying.

Not in the way we all are:

of the cancer silently growing or a heart that breaks

or an accident no prophet would have predicted,

but because it was built on (at best) wishful thinking

& for the worst on willful pretense.

    So it goes.

Three Lives

“A handsome child is a gift from God,

And a friend is a vein in the back of the hand,

And a wound is an inheritance from the wind.”

[Robert Bly, “Living at the End of Time”]

Two lives are livable,

the third destroys.

What home allows,

though crowded,

small, & full of ghosts,

is a degree of self

that cherishes

truthfulness.

The constant gift

of anticipation,

a child provides

a lesson in honesty:

constant

growth is not

sustainable

but its opposite

is anathema

to god & to man.

**

What a friend adds is beyond measurement,

but in absence, constricts, like hand to fist.

Not in anger clenching, but so much riding on

compliment, supplement, affirmation & faith

there’s bound to be a point a bubble bursts.

Pride, insecurity, delusion & doubt:

the sacred secrets shared in kind:

But illusion crumbles so sure as grandeur grows,

aloofness follows & then:   renewal, respite, & reprieve.

***

Standing alone in a loud corner,

the awkward happiness of others

smothers any hopefulness

of the possibilities of the third life.

Two lives are livable:

there’s here & there’s there.

The looming life,

lived somewhere between

slowly destroys itself,

its false promises of acceptance,

the suggestions of fame

disintegrate (without ghost).

Sometimes it’s clear:

it’s just time to go back home.

The first life thrives through the wound.

Fragment 22

Sappho, Fragment 22, from
If Not, Winter (Anne Carson)

“The spirit moves, but not always upward…”
[Theodore Roethke, “Meditations of an Old Woman”]

a.

waking this morning, an arm would not work

sleep & weight had robbed it of its force

it only took minutes to return at the elbow, then the wrist

a look in the mirror showed:

sleep left heavy lines across my face

if not today, what is winter?

temperature falling through the afternoon,

wind nearly silent through thick glass,

no pain afflicts the body

but much is seen, in its waves

because I prayed for clarity

this word: patience

I want to feel you near me

b.

there is only so much one can stand: work

satisfies until it doesn’t.

which face will show this morning:

the one that is impatient? enthusiastic?

exasperated? content? if not winter, when

will the prizes arrive? certainly not spring.

No pain without desire.

Is this because I prayed for accolades?

I should have never heard this word: ποιϝέω.

I want to be silent.

c.

being here with you is never work

(always home)

I never fail to see us both in each face

(the three boys who won’t stay still)

we will stay close, if not, winter,

no pain can preserve us from time

because I prayed that they would grow,

this word: patience &

I want, I want, I want

them to slow down

d.

work stacks & family holds

this face knows all four seasons

(if the spirit moves)

what is premature spring if not winter?

there is no pain if no loss,

all is temporary anyway:

(if the spirit moves)

because I prayed for happiness

this word: expectation

I want & must endure the spin

of gain & loss & loss & gain

(if the spirit moves)

Direction

In the beginning: oppositional Mars was not more than a pink speck, slightly larger than the rest, in the East above my neighbor’s house.

Somewhere down a long, familiar road an old love appeared new in the odd Winter's half-light. Falling in love with the shape of a tree in February has as much to do with skyline, the distance beyond, a cut of light, & sky so pink it might be flesh, as it does with the way the skinny bones reach out to embrace their own emptiness, want of nest, bloom, leaf, or errant kite.

But here, in this hurtling car, my sounds are less than nothing: beat, breath, synaptic fire: silenced by the friction of rubber & road, glass & wind.

(Suddenly, I recall the almost visible ribbon of geese I heard in last night’s darkness, still calling, now more necessary, perhaps, as their bodies blend into the midnight, blue-black vacancy. Is it wind they follow, or are they pushed by a force they do not know, a stream, though invisible, that they are more comfortable swimming in? They were gone as quickly as they arrived. Silence persists.)

Here, now, Mars, moon & Venus all down, or at least invisible, the meditation ends as one last streetlamp extinguishes, the trail of its light a chromatic halo, ephemeral, like a last note of birdsong or the final syllable of a hummed matin.

And I am alone again with all my doubts, all my loves, intact.

For Love

For Love

What the mind idealizes & the body desires,

something unknown accelerates, keeps, & makes last.

Some call it soul,

others heart or spirit,

but by whatever name

(& all words lack something essential)

it preserves, persuades, & protects.

It is there in the patter of a child,

in the needful relief of travel,

& in the shared glance of any given day.

It is the promise that makes forever possible;

It is the excitement of knowing one thing doesn't disappear.

______

Here's a link to a poem I wish I would have written: "Bird-Understander" by Craig Arnold

Here's a link to the Creeley poem that got mine started: "For Love" by Robert Creeley

Caliper

(for Brian)

"The cemetery expands its borders—
little milky crosses grow like teeth.
How kind time is, altering space
so nothing stays wrong; and light,
more new light, always arrives.”
[Spencer Reece, “At Thomas Merton’s Grave”]


What instrument do we use
to measure the capacity
of one’s character to
absorb loss?

The lies we live with
slide smoothly down the rule
only when the points
take & hold, without
slipping.

Then one day the beam breaks:
& every measurement is off.

------

I thought I'd always measure loss
on the little silver Mezurall
my father left in a drawer
(for me?)

It's in another drawer today,
(I kept it in a pocket for a while)
but I should have known:

Its length was never going to be enough.

-----

Your sister let each of us who were to carry you pick a pair of your socks from a plastic bag on the day we buried you. I chose Da Vinci’s calibrated man with his legs stretched into a pace that I'd never be able to keep.

-----

A life is lived on a hinge
that swings between eras
of unequal lengths & depths.

Sometimes it is a simple wind
that turns the gate between identities.

Then, again, storms destroy
what seemed so likely to stand,
so solid,so protected,
so easily measured.

When things finally settle again
& what’s left is gathered:
there is usually enough
to build the world again.

But once the rule is broken:
the measurements will
never again be exact.