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.