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.

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)

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.

Anecdotal

alone for an hour,

a strange-warm

winter Sunday,

a handsaw &

headphones,

we made a

renegade

tree disappear,

but the sapling

trunks, five in all,

at the place they

were the thickest

remain undug,

another day’s

tool & time.

…

together an hour

winding through

grocery aisles,

we two & the

wee one gather

future meals

brave  the hectic

crowds, borrowing

time from tears

that  (lucky us)

never come:

we fill a cart

with food,

with plans,

pay the tab,

load for

the unload

& put away.

…

shipping the troops

outside for an hour

a snowless deployment

rare in January:

left to their own

devices: grey sidewalks

graffito’d a winter blue,

a hill race on foot,

red bike turns,

brotherly taunts,

wrestles & rolls

in the brown

& sleep-full grass.

…

this is what it means to share an imagination:

the imagery of possibility: of unwarped cubits,

the momentary escape into the lion’s roar of labor:

throb of forearm, the aching cramp within the glove,

the shared but dreaded rituals of domestic life

turned magically into a game of hide & seek,

the pride of witnessing the brotherly bond

exult in its freedom to create & to break down:

to know that what grows must change,
that change creates loss as it provides gain,

to learn the patience of long love,

through the slow victimage of growing old

but most of all, learning the easiest lessons last:

that the anecdotes of memory are all we carry through,

that nothing remains but what is loved well,

that innocence is possible when the right task meets the right moment:

nothing teaches virtue better than the story that can’t be told,

the story that gives & gives & knows no proper way to end.

Departure

"My friends stood in a line and waved good-bye as long as they could see my back." [Basho, The Narrow Road]

Maybe it is loss that breeds
a need for absence, a going
that suggests distance & time,
when so many days end in a slipping away.

If I can imagine a line of friends,
loved ones, the marginally close
lining up to bid farewell, do not
mistake it for a death wish,
or a longing for the inevitable rise & fall of disease,
but a silent need for an appreciation
only recognizable through sustained longing.

Maybe not longing exactly, but being missed,
having the shared space emptied,
not breaking the vessel, always fragile,
just on the brink of disrepair,
but leaving behind footprints & a bit of dust,
knowing that I'd come back,
if only for the clutter, but not soon,
not too soon.

A decade is a considerable time to live in the same somewhere:
to occupy a house, to work a room, to wander a hallway.
Though dreams arise, fall, & reemerge, a made place must change or be left behind.

There is a second image lingering somewhere behind these lines,
the portentous one that tries so hard sometimes to become fact:
a family gathering their most precious cargo, strapping down what they love &

heading down some road that promises a fulfillment that their going toward brings.

Love Poem, December 1st

I am a seabird, you are the Arctic Ocean
I know your seasons, and your sanctuaries
And when I’m wheeling over your wild white horses
I know there’s nowhere else that I belong

[Stornoway, "Cold Harbour Road"]

The view from up here, soaring,
the view as only a sleeper sees,
not what is given for viewing
but what is wakefully missed
though unavoided, yet unseen.

Here your body curves into sleep,
the perfect contour, familiar lines
etched into my sleepy mind
wishing these wings were hands,
I'd give all this watery world for an island.

But to wake would be to fall,
to fall would be a graver loss,
a loneliness more pitiful than
even birdsong out of season,
hidden still behind skeleton trees.

To be awake, to be alone,
when the house sleeps,
when our children purr out dreams,
when even the coyotes stop their howling:
this is the time to hover above & look & look.

If you knew how I saw doubt disappear at each tide:
the breath's rise & fall through this not quite longest night,
through this beautiful untouched quiet,
you'd understand the more:
what this collection of feathers means to me.

Leaf Smoke, Sun Streak

Day 30, The Last

Not until this moment,
the sky impossibly coral streaked
& filled in by downy cloud,
did I accept the end of  another year.

Some of what goes up does not come back the same:
the leaf that fell now rises as smoke,
its rustle now crackles,
its color now roasts,
& its rust smells of cherry, oak, & smoky peat.

soon, I know, the cold rains will come,
the leaves' revenge, the end of fire,
the long sleep of seed & soil,
until the green fuse lit:
pop of bloom, crack of ice, hum of bird return.

but now, this evening that holds the cold away at a flames length,
a sky beholden not to art,
there is no sense in holding on to the past,
just being here now, just seeing & smelling
the end of another season is enough to settle this month's doubts.

Seasonal Invective Confession

Day 29

Everybody knows that September is the month for dying 

& October for being born. It's already November, 

already another number past the biblical midpoint, 

another pile of pages past the midterm, 

& again the worry of a wasted life 

still hammock free & temporarily hawkless.

What do birds know about disillusion anyhow,

that they show up to ghost a disenchanted morning?

What do they know of misplaced dreams, 

ill-timed despair, or the hunger of another plan?

They know the migratory urge, the seasonal pangs,

the Attic need to roost, nest, dally, & fly.

This is November. I know this feeling welling:

not regret exactly, but reproach, a weariness

of purpose that never works out as planned.

Is it that November is the polar twin of May:

the return of illusion with the migrating birds?

If only it was as simple as lift, flap, & glide.

Then again what do birds know about deadlines,

about stacks of unloved paper-hearted words,

about rushed poems that cannot find their ends?

Is it Time?

Day 18

the difference

between

too early      &

too late

cuts a line

across a face,

cracks brains,

initiates regret:

a voice unheard

in the wilderness

begs for forgiveness

too early      or

too late

no one hears

out of time

the distance

between

too early     &

too late

is impossible

to predict

& too important

not to.

Illuminated

Day 17

Starting out into the cold:

wallet, keys, phone, moon,

who cares what becomes

of the soundless dark?

Something like holiness avoids:

hides behind a maple tree,

hugs the stubblefield,

hangs like dying moss:

        a falling leaf.

Landscape opens into noise:

birdsong, wind-play, leaves,

where all this light comes from,

no one is around to say.

Something like a prayer slips away:

a newly antlered deer deciding:

stay, go, stay, go, go, go

& then it’s lost somewhere:

   a hawk gone on the wing.

Somewhere a pond begins to ice:

the edges ripple less & less,

the heron stops visiting,

fattened cows are led away.

The sun, rising earlier & earlier

illuminates a landscape that grows:

farther & farther & farther,

everything in a new light,

everything in its right place:

everything is full of change.

Your Name Within Mine

Day 16

Walt Whitman, 1856 Manuscript, Leaf 9

    

           

  


   for L.D.C.P.

All through your tiniest year,

I hummed Rachmaninov,

Rice, Beatles, & Stones

dancing circles around tables

all hours of the night to calm

the baby nerves of your gentle soul.

I read you Whitman, or rather

I read Whitman while you slept

in my lap or nearby as everything is

in our small home.

The piece of paper I was earning

still sits in its oversized envelope

in the basement,

while my real work

of that incredible year,

a small green notebook

sewn with orange thread,

sits on your bedroom shelf

a year’s worth of poems,

your first birthday present,

waiting the long years to be read.

Now, you study letters,

sounds, & words.

You make pictures,

build up stories,

draw gorgeous lies,

& practice your blue-eyed smile.

We cherish your sensitive heart

& hope you privilege your infinite mind.

Today may be the reminder

of the six years of your being,

in which hundreds of poems

have been sketched, dreamt & breathed,

but it is your daily life that

is the best of them all:

the continuous reminder

that your birth was an answer

to all that we’d lost.

Whatever

November Poem a Day: Day 15

Every poem is a love poem for something.

Some state it explicitly, others hide

sentiment with complaint or affection

with metaphor, suggesting objectivity

but bleeding introspection.

Let me say this clearly:

 I make poems because something wells up.

Even when it’s out of anger

or resentment , or estrangement, or revenge,

the hard words still ache of some kind of love.

Civil

November Poem a Day Challenge: Day 13

Like rising too soon from needful sleep,
simple kindness isn't always effortless.

There is enough anger to turn a thousand turbines,
it flares & hisses, boils & seethes. I breathe. I count.

Kindness smiles, winks, & tells stories. It gives.
Resentment takes & take; anger grits its teeth.

Both kindness & its opposite are wild within us,
don't let them convince you otherwise.

Still, let us prize civility. May I not use kindness to cover
the lie nor mask the truth, but if it eases the day, let it.

Make no mistake, your coldheartedness may offend,
but I will choose a fool's benevolence.

Long live the sturdy oak; let the wild vine grow.
It may not be easy, but it beats being rotten within.