Awake, Alone

I fill rooms with imagined friends
& am often alone within the loud, surrounding crowd.
I have searched the mirror for a recognizable face
& the window for a trace of ghosts redressed as birds.

I've climbed predictable heights,
found myself lost in familiar halls,
run far away in hope I'd never catch a glimpse of the damage left behind,
but find forgetfulness faster even than memory spinning out new, old songs.
I'm first to recognize that humility lies,
& last to find truth within my doubt,
but tonight I'm in love with the sound of a sleeping house.

I scan the quiet pre-midnight for the shuffle of dreaming dear ones,
allow the pulsing of four hearts to harmonize,
the chests' gentle fall & rise: a body tide
whose gravity rides me through what might have been a lonely night.
Let this night's song remain until these eyes close,
& let this not be the last night that alone feels so much like shared time.

Phase Three

When I started this space nearly a year and a half ago I called it All Shall Be Well.The thought was that I wanted a place to post non-news (poems) that suggest the world wasn't crashing & burning. I still don't think it is. A few months later I changed it 1606 & 231, the numerical markers of the two places I most often write (besides my car). Although these two "real" spaces are still very much important to me & what I write, I have decided that they no longer represent what I'm up to with this project. Therefore, welcome to Field Marks.

FIELD MARK

noun
a visible mark or characteristic that can be used in identifying a bird or other animal in the field.

I am no naturalist; I am not a birder. But my relationship with nature, with birds in particular, is similar to my relationship with words, with poetry especially. That is, I seek them out eagerly, I cannot imagine not paying attention to words, not being willing to locate the poetic in life, in thought, & in "real" experience in the world, in birds even.

In calling this space Field Marks, I am locating these writings within the field that is theworld where I live. It encompasses room 231, the hill on which 1606 sits, the 52 miles of Kansas highway between them, and the landscapes I travel, both "real" & imaginary. So that's the field; here I will post some of the marks.

Thanks for visiting, please feel free to leave your own marks.

P.S. Sometimes ghosts leave the best marks.

*************

What is & What seems

Sometimes it's difficult to choose
which to believe in:

Between the certainty of knowledge
& the whisper of doubt.

The perception of identity
& the palimpsest of memory.

The blur of distance,
or proximity's cues.

The Taste of Things

There’s a word, I love,

I heard & said & said,

days ago, that now

cannot remember.

The sense of it remains somehow

rounded round the palette,

sound still on the  tongue,

but now unutterable, almost impalpable.

This is what memory is like.

The taste of a certain moment

sticks in the throat.

Another settles in a cavity

that years have slowly eaten away.

We savor the familiar,

long for the sweet trigger

from an earlier life,

some unrecoverable trace.

The word does not satisfy this.

Note: I think the second half needs another stanza. I worked on some ideas but cut them for balance. Any suggestions? I had been thinking about this poem (the word on the tip of the tongue) for weeks. Listening to Calvin Forbes read "Momma Said" on The Poetry Magazine Podcast helped me get this draft written. Thanks to Don Share and Christian Wiman; they may not publish my poems but sometimes they help make them.)

When You've Seen a Ghost

The difference between
wake & sleep
is less obscured than
your friends might think.

The bell still rings
at the prescribed time;
appointments await
or remain unscheduled.

No one comments:
You look like...
(as they drift on by
pasty in Egyptian sheets).

The light in the hallway,
always on,
casts a twisty shadow
on a childhood wall.

What the ghost said:
Faith, if it is at all,
is a fragile thing,
waste no time worrying.

What you look like
when you've seen a ghost
is nothing different than
the faraway look in a window mirror.

Renewal By Vice

This is more
or less than
Carnival theory:

Wear the mask
& exercise
(exorcize?)
sequestered
want.

Cherry pipe-
smoke, amber
liquid, melting
icecubes, filter
flicking, pleasure
thought, bliss
imagined, guiltless
grapple:

Do all roads lead
to born again?

-------------------
In other words: Beware the damage of too much denial of small temptation.

Part I: Fog

What hangs over us,
here, now, was once
a part of something else:

Coherence is giving
from excess to cover lack
(each what they need most).

To adhere is thoughtless,
the way the tongue triggers
a long remembered prayer
without the deliverance of grace.

Let my promises keep to their motions,
falling like thin sheets of rain.

May they soak into the skin,
mingle with the ever-turning blood,
filter through systems & deposit in cells.

May it all cohere, always changing,
may each new leaf, needle, & cone echo the code.

Let there be someone to rest beneath
the successes & failures of a meaningful life.

Amen.

Dispatch 11: From Sea to Sea

I remember days ago sitting in the car in a parking lot in Carmel, my window open & my back to the ocean, three boys dozing behind me, one snoring to beat the waves crashing only a few yards beyond us. I remember thinking about how far from home we were at the end of the western world, nothing but sea for miles.

Since then, we have survived the kingdom of the mouse, crossed the western barrenness, hid away a night on sin city, slid through Utah's deathly slickrock & painted desert, climbed the Rocky passes, & rolled the ancient sea now filled with prairie grass, broken promise, & knee high wheat.

Something of the majesty of its open ocean past reared up as we crossed Kansas. A summer thunderstorm lit the sky for 200 miles, finally crashing upon us near the Capitol city. The last hour slid by as I sat, awake, alone again--with fragile sleeping cargo, in a car drunk on homesickness as it burst through rain & debris knowing the way, knowing rest was near, knowing we had survived another windswept journey.

Dispatch 10: For Mr. Muir

You walked, with a head full of bible, (balanced by Burns?) & an iron heart
that allowed no sentiment outside spirit matter communion, saving it all for the high Sierra, the tallest trees, & glacial loss. When you arrived here, you must have known immediately: this is the last place I'll ever need.

( I am still processing our trip through Muir's stomping grounds, but after Muir Woods I had to write something. More later.)

Dispatch 09: Of the Bay

I am not a lover of the big city, I prefer the tuckaway town, the hamlet, the burg of limited horses, but there are a few that get me at first glance, grab a hold of me somewhere deep, twang the strings a bit, elevate the blood pressure & settle in for a long relationship.

I remember this feeling years ago in a city that might not have been, the city below the waters, that exhilarated me with its smells, tastes & tendencies for debauchery. I was young & I was hooked. I have been back, an older man & loved it for better reasons, though some remained the same.

But that was a Southern city steeped in a beautiful & troubled past. This one is just as unique & nearly as varied. Its hills torment & thrill, its winds refresh & chill to the bone. It offers scent & sound & even its gimmicks deliver. It too is a city that might have been better left alone, placed somewhere less treacherous, but like its bayou counterpart, I am ever thankful for its dangerous beauty.

It has it's hold on me; I will see what it has to say, this hanging town nestled in its bay.

Dispatch 08: Glacier Point

I have no answer for the question of glacier & granite. From 8000 feet, the rest of Half Dome can be seen scattered along the carpetless floor where the ice giant worked its way down the hall its slow-time creep created.

The broken dome remains as a symbol of the power of ice; its shattered & scattered boulders that of fire.

Above all this, yet still below a clouded blue sky, the peaks of the Sierra smile at their capacity for violence. What they witnessed, their shadowy scars also retell.