don’t go by what I say
go by how the map reads
I must have lost our way
the map is where it leads
also, I’m not your guide
in fact I don’t know why
we’re walking side by side
or who let out that cry
Monday, January 4, 2021
Paying Respects
We found he iron garden-gate
linked to white pickets
hard and wondrous
to open. Ornamentation dated it.
Up the walkway then,
into her stifling house,
where she sat in her purple
dress and parchment skin,
saying what she thought
her whole life had taught
her. Almost too old to pity,
she was too austere to embrace.
The voice seemed to come
from years ago.
Our minds assured us
we would never grow
that weird if ever we
grew that old. Our minds
were confident we could
open the gate again, get
away. It stood out there
in advanced darkness. Inside,
the seconds of her clanking clock
ate the minutes of our patience.
Saturday, January 2, 2021
The Ride, the Badge
Tonight my memory is
a palomino exuberantly hooved
in an alpine meadow.
I ride the horse bareback
and fall off, replacing air
in lungs with fear,
pushing fear out then inhaling
again. I hold out
a sugar-cube on a flat palm
for my memory,
which nuzzles with a soft
gray mouth, nips
the cube, leaves lovely
equine slobber. The tail flicks out
at a fat fly, makes broom sounds.
Sunlight, the old sheriff, jumps
up on my memory,
and everything goes golden,
gathers
into a bright badge of
summer.
Evening Studies
What I learned about evening
included flapping bats silhouetted
against last light, mosquitoes
stuck to skin, a human need for
liquor to lead one into night.
Evening reduced disappointment
into sour essences affecting flavor
of suppers, brightness of eyes,
ligaments of love. I learned
the ambience of graveyards becomes
buoyant at dusk: Ghosts get
in a good mood, old oaks cool down,
words on headstones recede. In
twilight I studied attitudes of awe
toward beautiful young women.
Gratefully, I took in breezes
of their perfumes, watched
the care with which they walked
in a shadowless hour.
Squirrels
I’ve watched squirrels my whole life. They
inhabit a zone just outside domesticity. Are
diplomatically wild. They worry and stare,
behaviors of which I approve. They horde
forgetfully, gorge daintily. Sometimes
they just stop. And fall asleep, mid-day,
on a limb or a fence post. Squirrel
entropy. Sometimes frenzy
seizes them—something to do
with sex. Or fleas? —Mad bursts of wants
a frozen pose arrests. Squirrels
are not everything I had hoped wilderness
to be. They are though everything
I would want squirrels to be, and
slightly more, for there’s always
one more surprise set to leap
out of squirrel-evolution and seize
the nut, bury it, and pat fresh
soil over the nut-grave. And run away!
Fingernail Clippers
[new version]
A sea creature of lore owned
a gigantic, snub-nosed head
from which a body tapered
shyly. Digital blacksmiths hammer
out our steel replicas.
Lever and fulcrum and
paired toothless blades:
the spare architecture
of a specialized tool.
Owing to his mania,
the reclusive billionaire
eschewed clippers and let
his fingernails accrue
like stalactites. They clicked
like scurrying roaches
when he played cards.
Crows and monkeys groom
each other, picking bugs
from feathers and fur. A calm
comes over them as they pick
and peck. Thinking of them,
I clip a thumbnail--hiding,
like them, from hunger and
fear for a moment, attending
quietly to a bodily chore,
pressing a lever like Archimedes,
watching slivers of keratin
fall away like dreams.
thing poem
Friday, January 1, 2021
Sandwich
Sometimes you need a sandwich,
especially when it's not all you need.
Every culture calls it something
else. It's bread and something else.
Sometimes you need dry and warm.
Or you need to rationalize failure
or to read about Sufism. Sometimes
you need to be touched, seen, heard.
But's that's all beside the point,
isn't it? when you're stomach
and your gums ache from
hunger. I'm making sandwiches
today. To be given to the homeless.
I see them beside the street
where I drop off the sandwiches.
They live in tents. Sleep on
grass. In the wealthiest empire
ever to exist. Whatever. They
can't eat outrage. It's the sandwich
that matters, sitting there on a
plate, a plank, or your lap.
The distributors want bread,
bologna, cheese, and mustard.
Never mayonnaise. Someone
I'll never know lifts the sandwich,
opens their mouth, chomps,
tastes, chews, swallows. Feels
just a little bit better. I hope.
What do I know? Nothing. I know
sometimes I've needed a sandwich.
To get from one moment
to the next. And some water.
And a place to sleep. And sleep.
But it starts with a sandwich.
Something very particular
in the exact place you are
is what you need. What I need.
Some bread and something else.
To eat. To eat. To eat.
From a Diary of the Plague Year (20)
Masked, we stand like sentries.
In line six feet apart at
our local post office.
At the counter, postal
clerks query clients, shuffle
forms, tease computer
screens, and explain.
And explain. Their knowledge
and patience are gnostic.
They meet miffed
remarks with measured
words, weighing them
like a package bound
for anywhere on the planet.
Older ones of us
in line may see
the Post Office as sacred.
May have lived on rural
routes or in micro-towns.
The world got in touch
with us through the Post
Office. Some may have
dabbled secretly in
philately. Or corresponded
with St. Nick. Or ordered
a baseball glove or a doll
from a catalogue as thick
as an oak stump. We
do not know why a crowd
in power wants to wreck
this secular temple. Weary,
always mocked, the post office
is, like a library or a free
clinic, the kind of institution
that saves civilization,
as drops of rain eventually
save crops. Which is why,
in line and masked, holding
boxes and plump
envelopes, we accept
the wait
with everyday grace.
Thursday, December 31, 2020
Under the Horizon
[version two]
The Old Man got body-tired of
and mind-bored with
labor about the same time.
Built his last rock wall at 70.
I thought of him today
when I was chopping at a vegetable
garden's frozen mud in January.
My mind let my body make my mind
think, "This shit is getting old."
How he would have phrased it.
I felt like I thought the sun
looks when it seems to drop
below the top of shadowed hills:
ready for bed. Of course there's more
work waiting under the horizon.
William Tell Ravine
[second version]
(a tributary of the North Yuba River, Sierra County, California)
Before he'd heard anything about Switzerland, Schiller,
Rossini & stuff, he'd looked across the river from the house
at the long white beard of William Tell Falls. The sheer-drop
ravine looked perpendicular. No home for trout. Im-
pulsively, at 17, he decided to hike up there.
Headed out, crossed the river, climbed straight up,
more laddering than walking. Ravine was path in form
of bedrock. Manzanita brush walled the sides.
He got as far as the pool the falls slapped in jagged
pulses. Sounds of that constant collision careened
around the stone box. There was no climbing further.
In soaked jeans and wet boots, legs loaded up
with lactic acid, he slithered down like an arthritic
snake, satisfied to have spied on a geologic scene,
to have introduced himself to William Tell Ravine,
and to have witnessed water and rock in their own time.
Sunday, December 27, 2020
Wednesday, December 23, 2020
"Christmas Eve--Nearing Midnight, New York," by Langston Hughes
A short Christmas Eve poem by the great Langston Hughes, reading and video:
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)