Reading/video of some short light verse for a heavy wet day in the Pacific Northwest:
Monday, January 4, 2021
Cup
I am contained
in the cup of me
originally,
it's claimed, we came
from the sea.
actually,
what emerged were versions
of things that could
turn into us. nonetheless,
here I am, a full
cup of me,
a compound composed
of me, salt
water modified
elaborated, prorated,
not quite yet
evaporated;
self-contemplated.
Hiram Reports from His Adventure
In dark vegetation I couldn’t see
my body or hear thoughts. Fevers
rotted memory. Maggots flourished
and founded a parliament.
I hung in delirium, a sack
of neural bits and pieces. Birds in
endless green hooted, screamed.
I was transported to a desert that
cooked off confusion, revealing
basic elements of who allegedly
I’d been. My body became obvious
once more, eating dry food and
drinking wet water. I worked
in a factory of noon—my job to attach
objects to their shadows. Memories
arrived, stumbling like scattered
soldiers returning across sand,
descending from red rim-rock,
shedding uniforms, looking for
lovers and work.
Lost
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
Paying Respects
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]
Friday, January 1, 2021
Sandwich
From a Diary of the Plague Year (20)
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.