All things being equal
I will take the eight of swords.
The lady in my dreams sits up the tree
A ways next to the star. The card
For the eight of swords has only four edges
But each is a double edged sword
So you should keep it in your pocket
When approaching trees in dreams.
Pancake kick
Sit down into the kick
And spread out until you are irresistible.
Trophy kick
Hold a single moment mid-kick
Perfectly balanced and do
Not move the rest of your life
Winter Weather Warning kick
Promise vengeance. Promise no mercy.
Then walk softly and meekly past.
Then kick a week later.
Spring kick
Turn your kick into soft raindrops
That hurt nobody. Immediately
A million small green kicks emerge.
People come outside and beg to be kicked.
Love kick
Kicking the habit is
Just another kick.
Off the main road the weather has herded
Things long forgotten on invisible avenues
Of air. Most of our paths are so transparent
We can’t see the end coming:
In a high branch a plastic bag full of wind
Perches like a hawk surveying the field.
Before Sleep and Work
Tonight I will enter these lines in the shared diary of souls
Because I know I must add them before they disappear
And I alone am responsible for their care.
It will be read by a few, the words all that is clear
But the meaning, while not obscured, different to each
As if we each see the same thing with our own eyeglasses, which focus things perfectly for that one or this one.
If there is a single meaning it will elude me as well
Though I am first to chase it down
Like a boy chases his shadow.
Then I will be able finally to sleep
And when I wake like a child sitting up
In the surf as dreams cascade around me and fall back into a larger mass of presence,
I will open the double doors of the newspaper office
And say hello and walk up the old stairs wide enough for a car to drive up them
And type out the writing that will reach thousands
And be quickly read, thousands of words instantly forgotten
Though it must leave a single shape of meaning, even if muddy,
Even if only for a short time, like a child’s castle by the surf
Still standing amid the roar of nearby waves
And the flutter of a newspaper pulled out of a sunbather’s hands by the wind
That will distract other beach goers,
Who will turn as if the shadow of someone familiar could be seen on the sand.
When people die their eyes change color
As their vision turns inward in the seconds
That close decades of doors. They hear brand new
Sounds from their bodies, of people walking
Away from their jobs for the last time, of a family trying
To sleep the night before they leave a house
Nobody will move back into, of the crew
After the show packing now-silent instruments
Into their individual velvet darknesses.
The brevity is a single color, never seen
Before. Like a snow just before spring
It redefines the shapes of things
And then melts away, too fast and too slow
For consciousness to follow. But one
Does, alone, catching up to an echo, of
eyelids sliding shut against snow’s sudden glare.
The chapel of Ease was destroyed by fire
Left by a population fleeing the ruins of war
Along a stagecoach connection overhung
With spanish moss. Two brick walls hang
On like stagecraft from the sky. The foundation
Seems hardly to touch the ground, never had
A chance to dig roots into the sandy soil
Around the river whose local inhabitants
Called Big Bends. Two lead-crossed
Round windows, like cartoon eyes of the dead
Stare uncomprehending through spanish moss,
the wisps of song surviving on air alone.
The Yemassee started the American Revolution
Sixty one years too soon. They’d already left
One home and decided to stand and fight
For the second one against slavery and cruelty.
Sixty one years. People live and die
In that span and tribes disappear. The chapel of
Ease was rebuilt and destroyed and will
Not be rebuilt. The hanging moss, like so many
Lives, can be light as air but drape a haunting
Stillness on the trees even as a breeze flows through.
1.
It’s the underlined day
On the calendar of forgiveness.
But I cannot make the call.
2.
I get up early
To let the dogs out but
It’s too cold–they stay on the porch
As if waiting for a ride to pull up
Or a drink. I walk to the back yard
And relieve myself
Against the frosted grass.
3.
The black rabbit
Lounges in his hut
By the family vegetable garden.
He often rode on the back of our dog.
One day he lay on his side,
Not waiting for the morning
Or for us to find him.
He was finished and he went.
Leaving only a stiff black shroud
And the sound of birds.
Winter leaves like that.
4.
In our blizzard-crafted snow cave
We almost died
But the snow plow missed us as we hid.
Years later, my childhood friend Marty
in his capacity as a civil servant
of the public works
Tore up a curb with his plow right
Across the street from
Where we’d once schemed
How to pay for the garage window
We broke with a barrage of snowballs.
5.
After an early March storm
I snuck out before my son woke
To make lumps in the snow
Like snake coils surfacing.
Over breakfast I swore
I saw the Loch Ness Snow Monster
Out the bay window in the plow drift:
When we went to investigate
He discovered a large egg
Of ice, snow, and dirt
By the edge of the plowed pile.
He demanded we take it inside.
We put it in the freezer
To see what would hatch.
6.
Spring grows over the winter
Like a scar
The hurt season’s swelling
Diminishes
We almost over-reach for it
As if we prefer being sore
Over forgetting, a cloud
Ceiling over empty blue sky.
Suddenly it’s spring. The trees say so.
They don’t confer with the cold
Morning or mountain gusts. They don’t
Ask if we’re ready. The maple says, mind this–
And flecks with red punctuations like starting
A sentence backward, all the year’s statements
With their periods, leaving language to unfurl at its
Own, slower, pace. The trunk’s shadow runs down the slope
Like a creek then rivulets of branches reach across
The road towards your porch like it has
Something to tell you, only you. But come closer:
You must get up and step into the road
To see what it means, trickling black
At your feet. And definition depends
On surfaces for the depths to survive:
Too late you see how at its outermost edge
the message in twig shapes
Crumbles across the texture of street
Pebbles, first like a word breaking into syllables,
Then slight sounds of insistence or regret,
Then a breath then the thought somebody
Was about to speak but you turned to see no one,
Then your own breath, held, while you are
Listening for its shadow
Out of the earth
Up through the dawn
Into the sky
It won’t take long
*
Over the trees on the trestled
sky we traveled
The roar of time’s grooved
Wheels fitting against the tracks
Of consciousness the brakes
Of waking squealing into song
*
I like holding an old penny
Something seemingly worthless
Older than me, yet still here.
It is like holding something
From the future
Another place I haven’t been
And from which many worthless
Things will also survive me
*
Waking to a song that does not exist
And forgetting it then humming
It in the shower and from there
The lyrics came back and I told
My wife and then forgot them
But my oldest daughter who’d
Overheard remembered them
When I remembered later
That I’d forgotten something
So now it is a song
Translations from the English 