Yearly Archives: 2018

November hymnal (23)

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November hymnal (23)

On Friday I avoid the streets and stores and wait.
For doors to open in the words.

You can’t just force your way in words. The stars
Would feed you to the empty hordes

Of night. Instead I balance on the clock’s
Left hand and hope the day will take its course

And let the minutes devour whoever they stalk.
Some days have guns. And hours enforcing  a curfewed

Month’s thoughts. Silence on the phone
Between whatever tone you choose for it

To wake you from your dark jade dream to stone’s
Cold unpolished light. He wouldn’t hit anyone

He can’t enjoy, time. Enjoys the stars
Like fish scattering from the noise.

November hymnal (22)

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November hymnal (22)

So, after gratitude: the third part of autumn.
Questions without punctuation

Like love poems which will find answers only
When they reach the wrong person

In another language. Then the late slant
Of sun appears to end a sentence

Without words. No hope of early release.
The moon is balanced on the sky’s highest

Tent pole, just above the bear on the bicycle.
But nobody sees the bicycle. Suddenly

In the night’s back third we’re all up there
Clutching the ring to our parachutes

In the diffident cold, like all the stars
And no less courageous for it, our panic

Making a shape for strangers
Holding hands below.

November hymnal (21)

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November hymnal (21)

Late at night, the moon starting over.
Down the stairs the piano shines quietly

Under a stained glass lampshade.
Where leaves and boughs are a single shape

Connecting the trunks which disappear into darkness.
Like music is a single sealed vessel

Coming through the clouds the moon plays its phrase
in a lost key descending the sky’s scales.

Every season is within it: fruit, seed, husk, flower
Forgotten. In the dark mirror on the piano

Beyond the owl’s shadow the edges of sheet
Music shine. Starting over, before I unsnap

The accordion of thanksgiving, I’ll sleep.

November hymnal (20)

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November hymnal (20)

Memories of jumping in leaf piles
Are like the action of jumping

Into memory: edged shapes so light
The sharp pleasant scent

Composing myself amid total
Decomposition (meanwhile late

Fall’s upside down spring leaves
Reach the canopy of ground

And ever so slowly begin
The ascension to crown the roots)

November hymnal (19)

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November hymnal (19)

After freezing rain, the slow burn continues.
Ice burns, air burns. Morning mist clarifies

Into a river’s moving lens.
Sliding faster than fire.

This will always be the month of my unbecoming.
November burnishes the mind’s naked bark

As the details drift down to a grass blade’s slow spark.
The recent past dead at your feet but covering

Everything. There is no forgetting
No remembering only

November containing everything
Changing past changed future.

And on the ground the hovering
Vulture’s static shadow.

November hymnal (18)

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November hymnal (18)

Mid-November dusk cut short its set.
The cloud curtain did not part for an encore.

The moon crawled up it like a bug,
Marmorated like the shield shaped insects

We removed from my son’s curtain hours
Earlier, tossing them carefully out the window

And watching them buzz into flight.
Now, curtain and window and screen thrown open,

We climbed out to the roof of the porch
And watched marbled imperceptible motion of the moon,

Like an insect that came all the way from Korea
To barely move on a blue curtain.

So much of the world seems that still
While changing things faster than we can notice.

For just a minute we sat still, too. It was my son’s first time
on the outside of the structure of things. He tallied

It up: angle of the roof, texture of the tar shingles, scent
Of the colorless night and when he said This would be

A great place to write I knew he meant everywhere just
outside structure, where things come a long way to seem still.

November hymnal (17)

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November hymnal (17)

The night ice is a still wind.
Rips strong branches off trees

after the hours of violent silence.
Those remaining hold their tears

until the sun tells them it’s safe
and when they are done crying

there is no sign of what tore
them apart and exposed heart-

wood to the elements and circumstantial
invaders of life. Some love is like that.

The sudden split of solid direction,
the feathered slow motion crash,

the morning sunnier
and milder than anyone thought.

November hymnal (16)

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November hymnal (16)

October has its world afire
April the sudden bloom

May the maples set up their tents
knowing what they know

August the endless afternoons
January the hangover welcoming

the long haul ahead of March’s late snow
after February stiff arms you with winter

July the curling surf and sunburn and
the sweet magnitude of June

Oh June. September somehow
seems all seasons at once

except December’s definitive wince
But this month where nothing grows

or is saved nothing fully revealed save
absence absence of warmth absence of ice

In this space where there is nothing
To remember we remember gratitude

November hymnal (15) / November dream warning

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November hymnal (15) / November dream warning

“Get ready for a mix of disappointments over
night! just after midnight some hard truth moves in

and stalls, followed by heavy accumulations
of regret, turning to desire before dawn.”

But I didn’t dream.
Instead strange birds surrounded the house

and told me how earlier a rainbow crashed
like a cold war satellite into the house next door

without a sound but the couple who live
there were playing folk music on a stage

ten miles long. They could walk from encore
to foyer in one step. We have both buried

dogs like best friends in our yards; we have
both practiced songs with windows open

and the birds squandered the pot of gold
with outlandish poker bets on the back porch

as black walnuts fell, never upsetting the game
or the oversized cards as big as pillows.

November hymnal (14)

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November hymnal (14)

The sea stone sets down on the sky’s lobby.
Only the birds pass through it; their feathers

Still remember when they were scales.
The star has sent a poem to commemorate

The occasion. It’s the same poem every star
Composes. That every civilization has waited for.

The family pauses between house and car.
One of them points upward. A thousand things

Still alive in the trees and underbrush see
A thousand different families.

The birds rotate the stone like gears and snow
flecks off the stone as if God were sharpening

A great knife on it, to cut through the pile of burnt
Trees. To cut through ignorance, doubt, faith.

Four years later the house is empty. Sunlight
Streaks through the lobby and is arrested by

Clouds. Night falls. The star’s poem finally arrives:
“Too late!” reads the entire poem. Because they

Always have to be right, stars have few words
To work with. The sound of birds traveling through

The sea stone is like that of snow on steps.
The sound of stars composing is like a shovel on a walkway.