Tonight
For a while I will sit up listening
to the crickets. Your head on my lap.
I know, I know peace is balanced on
a blade of grass in a breeze
but tonight I am that blade
and nothing will fall
Tonight
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Category Archives: New Writing
To the Tune of a Song Not Yet Written
Note: another of a series of poems with the same title, to be scattered throughout a larger project called The Drift.
To the Tune of a Song Not Yet Written
Now we enter the season of our age
before summer’s end yellow leaves drift
haze floats between us and the foothills
still the sun is strong the rain when it comes
like the same words over and over
is not yet cold and when I look
between birds and hills I see the past
and am reminded of the future
To the Tune of a Song Not Yet Written
Note: one of a series of poems with the same title, to be scattered throughout a larger project called The Drift.
To the Tune of a Song Not Yet Written
I just spoke to the miles
they have no intention
of coming between us
but cannot get out of
the way so I looked up
the towers of clocks could
count the ways to keep us
together but not give back
even a moment spent
without you so I tried
boxing the yearbooks folded
the distance into my back
pocket even the intentions
bad and good wanted to help
but could not make up their minds
so I asked sleep sleep forgave me
I’m not sure for what but having
removed it all walked with you
wide awake beneath swallows and oak
humming these lines as I forget them
On Not Saying Goodbye
On Not Saying Goodbye
Companionable silence
breeze through the window
far away, the road
Overcast, Full Moon, Rain
Overcast Full Moon Rain
Does the insect know he has a shadow
or what it is cast from
When he moves from lamplight
and the moon cannot remember him
behind the scrim of rain and the shadow drifts
into illegibility does it add its unknowing
to the black page these lines are my shadow
are what the moon remembers
The Ancient Ones
The Ancient Ones
We think we see them flying by
in a whir almost invisible
until one alights by our table
I know from the way it looks at me
that we are the ancient ones
outliving fin and hoof and claw
outliving the water’s eyes and the wings
outliving these young things our spirits
Open Window
Open Window
Things come in at night
the voice of one locked out
the voice of one who locked him out
(this may be the last room they share)
Artist Painting Over Canvas
Artist Painting Over Canvas
detail from painting by Mary Winifred Hood Schwaner
The last I saw of the antlers
the cloud resembling a tomato
half materialized tree leaning
against years of gypsy weather
the old woman always
in the background always goes last and
she is the only one who comes back
but now you have decided to leave her
there her face whitewashed with relief
not finished enough to paint over
a tree begins behind her a brown stroke
in the foreground a young woman
her hands hold something valuable
you can see it in her face
even though the thing she holds
is almost out of the picture not yet realized
red vest light blue garment against
the yellow field past the dirt path
what will she hold and will she offer
it before the white brush comes down
you dab her face as if wiping away
a tear and promising her she will stay
the road darkens in the fading light
or is it growing relief the old woman’s
face does not change the tree
behind her branches off the canvas
[with a nod to bussokuseki’s “Earnest Offering” and ideas of erasure it inspired]
Erratum
Erratum
Smaller than a pen’s
mistake on paper
misplaced dosh
over the letter next
to the i are the wings
of the small insect
opening and closing at the
center of this thought
Fore-cast
Fore-cast
The breeze comes as promised
without rain but we don’t mind
so much is unreliable a sunny
afternoon unpredicted is welcome
and as last year and the years
before on summer days like this
yellow walnut leaves cascade
a promise the breeze won’t break
Translations from the English 