December 8th, morning sky
Venus pulled the moon over the morning sky
like a necklace snagged on a t-shirt
skids over a pale back on the surface of heaven
December 8th, morning sky
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Category Archives: New Writing
Difference Engine
Difference Engine
The creek was buried forty years ago.
It runs unseen beneath the motel parking lot.
Here I am taking off my clothes
before I write this next couplet.
I don’t want what the day wore
to come between us. Like all
those tourists, who came to see
the thing that was moved
so they had a place to park
and undress, and sleep
without seeing a thing.
Asterism
Asterism
A few stars, like holes in oblivion’s memory
mapped a gesture in us we could not forget
Even time, confused, changed direction
rolling the jar of the moon back home
Saving Time
Standing in the back yard
of my heart.
No value
in raking a yard of wet leaves!
River
River
River how do I find you always
in the same place when
you have the inclination of the mountain
yet lean towards level speech
narrow minded yet source of every ocean
where a late sun is sipping on the horizon
I Remember the Future
I Remember the Future
I remember the future where all poets were famous
I remember the future where there were so few
things and people that they were all the best
where nobody cares for long who won or lost
I remember the future had always been where the family
would be sound of mind and body
I remember the force of the world working
backwards in time broke upon me like a windshield
I remember the moment looking forward became
looking back that all these futures drove
the present and their shadows solidified
to stone became the past
I remember this moment was when I understood
love
but tonight as the moon slowly fills
with the bones of days
(all the dead come from the future
from the days that did not live)
it is harder to remember the past
where I learned I did not have to forgive
myself or others to take my next breath
the only one available in the present
from Spring Songs (12)
from Spring Songs (12)
12.
Midnight. In a corner of a room
a few days away, a half century crouches.
In the dark the corners of the years round up
certainty into the smooth black mast
against which direction flaps without words,
a trunk removed from its roots.
In the morning it is the maple and its shadow
unwinding along riverways of air and light.
The maple is old but the leaves always young,
the hours of the year, the half million
minutes through which we extend and end,
define the canopy of entirety itself by the shape
of what we miss. We shed time but are shaped by it;
wine on a quiet night, before crickets.
from Spring Songs (11)
from Spring Songs (11)
11.
Upstairs in my old house I find a bat
sleeping off a warm May morning
I usher the cats from the room
open the windows and let him rest
Toward dusk I come back his eyes are open
so I gather him up in a pitcher and in slow
motion pour him into the cooling air
from Spring Songs (9)
from Spring Songs (9)
9.
The weather came from the east this time
as low as the sun in the west and the sun
And the weather crossed swords over young leaves
glowing green against gray. And the tulips held.
The gray face came down and looked into the street’s eyes
and this was the first of May. Swallows follow a storm
like they have just won an argument with God
and the prize, so small we can’t see it, is everywhere.
from Spring Songs (6)
from Spring Songs (6)
6.
Lightning in the western sky over mountains.
East are riverstones of stars blinking through
the swift current of clouds.
Wherever I look across a rainy day and night
I see the soundless ocean floor of mind:
Silt of words that have not shifted for months
covers the breasthook of an overturned boat.
From a calm black gap in the burdenboards
the season shoots and flowers like an octopus
Translations from the English 