Two Couplets on Vision
The sun rises in opposition to image
and sets in middle of a million pictures
*
What’s right before me is a blur but worth the trade
to escape the burden of frames and look around
Two Couplets on Vision
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Category Archives: The Drift
September 21
September 21
Dusk leans in to the porch as we talk this anniversary night.
A cricket quietly mans the railing, as if he too were taking a moment
away from the kids and phone and all the cricket world’s white
noise and sitting on the silent rail of the moment. Clouds once pink
with end of day excitement have settled to the gray of river stones.
Later it will rain. Already the fresh breeze on the front’s other side
is banging the screen door of the abandoned house next to us.
Tomorrow the new season will walk in, confounded, wondering
who left the place and why, why they couldn’t wait for cooler
weather to prevail. On a thin boat of thought I push us away
from this container of emptiness to emptiness itself,
pointing out your heavenly body in the silt of the star river.
There is a cricket manning the oars and he will serenade us as well,
if he is still alive when we anchor just past the equinox.
Consequence
Consequence
Rain on a day off differs
from rain on a business day.
On the road it is fine but soaking.
Under the tree one is protected
from rain’s penetrating consistency
though drops recombine sometimes
on their way through the leaves
with larger consequence
Before the Fall
Before the Fall
In the summer night’s coolness walnuts are dropping
on roofs cars earth with sharp reports and thuds
In the morning they punctuate the early September light
their husks green round unbroken on the ground ending
all the invisible sentences on the season’s last pages
Lunar Occultation
Lunar Occultation
Halfway up the maple, the moon looks
suspended in a mesh of telephone wires.
A few hours ago it blotted a bright blue
planet from the sky—it takes 84 Earth years
for a single year to pass there but the moon
obscures it in ten seconds before its thirteen
rings can split the horizon. On this harvest month
it can dim even the dog star but now it needs my help—
tilting my head in homage I take a few steps
to the right, and the moon is free.
*
Author’s note: The lunar occultation referred to is when the moon passes in front of a planet, in tonight’s case, Uranus. I combined this with the visual experience I had in my front yard this evening. In the long run, I think the version of the poem below, shorter and without the additional planet-specific info, may be the final form this poem takes. Because the specific information about how distance affects time and perception, is very interesting to me, and just kinda cool, I wanted to share the original poem above as well. Due to an unfortunate hit-and-run accident soon after its formation, Uranus is also a strangely tilted planet, thus the reference in the last stanza. Feel free to comment on which version you prefer. Lunar Occultation Halfway up the maple, the moon looks
suspended in a mesh of telephone wires. A few hours ago it blotted a bright blue
planet from the sky—now it needs my help. Tilting my head in homage I take a few steps
to the right, and the moon is free.
Cool Morning, On the Road to Work, and Later
Cool Morning, On the Road to Work, and Later
Sparrows huddle under the car’s warm frame.
As I come back with my coffee they flow out
between the tires like a sound. Gray clouds nest
on the ridgeline. Driving into this image of sullenness
lightens me—as I pass through the opaque menace thins
to harmless mist. On the road home the light rain
drones outside the window like a distant train.
From my porch my daughter and I watch bats
sweep away the dusk. Pockets of light appear,
tuck into lamps for a few hours, then go out.
Rehearsal
Rehearsal
Reading together on the couch. In wordless motion
my daughter gets up and walks out of sight.
Just to the kitchen, this time, for water, but I sit quietly
and prepare, listening to her steps moving away.
Tea Ceremonies
Tea Ceremonies
Maybe aged twelve, I started staying up past 11
watching the local news with my dad
cup of tea and the Yankees score the daily last things
Tea that late never kept me awake
it was for time with my father
and learning tomorrow’s weather
In my dorm at college it attracted curiosity
people started coming to my room at eleven
arriving with mugs steaming coming to see the day done
One winter night we took it outside
into the courtyard in a snow flurry
three dozen students in flannel
pajamas sweatpants boots and mugs
spelling out T-E-A in giant letters
not a protest just a confirmation
atypical for that time and age
Tonight we talk after the kids are asleep
while you bathe I make you tea
which we take upstairs to our room
where last night a strange green insect
watched me from the windowsill
while I drank tea and wrote
about a dream and slept by you
awoke to today an empty cup to fill
For What Is Already Gone
For What Is Already Gone
This windy September night the air’s as noisy as any
shallow stream
Beyond it the stars shimmer through time’s waves
Beyond them lies the unreachable
river bed
Beyond that if there is any bedrock to the soul
of the universe will I find you whole
again there
or will it be an imprint on an eon’s sediment
of what has passed
both of us
already becoming others in another time
Meaning of a Dream
Meaning of a Dream
Alone in the house, in my bedroom, turning to go. The door to the closet is shutting, though I hadn’t noticed it open, I cross the room and walk into it. The closet stretches out around the house, goes around the back of the fireplace up here on the second floor, continues on, and someone is walking with her back to me. Hey, I say. What are you doing here? Who are you? She continues as if a ghost who didn’t hear me. I speed up to a trot around another corner. The closet begins to look like the basement of my grandmother’s house. I used to run as a child in a thin alley between the wood paneled walls of the bar my grandfather and father built in one half of the basement and the concrete wall of the foundation, with its wires and water pipes and mousetraps, though it was just a ranch in those days it expanded with the adventurous mind, had strange back alleys like a little town. I cannot catch up, I raise my voice, Hey! Come back, who are you? At the same time I can hear an echo of my voice, but it’s not an echo, it’s an actual voice coming from a man asleep on his bed, sounding to my inner ear like a bleating sheep, even though I can still hear myself loud and clear and strident as I lose ground in the chase, and my wife begins coaxing me awake with some words I cannot quite hear, and then I’m pulled backwards and downwards, as if my being is slipping out of my head and filling up the space in my waking body. I sit up. In the dark I shuffle to my desk and turn on the lamp. I know what this dream means, I just need to write it down, it’s about how the people and memories that inhabit your mind do not answer to you, they come and go in ways you cannot control, and whether it’s my mother’s vanished memory of our entire family history or my own memories or simple deciduous thoughts sprouting decoratively and cycling through their dream seasons I also know that this poem is how I’ll own it, exert some control over it in this part of my life bound to time and sleep, this is how I’ll remember not to take it personally that I’m not the one who owns this house, there’s some other me in another room who just saw this moment of his life walk by without so much as acknowledging him. When I wake up a few hours later I cannot read a word that I wrote, but I can follow the shape of it as it walks away on the page in the morning light and describe that.
Translations from the English 