Category Archives: Uncategorized

From the Mist

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From the Mist

The mist is the earth weeping for transparency.
You were there when the world was softened,

when a thought of condensed desire slurred you,
made slow motion replays of us all,

like a snowfall changing its mind or a road sign
rendering movement of all kinds but time travel impossible.

The empty sky can be conquered with a feeling
shaped like a color so simple it absorbs

nothing, How transparent is this tear?
It is the glistening sky praying to be earthbound,

to land on an unshod foot moments before
it is obscured by a step towards the wish.

The sky will have its wish and the earth will
have its wish and like the shape

of a new letter from a familiar alphabet
your body will walk my words in the mist.

River

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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

Paramount Stone [from Vanishing Tracks]

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Paramount Stone

The weeds cannot tell me anything new.
I let them cover up the old lies

And the shapes are something
I could not have told myself

About how I grew over the person
I told people I was and became something

*

[Dear readers, While I deal with a little writer’s cramp of the soul, I thought I would share with you some poems from my book Vanishing Tracks, which was published in 2011. The poems I share this week are from a section called “Markers: Notes on a train trip from Virginia to Cape Cod and back again” and all the poems in that section were written, at least in draft form, on the train there or back again. Many of these poems deal in some way or another with memory, with looking back while bring propelled forward, even if the propulsion is, in the strange ways of geography and family, toward the past. I’m purposefully releasing only a selection of them, and out of order, at that, if only because I’m going to let the mood of each day determine what to reach back for.]

About Time

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About Time

The mirror of time shows us only ourselves in the present.
There are no meters on the avenue of time. But when I parked

there a policeman immediately chalked my tire. It’s not like
you can stay here forever, he said, putting the small notebook

in his pocket. Would you want to know when he’d come back?
You could spend all day screwing in the light bulb of time.

Your eyes go bad just as the book of time is getting interesting.
The extra value meal of time is cold when you open the bag.

The middle school slow dance of time has the guitar solo
that you cannot figure out how to slow dance to.

The feral cat of time pees on the boxwoods outside.
There is a stuffed frog of time that I cannot locate

from the recent move. In the driving rain tonight
an owl exploded in front of my headlights

up from the dark road with a piece of something’s past
in its claws as it flapped backwards to avoid my car.

In my rearview mirror of the future I could see
we are all just creatures on the road.

It takes a long time to learn to play the piano.
Nobody plays the piano of time for just this reason.

Fortune teller

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Fortune teller

fortuneteller (2)

An old paper trick. My daughter’s voice counting
as her thumbs and forefingers shift the shape

to reveal triangles within triangles, like the smallest
possible stable shape of a thought, a fate. Choosing from the images

or words drawn on each one, I go with “Gold.” Shuffle. “Pine tree.”
Shuffle. “Two inseparable dots.” At each choice the landscape

changes again beyond choice. Under the last shape
is the final stable thing, the fortune: An old dream

will come back to you. Almost invisible, that dream
beneath colors and trees, underpinning everything.

On a Manila Envelope I Once Tried Unsuccessfully to Borrow

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On a Manila Envelope I Once Tried Unsuccessfully to Borrow

The contents matter less than the request
though I didn’t know what I was asking for,

that I was licked, inside my own opacity
unaware the asking was my only honesty