You traveled
For the entire duration of your time in this shape
With the ease of falling
To be stopped a fraction of a second before
Fall’s finality — caught in a gesture going
The other way, like
Some make a trip to a place to forget it all
And take pictures to remember the trip
The way the weather ends
And begins a discussion
About everything surviving
The weather. The way
Unexpected snow falls
Like a silhouette of spring
Sitting patiently as we trace
Its shadow. The way the sun
Arcs like a baseball hit so far
It will land in the last parking lot
Ever, bounce off the hood
Of the car of the only person
Who stayed for the whole
Game. The way the car’s
alarm, like any true alarm
Will be silent. The way we
Keep score as if it all
Won’t be gone soon enough.
All the ghosts of the dogs
Afraid of thunder hide
Under the bed. The bed
Is not on a frame, two
Thick box springs on the
Floor simply shoulder
the mattress like Atlas,
or Sisyphus maybe:
Every night they roll us up
The hill of sleep and every
Morning we wake and crush
Hours of dreams into oblivion.
Underneath even that there’s plenty
Of room for the terror of loyalty.
I’d like to think the dog
Ghosts are what
Wake us up. They are more
Important than dreams
And they are afraid even when
There is no thunder, like today
There was spring snow, so light
That after hours it had barely frosted
The twiggy ground cover still waiting
For leaves. Under the box springs
The dogs shiver. The snowflake
Shatters like glass. Something left
Outside in the storm moans like
It is not the wind, after all.
It’s after cats but before owls.
The moon fills its pockets and hangs
Out behind the house next door.
Like the sky’s a comfortable side street
You can ride a skateboard or bike along
And find a new favorite skipping stone
You’ll hold onto until the next time
At the creek, which will be days from now
And you think of the curve of her shoulder
As she threw and the water was too
Respectful to swallow the stone, the
Three steps it took on the water and the click
Of it coming to rest on the other bank
And like that you’re rising, full of someone
Else’s light, up above the neighborhood
And the whole world can see you now,
Like the sun on her shoulder,
The whole world can see.
All things being equal
I will take the eight of swords.
The lady in my dreams sits up the tree
A ways next to the star. The card
For the eight of swords has only four edges
But each is a double edged sword
So you should keep it in your pocket
When approaching trees in dreams.
Pancake kick
Sit down into the kick
And spread out until you are irresistible.
Trophy kick
Hold a single moment mid-kick
Perfectly balanced and do
Not move the rest of your life
Winter Weather Warning kick
Promise vengeance. Promise no mercy.
Then walk softly and meekly past.
Then kick a week later.
Spring kick
Turn your kick into soft raindrops
That hurt nobody. Immediately
A million small green kicks emerge.
People come outside and beg to be kicked.
Love kick
Kicking the habit is
Just another kick.
Off the main road the weather has herded
Things long forgotten on invisible avenues
Of air. Most of our paths are so transparent
We can’t see the end coming:
In a high branch a plastic bag full of wind
Perches like a hawk surveying the field.
Before Sleep and Work
Tonight I will enter these lines in the shared diary of souls
Because I know I must add them before they disappear
And I alone am responsible for their care.
It will be read by a few, the words all that is clear
But the meaning, while not obscured, different to each
As if we each see the same thing with our own eyeglasses, which focus things perfectly for that one or this one.
If there is a single meaning it will elude me as well
Though I am first to chase it down
Like a boy chases his shadow.
Then I will be able finally to sleep
And when I wake like a child sitting up
In the surf as dreams cascade around me and fall back into a larger mass of presence,
I will open the double doors of the newspaper office
And say hello and walk up the old stairs wide enough for a car to drive up them
And type out the writing that will reach thousands
And be quickly read, thousands of words instantly forgotten
Though it must leave a single shape of meaning, even if muddy,
Even if only for a short time, like a child’s castle by the surf
Still standing amid the roar of nearby waves
And the flutter of a newspaper pulled out of a sunbather’s hands by the wind
That will distract other beach goers,
Who will turn as if the shadow of someone familiar could be seen on the sand.
When people die their eyes change color
As their vision turns inward in the seconds
That close decades of doors. They hear brand new
Sounds from their bodies, of people walking
Away from their jobs for the last time, of a family trying
To sleep the night before they leave a house
Nobody will move back into, of the crew
After the show packing now-silent instruments
Into their individual velvet darknesses.
The brevity is a single color, never seen
Before. Like a snow just before spring
It redefines the shapes of things
And then melts away, too fast and too slow
For consciousness to follow. But one
Does, alone, catching up to an echo, of
eyelids sliding shut against snow’s sudden glare.
The chapel of Ease was destroyed by fire
Left by a population fleeing the ruins of war
Along a stagecoach connection overhung
With spanish moss. Two brick walls hang
On like stagecraft from the sky. The foundation
Seems hardly to touch the ground, never had
A chance to dig roots into the sandy soil
Around the river whose local inhabitants
Called Big Bends. Two lead-crossed
Round windows, like cartoon eyes of the dead
Stare uncomprehending through spanish moss,
the wisps of song surviving on air alone.
The Yemassee started the American Revolution
Sixty one years too soon. They’d already left
One home and decided to stand and fight
For the second one against slavery and cruelty.
Sixty one years. People live and die
In that span and tribes disappear. The chapel of
Ease was rebuilt and destroyed and will
Not be rebuilt. The hanging moss, like so many
Lives, can be light as air but drape a haunting
Stillness on the trees even as a breeze flows through.
Translations from the English 