Thunder Moon

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Thunder Moon

 

Passing through the veil of rain at
mountain’s peak I see the west breaks off

The sun lets the day go quietly there farther
and the break remains as my car crouches

against the hour changing its eyes
the long slow throat of thunder growls

all evening through the hollows and the gutters
on the roof all July is like this and the break stays

with me this open space to the west what
time is it there what are they seeing there

when the moon waxing now low in the clouds
appears like an eye behind a veil is it the same moon

on the other side will they know as the veil
of rain is lifted from their faces I will not let

the groom doze off on them or see
what I see in the break I saw on the mountain

thundermoon

empty heart

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I have been following Leonard’s blog since I joined WordPress just under a year ago. I learn so much from his work and our shared interest in poetry, I think I’ve earned my L.D. (life degree?) from LD. Enjoy this new poem of his.

zdunno03's avatarLeonard Durso

as I lie face up
on the hospital bed
waiting for 5 stitches
in my hard Calabrese head
Ali says
your ekg was good
your heart is better
than a young person’s
and Adnan nods
his blood pressure too
it’s because you have
an empty heart
Ali says
empty I ask
no woman he says
no woman no pain
Adnan smiles
a little laugh
some sad recognition
of a truth
they both share
and I think
maybe it’s time
to fill it
here in a city
among true friends
for even some pain
is better
than lying empty
and unused

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Abandonment

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Abandonment

 

The abandoned asylum. The shell of a house next door
like the edge of some stranger’s attention span

you’re drawn to it because they’re gone, they gave up
without knowing that even in their judgment

even when they have turned their back things are
growing green spreading out in abandonment

*

building their own context indifferent to circumstance
with regard only for their new shape just as

I am spreading roots in the airy spaces between your words
to build for you a new and pleasing shape

Others may not notice it but it will last
that may be why it will last just

*

as words are an abandoned structure
as soon as they are uttered they are left vacant

Who will come fill them in live in them will you
be with me in all this space left by others

Can we make a home with quiet abandon
past the edge of even our own attention

Past the edge of what we think we want

Angel

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Angel

 

Are the faithful the only ones who can recognize
what they have never seen or is this spilt milk

in my sink what it seems—a ragged host
reaching out to me as if it’s not too late

but for which of us    her shape
will not hold but who knows the shape

of the abyss—it’s white like old eyes
failing and in reaching out it diminishes

shredding from the edges
towards the center which come

to find out can hold quite a lot

Poem To Be Read But Once

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Poem To Be Read But Once

 

As soon as I have finished reading this poem
to you, you will begin forgetting it.

I have written it many times
but it can be read only once.

You are thinking if you read it
and I read it then that is more

Than once only but those
are different poems. This one

Is for you alone. Take a moment
to enjoy being in the middle of it.

I will even skip a line for you to take it all in:

And when you have read it the words
will fall away almost

immediately though the poem never
will nor old love and what travels with it

the line you’ll never forget
after all will be the one I skipped for you

Dream of Finishing Something

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Dream of Finishing Something

 

For the first time you see the rough draft of your life
complete. You now know—it’s a whale; it’s a shark;

It’s a school of fish. Silt in a tidal pool.

It’s a shadow of the plane passing overhead,
of the cloud into which the plane disappears.

For a moment there is no telling which direction
it is going, but it is all there; or whether its depth

Is imagined but it is all there is. Imagined or not.

Early Summer, Cape Cod

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Early Summer, Cape Cod

To the world we go, extinguishing and compelled.
Early summer evening. Through a knot of fireflies

A few stars showing. To the world
an evening of fireflies and an epoch of stars

are the same, just what I see, no difference.
I will remember this firefly and this evening

as they travel at light’s speed into a past
beyond existence at the same speed a star’s memory

travels into the future to meet this evening,
this view. To the world depth starts to go

its own way towards deterioration and someone
determines it’s time to start counting the stars.

Scargo Tower, Looking West

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Scargo1

Scargo Tower, Looking West

 

On the east coast by the bay at the top
of a hill overlooking a lake filled they say

when a great whale thrown by a winter storm
crashed there or filled they say by the tears

of a young woman from the Scargo tribe
when it was clear her life would not be the same

and over the belt of a waist-high stone wall at the top
of a tower there though you are looking west

with me the width of a continent is a thread across
the horizon and above it the sun lowers itself

ablaze on the bay before it and again on the lake
of tears or it is the resigned eye of the whale still

lying there its shape waiting for the tide to bring it
back I have seen the sun set over two bodies

of water the strip of land scrub oak and pine between them
wider than the continent beyond a hundred times

from here I have seen the riotous light lean against clouds
knowing my home was here above the crown

of the highest tree I’ve chatted with tourists taken pictures
for them stood here long after they have left

felt the wind rush in over the trees gathering stones
when it was clear my life would not be the same

and now I am coming back again to this stone place
where looking over endless land you see nothing

but water and sky and the wide scrim
of a welcoming light that does not remember me