Hearing the 12:16 AM Train
Now it is time to cross those tracks.
Yet I cannot tell on which side
I hear your breathing.
When the lamp is out
a lone firely rises like the moon
Hearing the 12:16 AM Train
2 Replies
Tag Archives: haiku
Quiet Night
Quiet Night
In the pause between
here and there the crickets fall
silent with me as
if waiting for a
shadow to pass but it’s deep
night, all shadows of
shadows the quiet
big with all the unsung songs
Thunder moon, intermittently overcast
Thunder moon, intermittently overcast
clouds fly before some
thing larger, like shifting
words in a short poem
Book of Moths
Book of Moths
We came here to the summer
it is a place like life is a place
On time’s window we are open and still
everything you want to say
But every time you look we are different
if you want us to survive you must
Stop glowing so we can find
our own way to the one you love
Time difference, breezy day
Time difference, breezy day
Shadows on the sidewalk of leaves in motion
above me are like the shadows of flames
the leaves are burning but the burn is slower it is a burn
we can inhabit or control are the leaves our days
how can we see it in the leaves still green and flexible
how can we see the beginning and end of it all in the shadows
how does the time difference work is it the same
when I send out words to you here in my midsummer
why do I feel the entirety of me burning
Thunder Moon
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
Abandonment
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
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
For the Sudden Mourners
For the Sudden Mourners
that thing you hold is
no less real for his death that
thing that I hold is no less
real for the distance
Poem To Be Read But Once
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
Translations from the English 