Tag Archives: JS

Driftwood Days

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Driftwood Days

 

The sea has examined me into this shape
I have come so far only because of what is left

How can I not accept it gratefully how can you not
if the entire sea can do it I would say give it a try

I do not have the power to observe you into love
but something of us both has been examined

Wave by wave into a lean slightness no vessel
because it goes all directions at once having come so far

with its hollows and whorls soothing to the waves
no difference between inside and outside

It no longer matters what is missing it never did it turns
out it was always this floating thing and never that

Moonless Night, Wondering

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Moonless Night, Wondering

 

Like an important moment slid on its edge
or a memory blocked mostly by the dark present

Something seeming to shine as it descends
but not shining really but reflecting instead

this larger brilliance from the other direction
entirely and not descending but circling

as love circles and predators circle and
the confused prey circles and for all that

knowledge still it is the moon setting
over a local hill in early evening before

the first firefly I have seen all spring
lights up in my room on this moonless night

Self Portrait at Forty Nine

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Self Portrait at Forty Nine

Even in a small town there is a sound arriving
through the silence like the breath of the tiger

hidden in every house. Asking how can something hidden
arrive, finally, to the place it’s always been?

Nevertheless there is no standing on reason
for that is the mystery I hear in the silence

before the house wakes, when the train sound slides
away and the bells of competing churches hollow

out to the thinnest reminder of passages time turned
away from to linger on a single guitar chord,

from this open window, now long gone, hours
later, as I lay in bed and when the entire neighborhood

is between breaths I hear this breath, this sound
arriving to the place it’s always been. Earlier today

my neighbor dug up with his bare hands four solid
concrete steps leading from the curb to the space

between our houses. As if there was an invisible
house there all along, and in absence of anything

but a passage all we can do is wait to see
who owns it, or who will come visiting

in the silence, or if the sound arriving is simply
the door we cannot yet see, not yet open.

fortynine

Another Full Moon Night, Under Clouds

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fullmoonwithclouds

Another Full Moon Night, Under Clouds

 

Weightless, local, essence of form but in no form
that keeps, these clouds block my view of the one

thing we can both look at tonight and know we share
the same world. It is not enough to know it’s there—

I must know that I see what you see. But if clouds,
empty of all illusion of form or permanence,

absorb their share of the moon’s glancing light
then maybe this love, shorn of time and setting

and shape, is equally bright and worthy
whether we see the moon or not

It is Before

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It is Before

 

Cool spring wind. It is before crickets.
Before the night sit-ups and downward dog.

It is before cobra pose and crow pose, the time
of sky that carries a moth the color of birch bark

To my desk who will land on the rim of my eyeglasses
mistaking reflection for source.

It has the scent of yesterday. It is
before the century I was dropped in the middle of,

before the one I’ll finish well ahead of
its resolution. Before the silence that follows

the wind, spring wind say where you came from
who you woke before me in the native tongue

of her flowers and the throat of her open
windowsill and the hair your whisper shifted

across her ear as she slept? It is before
her I tossed love into the wind like a kite

on a twine of trust, before I lost sight of it,
and still long before I have given it up.

To An Old Tune

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To An Old Tune

 

Always a surprise to hear your voice
and realize you are still with me

I must persist in you and grow less quiet
now and then like a song that comes to mind

or maybe like the years hum a little louder
without recognition above the level of crickets

distant trains garbage trucks or maybe you have
loved me this long and I’m still surprised by that

Early Signs

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Early Signs

 

All at once dogs and children roam in friendly agitation
where yesterday they stuck to the plowed paths

They climb the mountain of last week’s snow pushed to the roadside
Its ten thousand questions answered

by the lengthening silence of the afternoon
I feel like calling you every hour just to say nothing special

With thunder and warm wind spring starts to shoulder winter aside
Under sky’s sharp azure stone a jeweled cloud leapfrogs mountain

Full Moon, Clear Night, Looking at Tree Shadows on Snow

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Full Moon, Clear Night, Looking at Tree Shadows on Snow

 

The yard could be silver overcast sky
seen through the lean branches crossing.

I could stare all night, disappointed thinking:
where is that confounded moon?

Ease

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Ease

Snow melts and water runs down the steep rock face of the cliff
perfectly and with such ease though each sideways stream
is running for the first and last time, no time to learn how to do it right,
each molecule a limited engagement with the rest until at rest

later this evening it will be ice again. I have always said love is work
but I didn’t say it was all work—what makes me want to work so hard
is my own effortless falling, every day as I am struck by your light,
transformed to something with ease, headed straight down under sun