Tag Archives: love

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

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

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

Poem for the Back Cover of a Book

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Poem for the Back Cover of a Book

 

This book does not care if you buy it.
This poem does not care if you buy the book.

Even I do not care if you buy the book.
The three of us have been waiting here

To tell you this, but even more—perhaps
you have just been thinking of that person

Whose love has kept you alive without you
knowing it these many years, perhaps  you

Are remembering that person now.
Are they right beside you, unaware your

Love flows stronger than ever? Have you
not exchanged words in years? We are here

To tell you—put down this book, do not look
back, you were never looking back but always

Straight through the eye of his soul.
Put down this book now and go to him.

Or, if you are still here, at a loss for words,
I will help you. Go buy this book

And leave it face down where he
will find it, and notice this poem,

That is why we are here, after all,
And we will see what can be done.

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

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