Tag Archives: poetry

In a Dream [from Vanishing Tracks]

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In a Dream [from Vanishing Tracks]

In a dream I am in a car
racing backwards in slow motion
through a neighborhood being progressively
unbuilt, earth and foundation
appearing as shingles and windows fly away,
sod pulled up from red clay, native
shrubs waiting for the foundations to liquidize
and evaporate then moving back in,
and finally large rocks which we
never moved to make way for the houses
that were not built after all
and the road itself turns to gravel then dirt
undergrowth and pine needles rushing in,
and as the car itself begins to loosen
the sky darkens with shadows
coming towards me at the
speed of trees never cut down

*

[Another poem from from the series “Markers” and the book Vanishing Tracks.]

Bridgeport, CT [from Vanishing Tracks]

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Bridgeport, CT [from Vanishing Tracks]

On an empty court surrounded by empty lots
A man is dribbling a basketball. He stands
Around the three point line, jukes and feints
Away from an invisible defender, pulls up to
Shoot, changes his mind, dribbles again and
Steps to his left, maybe being doubled up
At this point though I can’t see anyone there,
And no one is around to see him pick up
His dribble yet again, no whistle blows, so he dances a
Little closer, the ball back over his head like a stone
In a medieval catapult. There is nothing between him
And the basket. He pauses, and dribbles again.
I crane my neck to watch him negotiate all that emptiness
As the train rounds a bend. He is still dribbling,
He will never find his shot.

*

Note: Another poem from the series “Markers,” a set of poems written on a train trip from Virginia to New England and back.

Coming to New England by Train [from Vanishing Tracks]

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Coming to New England by Train

The rocks are back, drifting just above
The earth’s surface like wildflowers along the tracks.

First a few outcroppings as if someone dropped rock seeds
By mistake, then wilder bunches of them, knee-high humps

Like micro mountain ranges. Soon they are shaping the landscape.
They are the engineers in charge, edging the banks heaving

To the tree line. They make walls but are not rocks with a mind
For mortar. They settle for nothing but themselves.

In Connecticut you see the first rocks on lawns,
In Rhode Island they are primary lawn ornaments

Bigger than the people who lived there. Clearly the house was designed
Around the rock. Wildflowers have been planted

At the foot of the rock. I know I am home because the clouds
Stick out of the sky like dry stones in calm blue water.

*

[Another poem from the sequence “Markers,” in which all the poems were written during a train trip from Virginia to New England and back.]

Paramount Stone [from Vanishing Tracks]

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Paramount Stone

The weeds cannot tell me anything new.
I let them cover up the old lies

And the shapes are something
I could not have told myself

About how I grew over the person
I told people I was and became something

*

[Dear readers, While I deal with a little writer’s cramp of the soul, I thought I would share with you some poems from my book Vanishing Tracks, which was published in 2011. The poems I share this week are from a section called “Markers: Notes on a train trip from Virginia to Cape Cod and back again” and all the poems in that section were written, at least in draft form, on the train there or back again. Many of these poems deal in some way or another with memory, with looking back while bring propelled forward, even if the propulsion is, in the strange ways of geography and family, toward the past. I’m purposefully releasing only a selection of them, and out of order, at that, if only because I’m going to let the mood of each day determine what to reach back for.]

Exposure

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Exposure

Perhaps I have shown too much.
Or left what matters out in the cold.

From a cold family in a cold state:
how did you tilt the seaons

so that notes slipped out of me
at your door? Words warmed me.

The world’s warnings like so much snow
covered all paths. I had to be exposed

to no direction to build a stillness
of ice, and sun, and time for your affection.

On a Manila Envelope I Once Tried Unsuccessfully to Borrow

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On a Manila Envelope I Once Tried Unsuccessfully to Borrow

The contents matter less than the request
though I didn’t know what I was asking for,

that I was licked, inside my own opacity
unaware the asking was my only honesty

Ohio Rain

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Ohio Rain

Sometimes in the same way Ohio rain meanders
below Akron and Canton casually beyond Caldwell and

into West Virginia stopping in Charleston for a change
of luck and then on slowly eastward and along sharp ridges

to this Valley becoming a fine mist on my shoulder as
only a memory catching its breath can before moving

on with the ease of a spoken sentence between strangers
about the weather, one on vacation, one on the way

to work but with a moment to spare in the passing mist
for the soft vowels of hello, so before the clearing wind

I feel what moves me also moves along this way, resting
when it reaches me like a mist on my shoulder,

like the lightest part of a vast weather that decides to stay
until evaporation pulls me up too and a new entirety moves on

To Be Read While Walking in the Rain

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To Be Read While Walking in the Rain

All grief to the ground must go
and joy, and birds, and every step

taken forward or back is the right
and wise step, and leaves and light

from the center of the moon between
us, and our lives which are air upon

air must settle in a single eventuality, and
from the ground swells always

up through my shoes this love
yearning for the sky’s response

Super Moon Lunar Eclipse Extra Special Full Moon Social, Already! #fullmoonsocial

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So apparently it is like not only a massive super moon this weekend, but also a great lunar eclipse starting around 9pm ET here in the Blue Ridge. What better time than this full moon to launch another #fullmoonsocial event on WordPress and Twitter? The eclipse lasts for three hours or so at a pretty optimal time for many of us, though I am looking at a forecast for overcast skies here in VA Sunday night.

We know that for as long as people have been writing poetry, they have written about the moon. Chinese poets made an art form of this during the T’ang and Sung dynasties that in many ways has yet to be rivaled. Viewing the full moon in September is a ritual to take time to think about friends and loved ones we are separated from by distance, even to think of those special to us we have not yet met.

So during the time the moon is up in your neck of the world–I’m talking to you, Esther! and Leonard! and Emily! and Robert! and C! and M! and Ron! and GG! and Sister M! among others!–take the time to write a poem for someone who may not know you are thinking of them, or may know and be thinking of you, or even for someone you haven’t met yet but who is looking at that same moon, and tag it #fullmoonsocial on wordpress and/or Twitter and/or Instagram. I’ll try and re-blog and re-tweet as I see them.

I’ll just close this invitation with one of my favorite moon poems, by the Japanese poet Masahide, who wrote a poem that can be roughly translated as:

Barn’s burnt down. Now 
I can see the moon better.

See you under the moon!

Vellichor

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books

Vellichor

Before rain. Clouds dozens of thoughts away gather
in the corner of your vision, surreptitious as Bigfoot,

as growing up. Every love is an act of defenestration,
like words eye-diving off the page into the casual reader’s

blink of sudden sonder. Hiraeth! when the bookstore closes
something reaches out from you for the story you haven’t held

but would have fit perfectly on your heart’s shelf. Then a dozen
thoughts pass and the petrichor rises from the earth to meet

the first drops of rain, sliding down invisible vines of physics
which determine where they’ll land, but not how you’ll smile.