Tag Archives: skylark

Skylark [series of dreams 1]

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Life isn’t about finding yourself, or finding anything.
Life is about creating yourself, and creating things.
-Dylan

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Skylark / series of dreams 1

O spirit I never wanted to catch you
And you never wanted to be caught

Like the small owl my son and I found
In my father’s garage in last night’s

Dream the door open like a diagnosis
The strange bird looking out at us

Sitting on an old office chair
We rolled it out into the driveway

Where I spent so many hours
Playing basketball and one new

Year’s eve climbed the pole and stepped
Over to the garage roof and watched

The new year’s silent entrance the sky
Unchanged for my gratitude and unchanged

To this day I can still remember it the steel
Cold dark the pinholes of stars the blinding

Emptiness overflowing the horizon
Inside the muffled whoops and in the lowlands

Of the suburbs assorted firecrackers snapped
Like small minds and while i remember that step

From the pole of childhood to the roof of my second
Decade I still do not remember

Ever coming back down and below there in the dream
Through the open garage door the owl

Flew with a silent explosion of motion
Across the street and then came back

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12312018

The days fall off the wall calendar
Like ice cubes from a tray.

Time applies the slightest pressure
And we’ll never know if it had more

Strength than that because it’s never
Necessary, the liquid days slow and

churn opaque and then click away.
When I was alone I used to spend the year’s

Last minutes on the roof, by the basketball
Pole in the driveway I’d shimmy up,

Grateful for family in the house below but
Not needing them to be grateful for everything else.

There was always enough space between
The stars for gratitude, no matter how cold.

Now, with my own family, I can hear time
Pacing back and forth on the roof, impatient.

I think about that garage roof in Rhode Island
Every year, but I no longer need to see stars.

November hymnal (17)

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November hymnal (17)

The night ice is a still wind.
Rips strong branches off trees

after the hours of violent silence.
Those remaining hold their tears

until the sun tells them it’s safe
and when they are done crying

there is no sign of what tore
them apart and exposed heart-

wood to the elements and circumstantial
invaders of life. Some love is like that.

The sudden split of solid direction,
the feathered slow motion crash,

the morning sunnier
and milder than anyone thought.

November hymnal (3)

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November hymnal (3)

 

All the angles of the sun on tomorrow’s hours
will be awkward like when you arrive late

to a friendship that began before you
understood who your friends were

If you catch up then everything changes
the number of leaves on the autumn trees

the sun rose over that morning
or the hour of the note left on the door

that is still on the door of the heart
though it said nothing less fleeting

than any butterfly of fate
Tonight while you sleep an hour will

come back but from which night?
when you could count the moons

you’d loved together on a single hand
or to a life that has been waiting for you

but now is going on as if you had been there
all along? maybe it never needed you

like the moon never needed you walking
on it but walk on it we did

Night’s asymptote

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asymptote

Night’s asymptote

Cicadas worry the heat from the bark.
Who am I to say where you are tonight

When gloaming’s slow folding unbuckles
Into night? The moon, only twenty minutes

From being a vague figure for lust, is now keen
song on a blade and without warning

Crickets and tree frogs push the black train
Forward. We all hear that same sound.

I know I will never completely reach you
And I know I will never leave you.

What that leaves us is the only word the
Screech owl knows before the circumstance

Of light floods across your lips and the sun
stumbles forward at the height of a man’s mind.

Running

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Running

When October’s morning glories trumpet our loss, you run.
When the day’s color concedes itself to leaves, you run.

When the earth rotates against you, you run harder.
When the earth changes its mind about you

and carries you along with it, you run faster.
When the skein of pain tightens across your thighs,

you run more. When our hands tell the time
in the dead hours where memory is sand,

you pull me from the bed and two hundred feet
below the earth by the gorge’s lasting stream we run.

When the moon flows like the reflection
it is, you run across the river of stars and your feet

do not splash against the night. Because the night
is as shallow as a puddle and you are as light

as the reflection of streetlights above you, and as still as you are
in the soul of my sleep, ahead of the curve of memory, you run.

Lines Stolen From a Private Letter Neither Fully Deleted Nor Fully Sent

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Lines Stolen From a Private Letter Neither Fully Deleted Nor Fully Sent

Selflessness can consume you, too.
We are birds signaling across a migration

started in different seasons. Insistent longing,
unsigned wind, eternity’s caution tape.

When my own name is a blur
to me, yours will be a bell.