Tag Archives: snow

November hymnal (14)

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November hymnal (14)

The sea stone sets down on the sky’s lobby.
Only the birds pass through it; their feathers

Still remember when they were scales.
The star has sent a poem to commemorate

The occasion. It’s the same poem every star
Composes. That every civilization has waited for.

The family pauses between house and car.
One of them points upward. A thousand things

Still alive in the trees and underbrush see
A thousand different families.

The birds rotate the stone like gears and snow
flecks off the stone as if God were sharpening

A great knife on it, to cut through the pile of burnt
Trees. To cut through ignorance, doubt, faith.

Four years later the house is empty. Sunlight
Streaks through the lobby and is arrested by

Clouds. Night falls. The star’s poem finally arrives:
“Too late!” reads the entire poem. Because they

Always have to be right, stars have few words
To work with. The sound of birds traveling through

The sea stone is like that of snow on steps.
The sound of stars composing is like a shovel on a walkway.

Sunday the 8th [from “The Week,” a series of 7 poems leading up to Friday the 13th]

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snow8th

Sunday the 8th

The way the weather ends
And begins a discussion

About everything surviving
The weather. The way

Unexpected snow falls
Like a silhouette of spring

Sitting patiently as we trace
Its shadow. The way the sun

Arcs like a baseball hit so far
It will land in the last parking lot

Ever, bounce off the hood
Of the car of the only person

Who stayed for the whole
Game. The way the car’s

alarm, like any true alarm
Will be silent. The way we

Keep score as if it all
Won’t be gone soon enough.

Reading sheet music

1 Reply

arp

Reading sheet music

The guitar arpeggios are the roofs of nearly identical houses
In a small village. The streets are covered in snow, no one

Goes in or out. But the temperature even at night has turned mild,
No smoke rises from the roofs, which are spotted with moonlight.

In the morning a dog runs through the alleys, pausing here and there
To check out something new. Snow slides off a roof in the morning sun.

Rolling the trash to the street, Monday night, cold rain

4 Replies

Rolling the trash to the street, Monday night, cold rain

In the neighbor’s security spotlight, activated by my foraging,
The rain is turning to snow. No longer just the path of a motion

But the substance of a season. No longer a man in the dark
Putting out trash but, striding through the door, carrier

Of a million fragile messages of light, change, gravity.

Near the End of the First Winter of My Sixth Decade

13 Replies

Near the End of the First Winter of My Sixth Decade

Through a brick-lined alley where I read my life’s sentence
I step over a rivulet of snowmelt that flows behind me into the past

walking with an open cup of coffee in a soft cold rain

Winter Evening, After Much Snow

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Winter Evening, After Much Snow

Plows pound the shoreline of the storm.
When their wave has passed, the shovels

emerge like crabs and get busy. The full moon,
distant jellyfish, drifts over the becalmed buildings.

South and North (2)

8 Replies

In the still summer swamp a cypress knee’s
a mountain. Behind the patient transparent lid

of danger there is not a single smooth straight
line on two hundred million years of hide.

*

On the hill I dump more March snow
behind my truck into a pile impenetrable as Everest

without a Sherpa. The uneven humps
of buried cars stretch ahead: back of a giant alligator,

danger lies silent on the surface of the road.

#FullMoonSocial // Overcast Full Moon Night, After Snow

4 Replies

Overcast Full Moon Night, After Snow

Rain melts snow then turns
to snow: earth slides soft

then stiffens and stills
and disappears under new snow:

Clouds ride endless wind
always leaving: unseen

and unmoved by the mess
and distance, something

of you and I makes its
own slow circle above

To the one missing her father inexplicably on a warm day after an ice storm

2 Replies

To the one missing her father inexplicably on a warm day after an ice storm

Mid-morning snow after a night of sleet.
Ice is melting off the roofs, descending

faster than flakes can fall, but they go
only their own speed, unconcerned

with making up the distance