December 8th, morning sky
Venus pulled the moon over the morning sky
like a necklace snagged on a t-shirt
skids over a pale back on the surface of heaven
December 8th, morning sky
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Tag Archives: unregulated verse
Difference Engine
Difference Engine
The creek was buried forty years ago.
It runs unseen beneath the motel parking lot.
Here I am taking off my clothes
before I write this next couplet.
I don’t want what the day wore
to come between us. Like all
those tourists, who came to see
the thing that was moved
so they had a place to park
and undress, and sleep
without seeing a thing.
From the Mist
From the Mist
The mist is the earth weeping for transparency.
You were there when the world was softened,
when a thought of condensed desire slurred you,
made slow motion replays of us all,
like a snowfall changing its mind or a road sign
rendering movement of all kinds but time travel impossible.
The empty sky can be conquered with a feeling
shaped like a color so simple it absorbs
nothing, How transparent is this tear?
It is the glistening sky praying to be earthbound,
to land on an unshod foot moments before
it is obscured by a step towards the wish.
The sky will have its wish and the earth will
have its wish and like the shape
of a new letter from a familiar alphabet
your body will walk my words in the mist.
Asterism
Asterism
A few stars, like holes in oblivion’s memory
mapped a gesture in us we could not forget
Even time, confused, changed direction
rolling the jar of the moon back home
Saving Time
Standing in the back yard
of my heart.
No value
in raking a yard of wet leaves!
River
River
River how do I find you always
in the same place when
you have the inclination of the mountain
yet lean towards level speech
narrow minded yet source of every ocean
where a late sun is sipping on the horizon
On a Photograph of Sky on the Surface of a Pond Seen Through a Tree and Therefore, By Extension, On Magnetic Resonance Imaging
On a Photograph of Sky on the Surface of a Pond Seen Through a Tree and Therefore, By Extension, On Magnetic Resonance Imaging
The thinness of things
is real and holds itself like the only breath
an image can take.
The tree digs through the sky.
On the other side its heart
emerges upside down but still centered
between the branching out
and the taking root. Your life
plunges outward
like a branch occupying space
in a photograph showing neither
its beginning or end
the pond’s surface surely capturing it
somewhere outside the frame
where I cannot see what you see
only the empty sky beneath the tree line
and an image breathing out
to a moment it will never see: a leaf
rippling depth across the landscape
Kwakiutl
Kwakiutl
On a long journey. The road darkened like glass
after the candle behind it has guttered.
I met the forest there like a corner rounding everywhere.
Birds who’d never heard themselves before were asking
for their names. Though we could hear the train beyond the ridge
we knew it was empty except for a woman anxious
she’d missed her stop as she dozed. We walked but I could not hear
your step behind me over the sound of the leaves growing.
I am tracking a number in the dark. It keeps changing typeface
to throw me off the trail but it is the only set of tracks ahead of me.
Even as I slow down I am accelerating. Your own footsteps
are catching up to me but I am afraid the number ahead will tire
at last and I will catch it, panting on a hip-high rock among the pine.
I should go back to the woods in the daytime, who ever thought
you were nocturnal, and in the light splaying
among the leaves I am not afraid of numbers.
In the Month of Your Birthday
In the Month of Your Birthday
Mid-afternoon storm hours behind me, on the walk home.
Slight breeze triggers rain in the maple, cascading
leaf to leaf in the layers of small shadowed sky, not a memory
of rain but the actual rain, retained, in the vast shadows, actually
falling, and isn’t memory an actual thing moving in a real space,
and like the rain in this maple, not touching the ground.
Thoughts As I Wait for the Thunder Moon to Appear
Thoughts As I Wait for the Thunder Moon to Appear
Chuang Tzu asked, why is what the world does worth doing?
The thunder moon which I cannot see teaches me that it is unavoidable.
Regardless of all that I know and do not know, it is launched without slowing
over the clouds. As the arrival of clouds cannot be avoided, neither can the departure
of clouds. It may not be worth doing, Chuang Tzu said. And yet
it cannot be left undone. I am looking without seeing, Chuang Tzu,
and it may be enough that I am no longer looking for the moon.
In the quiet, unseeable, the small chicory flower unfolds towards dawn.
As the departure of life cannot be avoided, neither can its arrival.
When the moon’s no longer needed, clouds break open like blue petals.
Translations from the English 