Category poetry
The poet snaps out of it
A red snapdragon I did not plant tumbles from rough rock soft rounded lobes offering themselves to the rugged world how readily beauty dazzles when it does not care who sees a poem I think and then the butcher’s knife drops from the counter pierces my foot so deeply so cleanly cleaving the flesh as […]
How tiresome to be solid
the stubborn insistence the ceaseless assertion the perpetual collisions sixty percent liquid some variable amount gas and still we do not move aside do not go around do not flow nor mingle we are rigid as rock On my favorite day which has not happened we become insubstantial unassuming as ghosts we are indistinct interstitial […]
Capers
Again I forget what capers are I think jobs pulled by bank robbers in old movies tommy guns blazing exciting unlike a callow bud that will never bloom imprisoned in a plain jar near the pickles and the olives potential unrealized not exhausted not like the gangsters burning out in a flame of glory Take that, […]
The wren house exults
Oh, you are here! How long I have waited my eastern exposure my perfect aperture my rustic charm and so near the plum aflower in delicate pink the serviceberry in welcoming white Still you did not come and then the wasps their thin grey gag occluding the mouth from which I wished only […]
Still I belong
Still I belong to the earth, the grass greening through spring snow, the white shoulders of mountains, the doe bounding and twitching vast soft ears that hear what I cannot. I belong to the early forsythia, bright with promise. To the late killing frost. I belong to the newborn finch, naked and blind, the jay […]
Everything, offering
How it holds you up, everything, offering, even the space vacated by what you loved blending with beauty eventually and can you feel how thin yet absolute your skin how it insists on separation and yet remember how wondrous the world dazzling your blurred eyes entering your small ears before you were human before you […]
Your excuse
Finding no one to admire I gather reflections my friend a Green activist flew across the ocean 1.6 metric tons of CO2 emissions to meet her new grandchild 58.6 metric tons per year who lives in Australia where a half- billion animals burn with our empty convictions. Our values collapse at the point of “me.” […]
Vertigo
Snow falls all night as I lie beneath down only the cat against my flank, her weighted contentment, making me necessary in the oriented world. Vertigo again — reeling adrift — meclizine in the dark and waiting, still, on the gradual repair of the rotting rudder. The aging body comes round slowly if at all […]
This winter’s day
You do not have the flu. The cat is not sick, nor the dog lost. The bitter cold has not burst the pipes. The firewood is dry enough to catch the perfect flame thrown by the ordinary wonder of a rough-struck match. The small, wild things — plumed, delicate — fly hollow-boned to the feeders […]
What if we never
turned and fired, but kept walking, our backs to each other, until we forgot the nature of our grievances, grew weary of the weight in our hands, the long heavy barrels, the ancient ammunition, and dropped our pistols in the pile of pointless things, disarmed, disoriented, dazed by the trees singing through the mouths […]
Meditatio Ephemera 