yet another day
with another grey sunset,
my glass is empty.
(May 13, 2021)
Bone Tired
Category: aging
ways of knowing (138)
certainty’s a razor’s edge
pressed lightly across skin
i draw a line along
the length of my arm
tracing a blue vein
a way in a way out
(May 4, 2021)
every day’s most quiet need (133)
when I wake
into the night
uncertain
of where
I am
I hear your breath
nearby
a surety
you are
still
a part
of me
(April 15, 2021)
palimpsest (132)
tension slips between
skin and flesh
as skillful as a fishmonger’s
blade slices down
the length of an eel
with one stroke
a practiced motion
without thought
like a priest at prayer
each wooden bead rolled
over fingertips in sync
with the slow muttered vowels
one patterned moment
moving toward the next
with endless patience
as the next ritual waits
for the candle to be lit
the words to flow
less with meaning
than as a balm
to still disquiet
(April 14, 2021)
ephemera (131)
each evening
the day’s tasks
settle around you
like dust
in an abandoned house
the fire is low
the room dark
you are worn
a ragged coat
hung upon a chair
tomorrow will differ
only in its minutia
what you will have
for dinner and what
words you will say
(April 11, 2021)
like televisions in empty rooms (128)
at night a window becomes a mirror
where I see through my face
floating upon the glass like ghosts
outside the trees glow in moonlight
I open another door and walk out
across the grass mixing my shadow
with the night’s mottled shadows
as if dark lace woven into the earth
I turn back to watch what I’ve left behind
the figures in the house move silently
from room to room like actors
rehearsing how they will say what they say
(April 1, 2021)
side note
indecisive and insecure
I am on an edge
no cliff nor rooftop
from which to leap
more marginal
more like myself
a collection of questions
laced down a ragged page
I take a moment
to pull myself close
to gather myself
into a tighter pile
of misunderstandings
to tie myself to a series
of questionable knots
strung across the night
with a sense of frivolity
like lights at a garden party
or a noose in a lonesome room
swinging beneath a bare bulb
(March 25, 2021)
mill horse (124)
my myopic eyes fix
toward a horizon
I cannot see
as I plod through
this viscous mud
which will be my grave
(February 26, 2021)
Each Moment Re-inscribes the Present (123)
like the good china handled
with delicate hands as if
the people pictured could be
shaken from the scene and lost
they are only brought out on holidays
or as we gather to bury the dead
who were the ones who knew them all
these photographs that stepped from context
as soon as the shutter snapped
the aunts uncles cousins friends pictured
within a tangled patchwork of memory
at their own holidays their own funerals
look back at us with our familiar eyes
wanting to know who we are what we’ve become
(February 25, 2021)
Without the Stories She Must Have Told
All I know of her is, perhaps, this
three-second, eight-millimeter film clip:
discernibly old, she steps through shadows
next to a tall man, who is also in shadow.
Briefly from the sepia tress, she looks back
towards the camera— her face a blurred silence.
(February 18, 2021)
