
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)
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)
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)
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)
formed out of these walls to shape
the air to separate here from there
beneath the dark winter quilts
my skin presses to your warmth
longs to be more than my limits
more than what’s contained inside
more an opening to other spaces
other ways with different lines
to cross with a limping accent
a creole to hone words into an edge
I know only what I know
my cell wall’s textures memorized
through the season’s slow change
the light and shadow through the bars
play their fingers in the silent air
like puppets alive to the string’s pull
A honey bee dances around my head,
searching for something else.
Once, I would have jumped up
waving him away; now,
I shake my head,
and he floats away,
as I will eventually. Now
with less time than I’ve had,
there are no new beginnings
just a slow unraveling.
(January 3, 2020)
how much must be
etched across the glass
like ice across the lake
before I can hear
the ravens in the wood
caw out their hunger
before the dark wings’
fluttered descent disguises
the sharp peck and pull
that is my final vision
what silence waits
as an echo’s first reflection
before it wraps itself again
around the trees like snow
(December 24, 2020)
“but little thought”
—W. Wordsworth
today as I drive past sorghum fields
on my way to work I recall
a train in the Netherlands
decades ago moving through tulip fields
long strides of red and yellow
that stepped toward the horizon
(December 8, 2020)
when mom died
we scattered her ashes
near the New Sweden cemetery
the chill wind swirled
like a witch’s spell
I inhaled then spat her out
today a cold wind dances
fall leaves down the street
I cough slightly then spit
(December 2, 2020)
When my mother died,
I did not get another—
one being
more than enough
for a lifetime.
(November 20, 2020)
With a late autumn
wind, a burr oak leaf flutters
gently to the ground.
(October 20, 2020)