Free of belief’s comforting vanities,
the small profundities of the day
reveal themselves through slow unravels
as their collective weight strips conceit
away, leaving bare bones exposed
to judgement and snide approbation.
(March 4, 2026)
Category: belief
-
- Climate
another warm day
too warm for February
the knife’s at our throat
belief thrives in a stasischange requires an awareness
2) Predictive Value in Metaphoreach morning we ask
after the night’s restlessness
as if a portent
one thing is like anotherthus as above so below
(February 10, 2026)
-
The full moon’s near Jupiter—
as if I can know
what someone else has told me.
I believe and see
the sky unfold around me,
each star in its place
fixed tightly with divine faith.
I know only this:
my truth is only my truth.
The chihuahua knows
he must go into the dark;
I open the door.
He barks at a Great-horned owl
who stares into the cold night.
(January 4, 2026)
-
to fill the soft holes
the auspices
have left behind
for our memory
like tattered tarot cards
to make sense of
for our past to exist
in this present
dénouement
which of course
our future will
ignore as blasé
as conventional wisdom
bangs out a beat
on a tattered drum
we must insist
like the birds
how this story goes
(October 16, 2025)
-
Memory, perpetually cloaked
in iridescent shadow, finds
itself a metaphor, becoming
along the way something
other, something momentarily
more accurate, than it ever was—
something easier, somehow,
in this moment,
to see
what was there once before,
to see
what was there all along.
As if instead of a tsunami
calmly obliterating the past
like a Japanese fishing village
washed clean from the shore
in a spasm of forgetfulness,
amnesia lifted thin silk veils
to reveal new aspects of time
no longer smothered beneath
the scent of stale mothballs
and the thick quilted layers
of familial consensus.
(August 18, 2025)
-
Still Point
by
Ritual consoles
through repetitions solace:
“I’ve been here before.”
(August 16, 2025)
-
To service his designs
the face I know is one
of many you deploy
to hide in the angles
between the reflections
not even a shadow.
This I, this you, this him’s
easier to disguise
within this trifold world.
I cannot see myself
except as I am perceived
in other’s mockery:
the dead narrative I
is a social construct.
(April 29, 2025)
-
I have a Spring cold,
my chest thick with congestion.
Still, I go outside.
One must be at work,they say, for inspiration
to find room to breathe.
Oxalis from mom’shouse in Victoria grows
beneath the iris.
Our yard is chaosplanned out from the beginning;
nature is random.
The roses need to be pruned.A hummingbird whirrs nearby.
(April 11, 2025) -
“You seem quite normal. Can you tell me? Why
does one want to write a poem?
Because it is there to be written.“—William Carlos Williams
somewherefor decades now
it has been there
in this sequence
of unlined sketch books
waiting
unwritten as I write
out of a present
necessity
never knowing the why or how
anxious each moment
it will not
trusting
it will be
(April 10, 2025) -
On the advice of a character from a Jim Harrison novel I was reading many years ago, I ordered two translations of Stephen Mitchell: The Book of Job, and The Gospel According to Jesus. I finally got around to reading one of them (one big advantage of retirement). Over the last couple of weeks I have read The Gospel According to Jesus. It was interesting and worthwhile. It opens with a lengthy introduction, followed by a translation of the parts of the gospels which in some versions would be the red-letter parts. After that section, Mitchell returns to the various parts thematically, accompanied with commentary. The commentary is a mixture of Mitchell, selections from Biblical scholars, and similar themes in philosophy (Buddhist, Taoist), and poetry (Blake, Rilke for example). As one of the blurbs on the back of the book says, “This approach succeeds brilliantly. Jesus, or at least Mitchell’s attractive portrait of him, leaps. into life and will fire the interest of believers and nonbelievers alike. (Harvey Cox)” And no, I have not abandoned my apostasy. -
Crows fly overhead
with raucous caws.
With less than an hour
before the long night begins,
I start a fire in the back yard.
Inside where candles burn,
guests gather bearing wine and gifts.
Spilling some wine, I turn
from the fire and wave
to my friends inside.
Tonight we share food,
and laughter. Fear of the dark
hangs on the edge of the fire.
Of this, we are all aware.
Tonight, we smile, hug,
and toast the coming year:
there is always hope.
Tomorrow, the light,
in daily increments, begins
to slowly turn from the night.
(December 22, 2024)
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“Skoal! with the dregs if the clear be gone.
“wineing the ghosts of yester year.”
—Ezra Pound
Last night conversation flowed
freely between wit and wisdom
as easily as comfortable privilege
protects the occasional faux pas.
What wisdom lacks is the bitterness
left with the dregs at the bottle’s end.
Alone this morning, I slowly collect
the mostly empty bottles scattered
about the house like an archeologist
sifting for hints of a civilization
in the shards of broken pottery.
I wash the dishes, slipping my hand
over the soapy crystal, careful not
to shatter the glass against the sink.
Last night’s Malbec has turned slightly.
I pour a glass, and sip a bit anyway.
Skoal! I am the only one still here.
I swirl the glass ruefully, as ghosts rise
from memory to confirm my sour mood.
Memory, after all, can only reflect
the present. Like the glass, it distorts
any clarity dispersed, any veritas
the wine might once have whispered
like a former lover years after the affair:
a version of reality dependent on what
had been said, and how much confirms
what was suspected, and how much must
be forgotten as a form of forgiveness.
(May 26, 2024)
subtext 