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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)

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as in fields of broken stone (109)

all the ropes and chains

and puppet strings

knotted about

our brittle bones

like love turn us

toward a hell

we’ve compensated for

for years and years

where we coo and flutter

like lonesome doves

*
this is where i am this

is where you are this

is where i need to be

no where else but here

where i followed

continuity’s remains

like snails’ wet traces

through damp vegetal rot

where i find the eyes of the dead

laid on a cold plate

watching the mendicants

offer olives and oil

to a god

who cannot be bothered

to laugh

(January 25, 2021)

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shadows near shadows far away (103)

as if trapped in a net of shadow

afternoon light through the window

struggles on the opposite wall

to form a coherent pattern where

a difference may be discerned

between shadows near and far away

outside the oak and elm stand mute

allowing the air to whisper for them

allowing easy cliches to answer

decades of hardened blood

to answer questions never asked

to form opinions from shadow

as old palimpsests below the scars

re-inscribe the day hour by hour

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Thanksgiving

When my mother died,

I did not get another—

one being

more than enough

for a lifetime.

(November 20, 2020)

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parenthesis (95)

with an accent slightly different

than any dialect spoken here

a hole opens around us like an amoeba

and we are contained within

an other’s misinterpretation

as if we were not a part

of the conversation like a rock

is not a part of the river

which erases incrementally

shaping the rock as it surges past

oblivious like memory to the change

as each remembrance rises

to take dominion everywhere

if only for the moment it takes

to speak and then to unhear

all the patterns which brought us here

(November 19, 2020)

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drifting homeward (89)

dropping soft scraps of light

like rose petals on the floor

the moon threads her way

between the bare branches

purpose requires ambition

which the moon lacks other

than its spiral descent

toward a predestined end

where is the metaphor

who holds reins so slack

trusting the horse’s nature

to find a slow way back

(October 29, 2020)

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heal thyself (87)

all I have are dull words

to bludgeon my tongue

into submission

but if i strop the blade

the leather’s length

until the edge gleams

as with sliced ribbons of light

then I might excise

the shadows from my heart

without a trace of blood

to mark my disillusions

(October 27, 2020)

who tells the tale

from a work in progress: process, not a journey (65)

she speaks of her self

and all that entails

your memory is not hers

less so than those daffodils

shut up and listen

(June 19, 2020)

Control’s an Illusion

I negotiate the moment:

the shape of a shell;

the color of a shoe;

the proper knot for a noose;

what was said when,

and to whom. As if time

whispers the secrets

it finds in tide pools:

what belongs

scuttling in the rocks,

and what has washed in

with the last full moon.

(May 24, 2020)

fog

from a work in progress: “process, not a journey”(59)

of course it’s never either or

a yes a no one path or some other

no matter how far you attempt to see

before it bends in the brush

or how detailed the pro con list

you lay out with little checks

primly contained in tightly drawn boxes

your life is always cluttered

with could haves would haves buts

yets and never-minds

all the vaguely grey spaces

where it’s troublesome to see

as if your smudged glasses were removed

in order to clean the day’s detritus

away and what blurred clarity

you possessed expands and smears

toward an ever-darkening horizon

(May 2, 2020)