God gives meaning to us
as we give meaning to God
depending on what One means
we are the power and the glory
on Earth as it is in Heaven
forever and ever amen
(June 15, 2026)
Category: fate
-
Process
by
I do not sing these songs
as much as mutter
over what I notice
like an itinerant priestparsing last rites randomly
to people passing outside
nevertheless I trust what I saymatters yet to whom or how
I do not pretend to know
there is a truth to poetryI will never understand
for it occurs without my help
I have become resigned to itas with much of my life
things happen as they happen
(April 7, 2026)
-
I’m bored
as I write
this poem—
Not too much here
that is not mine
to ruminate:
the mistakes,
and broken desires
left behind
in memory
clot the way
with the pretense
of fate. Only fate
is just the past:
I’m here reading
what I write,
because I’m here,
not somewhere else
reading something
else I wrote today.
Somedays are destined
to be something else
which could have
happened somehow
on a warm afternoon
after a yawn or two,
but then didn’t.
(April 2, 2026)
-
I’ve tossed yarrow stalks on a table,
and stared blankly at arcane cards
pretending at small divinations.
Last week I’ve been reading poetrythat survived orally for millennia
before copied slowly onto a page.
I’ve done all these things before,so much so I almost recognize
the footprint’s patterns in the sand.
Each morning repeats itself:I let the dogs out, start coffee, piss,
as if the sun wouldn’t rise otherwise.
Yet, it does, as it will again:so starkly beautiful, so new.
(December 15, 2025)
-
memento mori
by
and soon enough
your last tomorrow
will arrive
you will ask afterthe time, then shrug,
“that can’t be right”
but it isand it has
and you’re not
(November 7, 2025)
-
The adage goes
To save for a rainy day,
But the rain doesn’t rain much
Anymore. When it does
I watch the grass, trees,
And flowers left dance,
A hollow ghostly dance.
I look around the circle;
To see ritual filled eyes
momentarily hope. We are
Lost. The moment’s all
That is left. Tomorrow’s
Too late. It rains
For hours. the air cools,
At least ‘til morning.
Nothing’s changed;
All is as it has been. Yet,
The streets dry quickly,
And the earth cracks
Open like an empty kiss
Bestowed upon a corpse
As a last blessing.
(August 22, 2025)
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Teleological
by
All day the sky lurks darkly:
low, grey, thick with rain.
Across the back garden,
a mourning dove’s arc
becomes itself wholly
in a violent flutter
of feathers and leaves
as it finally drops
deep within the oak’s
dark twisted branches.
I have so many taskswhich take little time;
yet, I do not move.
I’m already here.
(July 18, 2025)
-
hope will become a nooseBook of Job, trans. by Stephen Mitchell
1
Spring! Symbol of life!
There’s a rabbit in the yard—
The dogs mark its scent.
2Damn! There’s a rabbit!
So close to Easter Sunday—
No resurrection.
(April 13, 2025)
-
The grass is dead; heat
and lack of water condemned
it to a fiery death.
The sun sets the skyon fire; the air vanishes
with the last ember.
The dark cannot grantreprieve from the constant heat;
our sweat turns to ash.
There is no relief.Our father has failed us all
The sun chars the dark.
God smells of stale death in ice;A silent corpse’s last breath.
(March 24, 2025)
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It is not safe. Bears ramble
through the valley, eating
fruit and honey. Berries
stain the forest floor
in blackish red swathes
like ink poured accidentally
across a policeman’s ledger.
They have crossed the road
which runs along the edge
of the park. The dam moves
with purpose, followed close
by her rapacious cubs,
their long tongues loll
wetly from their mouths
like loose rubber pendulums.
Make no mistake, this time
it is more than mere hunger
which curls her black lips
into a sharpened smile,
more than resurgent spring,
more than the fate of time
at history’s end,
but revenge.
(March 21, 2025
-
I finished “Bewilderment” by Richard Powers last night. It was a lovely disturbing and heart-rending novel. Awhile back RFB read The Overstory by Powers, it too was lovely and disturbing, but not quite as sad. Where The Overstory was about trees and the destruction of nature and our connection to it, Bewilderment is about the destruction of life as we know it and ourselves. If you have read “Flowers for Algernon” you will recognize the strong allusions and parallels to that classic novel. (If you haven’t read Algernon—what is wrong with you?) In addition to the end of life on the planet, Bewilderment is also about the relationship between a father and son after the loss of the wife/mother. If you haven’t read The Overstory, you should read it. Bewilderment is also great, and a bit shorter. -
I arrive early at nothing, no door,
no prison wall to climb, a vast unknown.
Like time standing still in an open fieldwith an infinite empty perspective,
all direction the same grey hollowness,the same vacant stare into cold distance.
There’s no point in looking back for a road;it too slowly vanished into nothing.
The foreground is without prior contextand smudges vaguely into the background,
as if a charcoal sketch had been erasedhaphazardly and without proper care
leaving bits of paper and eraserdebris scattered across an empty page.
(May 21, 2024)
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Sonnet
by
A quaver like an old man’s stammer,
I descend like motes of dust for decades
into my final voice; until now, as
I stumble down the hall into the night.
Like my father the year before he died,
I grope my way through the thickening dark.
I do not believe in an inscribed fate;
yet, I am still here now, nowhere else.
A result of fractal mathematics—
one tangential thought into another?
Misdirection became the direction
reaching out like feathers testing the wind
lifting the hawk along a dry thermal
which rises above a desolated plain.
(February 26, 2024)
-
When lost it’s best
to stop and ask
where you are—
but no one knowsbeyond our places,
our beliefs.
Even so, we arrive;our mouths filled
with fresh-turned earth.
Mostly peoplewe know attend,
chatting quietly.
Then a few more leave,while others do not.
(February 8, 2024)
-
As we arrived,
The blue and and red lights
Flashed across the outside
Of Mamie’s house
Like color wheels
On flocked Christmas trees.
She lay unattendedIn the ambulance bay
The back doors swinging wide
As they gathered their gear.
Cool fluorescent light leaked
Into the warm autumn night.
Next to a piece of toast,In her bright kitchen,
A fried egg grew cold
On a small porcelain plate.
Nearby, the wall phone receiver
Lay askew on the speckled tile floor.
(January 23, 2024)
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