If I understand
correctly, then
I have stumbled
on a rule,
a pratfall,
in my case,
accidentally
into a truth.
Not that rules
or truths must
ever exist
necessarily:
here, where I am lost, is
where the first word falls.
(April 24, 2026)
Category: meaning
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The snow, the road,
the woods, the town,
the wild geese, the sleepy cat
are not the snow, the
road, the woods, the
town, the wild geese, the
sleepy cat; the words I use
are not what I am saying.
Like lovers’ conversationslate at night after many years
and a second bottle of wine
are never about what they say:
a metaphor is what is left;
a metaphor is what you fear.
(April 22, 2026)
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I finished “If not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho” by Anne Carson last night. This is the second time I have gone through this book from start to finish. The last time was about 13-14 years ago. I have picked it up randomly over the years reading bits before putting it back on the shelf. When I read it through years ago, I was also reading Carson’s “Eros, the Bittersweet,” which has several essays about Sappho. It helped. Anne Carson, if you don’t know, is an Ancient Greek scholar, who is also (imho) one of the most interesting writers in English today. She is probably best known for “Autobiography of Red,” but NOX should be on everyone’s reading list. As with the last time I read “If not, Winter,” I was reminded of Guy Davenport’s “7 Greeks,” because of the number of poem fragments which were translated with gaps in parentheses. The empty spaces made me think about two things: 1) the importance of silence and the use of space in creating meaning, and 2) how much meaning one word can carry without effort, and how placing simple words next to each other opens portals into other worlds which go beyond what is contained in the solitary words by themselves.
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Memory is all that we are,
and all that we are is what
we remember. These days
I often forget why I enter
a room as I enter. I’m forced
to wait on the blurred past
with its dead possibilities
to catch up to my present.
We sit comfortably couchedabout the room. We confess
our stories again, shifting
scenes to allow for shapes
which differ, to be polite,
from others in other rooms.
(December 28, 2025)
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a turn away
from pursuit
from a life
from himself
an escapefrom others
from definition
from self-immolation
a denialof projection
of supposition
of expectation
a purgeof arrogance
of shame
of the soul’s anger
a beliefin the present
in hope
in simplicity
a meaningin the chaos
in the day
in himself
a directiontoward difference
toward laughter
toward each other
a movementtoward trust
toward friends
toward love
(December 9, 2025)
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The wind gusts in bursts
rushing leaves down the street
in a spasm of seasonal ritual,
as if a pattern’s repetition
creates a meaning separate
from our own simple noticing.
I have a hard time hearing
these voices of the world
through the constant clatter,
through the daily dazzle
and flash of the spectacle
playing in the wind’s
petulant laughter.
My screams are too loud.
To maintain my illusion
of safety, of purpose,
I whisper stories to myself.
I know stories are stories
and how they move through
each other like incestuous ghosts,
or confluent rivers, shaping
one another as they change.
I know change is incremental,
so I listen closely to my heart.
I notice a difference, but
am unsure what is different—
my notice, or the angle
of the wind through the trees.
(November 13, 2025)
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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)
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The conversation continues along
the old tracks of cliche. Clack-clack he says.
Clack-clack, she responds. And so goes the night,
Another milk run no one remembers.
I worry about what I should forget,and forget what I should worry about.
In a forest of clear trails and side tracks,
one word completes the regrets of the whole.
It’s easy to get caught in an eddy,to circle slowly back to past mistakes,
to unravel a gesture’s soft nuance,
to mean more than anyone could entail.
What could he have said? What could she have said?The words are spoken. The cast’s determined.
(May 31, 2025)
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A hawk slips between the trees,
silently like a child’s paper plane.
Here is no truth lassoed tightly
by a smug Wonder Woman.
For what is truth? The mountain
is still a mountain, despite its name.
We see it—imposible to deny—
but we insist words mean more,
tripping over them like shoelaces
as we cower in the short grass, and
listen for air as the hawk descends.
(February 6, 2025)
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Purpose
by
I wait to learn
what it means— wait
to be told with a form
of subtlety how threads,
like spider’s silk,
stretch through time
along stuttered words,
until a cocoon is spun
and I wait tightly defined
as a spider slips
across its web.
(October 14, 2024)
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People are always asking ‘what’s the use of poetry?’ The mystery of language, the poetic imagination, and the mind of compassion are roughly one and the same, and through poetry perhaps they can keep guiding the world toward occasional moments of peace, gratitude, and delight.
—Gary Synder
A hammer lying next to a book
of poetry on a table is not a hammer.
The book of poetry is not a book of poetry.
I open the book and read a poem.
I close the book and place it
once again on the table:
Once again into nothing.
I pick up the hammer
some nails,
then go again to work.
What use am I?
(June 10, 2024)
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it’s when you believe
you are someone
that the mistake begins
you are not the nailthe crown fell later
far from your loss
what I wantednever mattered
more than now
and now is too lateto be any more
than a thin fume
a last twirl of smokeafter the ember’s gone
(January 17, 2024)
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