He places his foot on the treadle.
The wheel slowly begins to creak,
then spin and spin like fate
in death’s dark hands.
He presses his tired eyes
to the stone; sparks fly.
It’s hard to see with myopic eyes.
Everything blurs with angelic auras.
If only he can sharpen a new lens
to reshape his stark visions,
then what he sees will not come to be—
If your eye offends thee,
pluck it out,
pluck it out!
(April 22, 2025)
by
The dogs wake me to feed them.
So, I go down stairs half-asleep.
They dance on their hind legs,
then happily wag their tails
as they wolf down their kibble.
Moments after licking the bowls clean,
they are back upstairs curled asleep
in tight balls next to Lisa.
These are my days now: no longer clotted
with work tensions from day into dreams;
no longer consumed by other minds.
I have my books, our garden, our friends,
and the time to tend to them all.
It is my life to live as I live it.
(April 21, 2025)
In the well-manicured suburban lawn,
one vulture feeds on a squirrel’s remains,
while another perches on the chimney,
its mottled black wings outspread to the sun
as if Christ the Redeemer in Rio.
Last night I could hear coyotes yip and sing
their tangled way along Gilliland creek
which runs through the green belt behind the house.
For days now the north wind has whipped the trees
against the sky, branch rattling on bare branch.
I cannot sleep. The weather makes me tense.
A bland vision of an apocalypse,
I know. Our determined whimper deserves,
despite our frailty, so much more than this.
(April 20, 2025)
by
Money makes one mad.
As if one controls the dice
with a simple kiss.
(April 19, 2025)
by
“If you haven’t read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate, and you will be incompetent, because your personal experiences alone aren’t broad enough to sustain you.”
—General John Mattis
Some days the distance across the room is problematic. Like now, I am reminded of a book by something I just read, but cannot see from where I sit if it is on the shelf. Prester John would know, but he lives somewhere else far far away surrounded by pagans and others I can only imagine. But for today, I am lost in thought. Prester John and his mighty Christian armies could lead the way, if only I could find him somewhere nearby. Perhaps tomorrow, or the day after, I’ll remember to look in that book over there. For now, I am tired, and it is almost time for dinner, and I have such a long walk home through the village square before dark.
(April 17, 2025)
by
Ghosts move through the house, sitting on the kitchen table, on the arms of overstuffed chairs, looking at the blurbs on the backs of books left casually on side tables as if they still knew how to read. They have something more to say, but they have lost their ability to speak. I loan them my mouth. Their words almost fit what I say. They speak in the footnotes as unacknowledged experts to cite variations and caveats. Although no one has time to read their comments, their soft attention to others’ details reshape the shadows until memory begins to cling to their faces like stone veils, or muscles to bone. They no longer belong to the story they once were, anymore than I know the end of mine.
(April 16, 2025)
by
Ashes to Ashes
I watch the hollowed out building burn.
Sections of roof collapse into the flames.
Smoke occludes the sky like a prayer.
I am complicit.
Smoke and ash smudge my hands and face,
a negligent guilt through willful ignorance.
I am at a loss: I call, I write, I vote;
I make signs for marches.
The flames burn hotter.
They buy more gasoline and matches,
then dance unimpeded down the road
to sing gleefully around the next bonfire.
(April 15, 2025)
I wake from the night into memory.
Nearby, I am here again, a soft footstep
in the hall, muffled behind a closed door.
A silence forms like an intake of breath.
Dawn waits darkly along the horizon.
It is hard to differentiate the difference
between what I see and what I knew.
One changes the other like the rising sun.
It is as if I have lived here before,
perhaps, in a novel I once half-read,
or when lulled by repetitive motion
of an ocean wave adrift far at sea.
I’m present in overlapping visions
within each one, I’m lost and discontent.
(April 14, 2025)
by
hope will become a noose
Book of Job, trans. by Stephen Mitchell
1
Spring! Symbol of life!
There’s a rabbit in the yard—
The dogs mark its scent.
2
Damn! There’s a rabbit!
So close to Easter Sunday—
No resurrection.
(April 13, 2025)
by
time fills the day with nothing
but pre-occupations
something planned randomly
to give an appearance of order
for the orderly to follow before
time runs out leaving no time
for what could have been done instead:
a slow walk about the garden for example
(April 12, 2025)
by
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’s
house in Victoria grows
beneath the iris.
Our yard is chaos
planned out from the beginning;
nature is random.
The roses need to be pruned.
A hummingbird whirrs nearby.
(April 11, 2025)
I have been reading Williams since I was in high school when his selected poems was one of the texts in a creative writing class I had received a scholarship to attend. He has been one of the recurring poetic presences in my literary life. Over the last week I have read from start to finish his last book of poetry, for which he won posthumously the Pulitzer Prize, Pictures from Brueghel and other Poems. I have read the Brueghel series multiple times over the years, teaching several of them, like the Fall of Icarus, in my classes. Additionally I have read most of the others in the book, opening it casually over the years, or have read them in anthologies of his work, or modernist anthologies. But I don’t think I have ever sat down and read the volume cover to cover, even if I have had this copy for at least 40 years. I really enjoyed reading the longer poems: The Desert Music, and Asphodel, That Greeny Flower again. Williams unique, rhythm and voice— what he called the variable foot— are a delight of the American idiom. I felt as if I could hear his calm voice speaking in the room. I think I will go back and read his complete works again, taking advantage of the chronological order of those works, as well as being grouped together with the poems originally published in volumes of poetry. (A side note: in grad school at Bread Loaf I took a class on the Modern long poem with Walt Litz, the editor of the first volume of the Collected Works).
(April 10, 2025)
by
“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
somewhere
for 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)
by
The rabbit nibbles
fresh clover through the spring day.
The dog’s ears prick up.
(April 9, 2025)
subtext 