by
the pause between
your question
and my answer
goes unnoticed
as if what I say
is ever easy
as if the cold mornings
before driving to work
in the dark
were never a part
of the life we lived
of who we became
as if these small seconds
as leaves fell
through the light
late after work
or Lilith dancing
in New Orleans’
rain-slicked streets
or the grain of sand
glinting in the sun
weeks after our beach trip
never occurred
like most of life
(December 2, 2024)
As I was heading toward bed last night, I thought of Galway Kinnell’s “The Book of Nightmares.” It has been years since I last read it. I figured it was the universe telling me I needed to read it again, So I pulled it off the shelf.
I first ran across “The Book of Nightmares” in the University Coop basement, where they would put out the required texts for the numerous classes being offered that semester at UT. I often would troll through the offerings, buying books for classes I was not taking. One semester, Kurt Heinzelman, a prof at UT, was teaching a graduate class on the Modern Long Poem. In addition to Eliot’s Four Quartets, Ted Hughes,” Crow, and various others, was Kinnell’s Book of Nightmares. I bought them all. Kinnell’s book fell into heavy rotation in my reading play lists. A few years later, I found a cassette tape of Kinnell reading The Book of Nightmares, which I listened to constantly in my old Honda as I drove around Austin.
After years of reading and re-reading “Nightmares,” as well as his other books, Kinnell came to Texas State to do a reading in 1989. Lisa, Donna and I drove down to see him. After the reading there was a reception where the attendees could talk with Kinnell. I was too introverted to attempt a meeting, even though I had brought my old copy of Book of Nightmares for him to sign, if by some miracle I was able to summon enough gall to speak to the poet. Donna and Lisa went off to find the restroom and left me sitting on a bench awaiting their return. While I waited a man came over and sat down on the bench next to me. It was Galway Kinnell. I figured I had to talk to him, since there he was. We made forgettable small talk about Vermont, and he graciously signed my copy of Nightmares.
Last night after I pulled it off the shelf again, after years of not thinking about it, I read it again from start to finish. It is still an amazing poetic achievement. Reading it, I immediately fell into the slow rhythms, and stunning imagery. Themes of universal birth and death, creation and time mixed in with the personal reflections on the birth of his own children are just a part of the overall power of the book. I was lucky to have run across it that day in the Coop basement, it has been a true companion in my literate life.
by
In my darkness, where I will not look,
live the parts of me I do not wish to know.
I sense their vague shapes along the edges
shifting toward the trees as the flames flicker.
Sometimes during the day, I can hear them—
their mutters rising thick below my words,
like smoke billows from a chemical fire
fixing its pungent smell across a clear sky.
Mostly, they sleep like bears hibernating
deeply beneath the snow. I let them be.
Better left with violent dreams of salmon,
than cracking open the bones of the dead.
Better chained in soft recriminations,
than eviscerated with what I am.
by
“clarity in the sense of silence”
—George Oppen
I know him as I knew him then
as I knew myself as I know now
we are at once all our ages
a revisioning of our visions
distance allowing no clarity
only layers and layers of veils
each claims with equal certitude
to be the last to fall to ground
but the eyes are hungry to savor
the one taste to define the dish
the one traumatic or benign event
to become the archway’s keystone
beneath which I can finally pass
and see myself preserved in silence
(November 18, 2024)
by
always somewhere else
in a foreign language
an ocean away
another part of town
the neighbor’s house
never near you
in the same room
your blood on the floor
your muffled cries heard
down the well-lit streets
always safe behind screens
with coifed stern faces
stating facts about others
numbers abstract and soft
pushing their deaths away
never the mangled bodies
splattered brains on the wall
never at fault
never complicit
always another lie
(November 17, 2024)
a cardinal flits along a parabola from tree to tree
as if making a hand gesture to emphasize a point
as if what you saw in the clouds
(dogs pursuing nebulous squirrels)
is worth the energy it takes to look up
from reading the day’s news to listen
to the beauty which orbits slowly around
us
and we all just see what we see
because we are that simple
we are that simple
(November 16, 2024)
Jiggers of time measured out:
a mixture of meals, dog walks,
and predictably mundane
intrusive thoughts. Skoal!
(November 15, 2024)
by
At least 25 years ago, I read The Road Home by Jim Harrison. I read it again for the second time slowly over the last month. The Road Home was the first novel by Harrison I read. I had read his short book of poetry “After Ikkyu,” which is still one of my favorite books of poetry. I have since read pretty much everything he wrote. The Road Home is the sequel to Dalva, which I read after The Road Home. The Road Home had an enormous emotional impact as I finished it the first time, and now again 25 years later. It wrestles with themes of history, family, place (as in location), nature, art, and love, and how all of these interact in one’s life for good and ill. Harrison’s prose style (poetry too) creates the illusion of someone talking directly to you, going on short and longish tangents and asides as the story is told. All the while adding nothing that is not necessary as the story unfolds. Here are some quotes from The Road Home:
“The mind by itself must discipline itself to open wide enough to allow the soul to clap its hands and sing.”
“..as if we were all undertakers for our past.”
“If it all was based so resolutely on chance it seemed by far the best course to seize what chances were offered.”
“Obsessions don’t seem extraordinary if it’s just the way you are.”
“I wondered at the time and still do why they allow people to teach who don’t read.”
by
On a sunny day in mid-November
in a newly gentrified part of Austin,
the restaurant is full of the young and educated
who chat at tables beneath the large oaks.
Waitresses bring armfuls of food and drink,
then easily sweep away the empty trays
in an all consuming dance of plenty.
Conversation at our table stays light
with talk of work and dogs and nothing,
nothing at all, of the coming darkness.
(November 10, 2024)
by
The sky hangs low and grey; the first
true cool spell since early last spring
thundered through a few nights ago.
The election is over, and the beast
has returned once again to power,
a bitter creature bent on revenge.
Today, I must finish cleaning up
the house after last night’s party,
which broke up early and dissolute.
It is difficult to be hopeful as fall
deepens toward the winter solstice
even with its celestial cliches:
as darkness grows, the light remains;
a millstone slowly grinds all to dust.
(November 7, 2024)
the shadows of the crepe myrtle
outside the window I sit next to
sway across the page of my book
like an old couple decades in love
slow dance to music only they hear
(November 6, 2024)
by
when deep inside dream
can you remember vaguely
the working world as you
remember the wisp of dream
when you move through bright day
haunted by an almost familiar
sense of an impending joy—
the memory of dream
and the memory of you
flow near the other slowly
like two disparate rivers meld
into more than just themselves
(November 4, 2024)
between dad’s explosive anger
and mom’s emotional oppression
between chaos and control
between love and distance
between death and freedom
I am tired but cannot sleep
in the bed where I am born
(November 3, 2024)
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