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)
by
I approach a common ledge.
It was once, in a different world
than this, a waterfall cascading
to the half-hidden rocks below.
Oblivious, I would often sit,
feet dangling casually above
the water’s icy swirl, listening
close to the whispers beneath
the roar of the waterfall’s
incessant gush and rush.
For hours, I would watch. The mist
would rise and fall from soft depths,
beckoning me with seductive arms
toward an unrequited leap of faith.
Now, a clarity, weighted with remorse
and infantile regret to change,
whets the air with metaphor.
The rocks are dry and stark,
full of sharp consequences,
and vaguely permanent decisions.
Dust slips slowly among the cracks.
The contrast between then and now
cuts a razor line across thin skin;
blood beads like dew on a leaf,
hesitating before falling away.
Afraid to fail even in the attempt,
I turn away, once again lost.
(October 30, 2024)
Today is cooler, closer
to memory which is always
icy, and inaccurate. Time
exists as sentences exist
to rationalize what
they say as they say it,
calling being into being
in the time it takes time
to fall away yet again.
The trees offer their leaves,
no longer the green of spring,
as sacrifice to the black earth.
Tonight even the sun is tired
pulling the day slowly back
toward the longest night.
The dogs are never tired
eager to dance about the yard
in futile pursuit of squirrels.
(October 23, 2024)
by
“why fault me for my birth”
—Jim Harrison
It’s odd to give up
part of yourself:
what has contained
from others—you.
What must the cicada
sense as he outgrows
his skin, then hears
the dry crack
as he steps away
from the smaller space?
(October 14, 2024)
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)
by
“worn out a way of being”
—-Jim Harrison
1)
Not that they went away,
my meds muted most,
and slowed the pace
to a lachrymose flagellation,
from relentless and revisionist
jump cuts, reshuffled
and reconnected,
in ever new and familiar
kaleidoscopic tropes.
2)
I read once twenty-five percent,
or more, of people have no voices
talking to each other,
no inner voice to sound
the depths of their day.
“How do they think?” my students asked
when I told them. “I wouldn’t know:”
I sighed, “strangely, I guess.”
“How lonely,” one girl said to herself.
3)
Almost four in the morning,
the dogs insist on going out.
I’m tired and insist on telling
myself that I am tired. I want
to make a list of all the things
I’m tired of, finally coming
to a consensus: I’ve worn out
a way of being, a path carved
in repetitive quiet conversations.
(October 7, 2024)
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