subtext

My Poetry and Commentary on Life

Designed with WordPress

grounded

by

acceptance, agency, aging, change, contentment, difference, gratitude, identity formation, optimism, poetry, retirement, transition

bare branches lace the grey sky to the ground

as the rain continues into the day

again I wait in a doctor’s office

an event more often than not these days

but what can I say I’m no longer young

outside people drive to work through the rain

I still rise long before the sun rises

as I did for the last thirty-four years

I take naps now instead of commuting

I like that I have nothing much to do

that must be done on someone else’s time

my day’s filled with dogs and poetry

both of which provide a steady rhythm

more suited to the beating of my heart

(January 26, 2024)

Share this:
Facebook
Tumblr
X
Bluesky
Threads
Like Loading…
After Mamie Died, Mom Called the Ambulance

by

alone, attention, change, death, fate, life, meditation, memory, poetry

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 unattended

In 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)

Share this:
Facebook
Tumblr
X
Bluesky
Threads
Like Loading…
The Difference From Desire

by

abstract, anxiety, chance, courage, desire, despair, difference, fate, fear, paradigms, poetry

Do you see the hope, the longing

that waits always unfulfilled

like despair upon a bridge

unwilling to stand balanced

upon the rail, to watch the flow

of the white river through the rocks;

unwilling to decide

which ecstasy to embrace:

the ecstasy of hope—

to fly unimpeded into the sky

as the wax our father shaped

into wings softens with the setting sun;

or the ecstasy of fate—

to accept the freedom the plunge offers

in the froth and blood far below?

(January 20, 2024)

Share this:
Facebook
Tumblr
X
Bluesky
Threads
Like Loading…
for want

by

aging, choice, desire, life, meaning, poetry, process, samsara, sonnets, time

it’s when you believe

you are someone

that the mistake begins

you are not the nail

the crown fell later

far from your loss

what I wanted

never mattered

more than now

and now is too late

to be any more

than a thin fume

a last twirl of smoke

after the ember’s gone

(January 17, 2024)

Share this:
Facebook
Tumblr
X
Bluesky
Threads
Like Loading…
Cold Winter Day

by

aging, awareness, haiku, interrelationships, metaphor, poetry, syllabics, tanka, time

Outside in the yard,

spring’s green garden grows dormant;

ice holds to the ground.

Petals fall like snow.

As I walk through the garden,

the cold kills the rose.

My son wants something:

I can only be myself.

Winter’s wind is cold.

Ice covers the grass;

Even inside, I am cold.

All my friends have gone.

The low grey clouds hang like shrouds;

the cold grows into the night.

(January 15, 2024)

Share this:
Facebook
Tumblr
X
Bluesky
Threads
Like Loading…
Crossing Over

by

attention, change, objectivism, poetry, zen

On the concrete bridge

crossing Gilleland creek

near the playscape

in the park, a box

turtle pulls tightly

into its mottled shell

and waits for the dog,

and me, to pass.

(January 12, 2024)

Share this:
Facebook
Tumblr
X
Bluesky
Threads
Like Loading…
Impasse

by

broken, pessimism, poetry, relationships

“words as residue”

—Gustaf Sobin

Sheared close

to the skin,

we sit waiting

for something

to be said.

What remains

after we speak

are bludgeons

of memory,

a residual gist:

if only words

could be solid

and crystalline.

Instead, dust motes

slip silently

through morning

sunlight.

(January 9, 2024)

Share this:
Facebook
Tumblr
X
Bluesky
Threads
Like Loading…
Continuity Requires Patience

by

abstract, metaphor, paradigms, patterns, poetry

the darkness waits

without waiting

as easy as the sun

over lake travis

or whiskey over ice

slowly over decades

roses unfold

then fall upon the floor

the darkness shadows

the light from the window

patience is what is left

a sheen of mist

slicks the lily’s leaf

as light absorbs the dark

back into itself

(January 4, 2024)

Share this:
Facebook
Tumblr
X
Bluesky
Threads
Like Loading…
The Mundane Patterns Along the Way

by

attention, awareness, change, cycle, haiku, patterns, poetry, sonnets, syllabics, tanka, time

another day ends

the night swallows the last light

a new year begins

the old clock rings out

ten minutes behind the time

the night knows no time

fireworks break the light

across the darkest of skies

rain falls to the sea

the morning is cold

leaves have fallen from the trees

for now the wind waits

ring out bells ring in ring out

ring in bells ring out ring in

(January 1, 2024)

Share this:
Facebook
Tumblr
X
Bluesky
Threads
Like Loading…
Some Days

by

broken, difference, hope, liminal, poetry

Each morning,

or late at night,

when difference

thins, I find bits

of cracked mirror

to reflect within:

a book, a memory,

a word, a look.

I cannot believe

this is a mistake,

yet purpose,

like the hope

of redemption,

eludes me.

I am no one;

even before I was

broken, I failed

to cohere. A soft

fear pulses like veins

near the thin surface

of my wrist. I watch

its blue throb into

my ravaged palms

like flash floods

through desert ravines:

the life line, heart line,

love line—as if the blood

can read a divination

past decades and decades

of dust and slow decay;

as if I could discover

a razor sharp enough

to cut the membrane

between night and day.

(December 31, 2023)

Share this:
Facebook
Tumblr
X
Bluesky
Threads
Like Loading…
Two Poems for the New Year

by

haiku, poetry, repost, tanka

All day the rain fell

Soaking the cold winter ground

The year ends tonight

(December 31, 2020)

New Year’s Eve

It’s all too simple—

to watch the clock strike midnight:

Dust settles to earth.

 Nothing much ever changes:

we laugh, and sing, then we don’t.

(December 31, 2021)

Share this:
Facebook
Tumblr
X
Bluesky
Threads
Like Loading…
Books Finished in 2023

by

books, contentment, conversation, literature, reading

I don’t see finishing another book by the end of the year. So here is a list of the books I finished this year. I always add finished because I often stop reading books for various reasons: 1)I forget where I put them, and then when I find them I don’t care anymore; 2) I lose interest; 3) I find the book tiresome, or obvious;4) the book is dreadful; 5) I become distracted and start reading something else. I also add finished as a qualifier, because I sometimes suspect people’s list of books read is more about competition (LOOK, I’ve read a bunch more books than you!) than it is about reading what you want to read. So, here is my list: 2023 books

The Wasteland: a biography of a poem by Matthew Hollis

Black No More by George Schuyler

10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World by Elif Shafak

The Needle’s Eye by Fanny Howe

Bridge of Sighs by Richard Russo

Less by Andrew Sean Green

When We Were Orphans by Kazaa Ishiguro

Poverty, by America by Matthew Desmond

The writing Life by Annie Dillard

The Dance Most of All by Jack Gilbert

The Overstory by Richard Powers

Forget the Alamo by Burrough, Tomlinson, and Stanford

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

Finalists by Rae Armantrout

Pierre Reverdy Selected Poems translated by Kenneth Rexroth

Gasoline by Gregory Corso.

Breathing the Water by Denise Levertov

Fully Empowered by Pablo Neruda

Flower Wreath Hill, later poems by Kenneth Rexroth

Four Unposted Letters to Catherine by Laura Riding

The Heat Will Kill You First by Jeff Goodell

The Now by Albert Goldbarth

Fathers and Children by Ivan Turgenev

The Fraud by Zadie Smith

Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

Poetry as Insurgent Art by Laurence Ferlinghetti

An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro

Good Night, Irene by Luis Alberto Urrea

Diving Into the Wreck by Adrienne Rich

Hermetic Definition by H.D.

Singing at the Gates by Jimmy Santiago Baca

Share this:
Facebook
Tumblr
X
Bluesky
Threads
Like Loading…
memory

by

control, definition, fate, fear, interpretation, paradigms, patterns, poetry, traces

a network of shadows

across a path

connect patterns

dormant through my night

I am constrained

with chains of doubt

and fear—abstracted

from stark moments

decades old

for more than a moment

they swirl like dust

in late afternoon

sunlight—

thin and pale

for less than a moment

i hold these moments

like crumbling oak leaves

falling from delphic hands

back into shadow

(December 24, 2023)

Share this:
Facebook
Tumblr
X
Bluesky
Threads
Like Loading…
I am Offered Advice on How to Live

by

aging, change, cycle, death, life, meditation, poetry, retirement, zen

1- Tao

once

there were two

which begat a third

then sprung

a myriad

to flourish the world

2- Patience

finally

i become

the contours

of the change

my life has

left me to

desert wind

through rocks

as rain upon

old gravestones

grinds time back

to nothing

(December 19, 2023)

Share this:
Facebook
Tumblr
X
Bluesky
Threads
Like Loading…
Mid-December

by

aging, change, meditation, poetry

Oak leaves skitter

like fragile kittens

down the empty street.

The first blue norther

slices through the trees,

rattling my old bones.

(December 10, 2023)

Share this:
Facebook
Tumblr
X
Bluesky
Threads
Like Loading…