by
the dogs bark out back
again the wind ignores them
each to their nature
a warm new year’s eve
ends the hottest year ever
our world is burning
we live deluded
without trust in what we see
shadows form our wall
of course old leaves fall
as easy as the sun sets—
another new year
the wind is only the wind
the sun will rise without us
(December 31, 2024)
the last bottle of champagne is empty
I pour a glass of malbec opened
for Christmas, three days ago—
there are no secrets
only unacknowledged lies
(December 29, 2024)
by
an afternoon is enough:
an hour, or so, with the sun
as shadows slip across
the walls and ceiling
he was there,
and now he’s not
(December 27, 2024)
by
Crows fly overhead
with raucous caws.
With less than an hour
before the long night begins,
I start a fire in the back yard.
Inside where candles burn,
guests gather bearing wine and gifts.
Spilling some wine, I turn
from the fire and wave
to my friends inside.
Tonight we share food,
and laughter. Fear of the dark
hangs on the edge of the fire.
Of this, we are all aware.
Tonight, we smile, hug,
and toast the coming year:
there is always hope.
Tomorrow, the light,
in daily increments, begins
to slowly turn from the night.
(December 22, 2024)
by
if I understood I would not
need to write this moment
i’d simply let the breeze wash
across my skin without metaphor
like morning sunlight strikes
the strings of a silent guitar
(December 18, 2024)
we returned after months
because we knew me must
despite exhaustion of the dead
we returned with each other
to each other’s acceptance
despite the darkened folds
we returned to common rooms
to staccato conversations
despite our acquiescent whispers
we returned to rearranged chairs
to vaguely shifted points of view
despite our best attempts to lie
we returned to our solitudes
to our redacted definitions
despite our fractured lives
(December 15, 2024)
by
As if leading a ritual, the dogs wake me from dream. Their wet noses snuffle in my ear, scenting for traces of consciousness. I slowly collect myself, then escape down the stairs alone. Their task complete, the dogs curl into the warm shapes I leave behind in the tangled sheets. I’m cold, so I wrap myself in one of the brightly colored Mexican blankets Lisa bought more than twenty years ago along the border. Behind me on the counter, the coffee pot begins to gurgle and spurt. I watch through the sliding glass door as the leaves fall from the cottonwood and sycamore out back. Chasing squirrels most of the day, the dogs have worn two paths through the grass, each ending in the same place on the far side of the cypress at the bottom of the yard. These paths breathe cliche, no less so because mundane. The squirrels, out early, leap from tree to tree, dropping to the ground unmolested to collect acorns they buried, somehow remembering where they are months after the fact.
(December 10, 2024)
by
an old man stumbles then
feels his way through shadows
shifting across his walls
(December 7, 2024)
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)
