The setting sun graces the trees
at the back edge of the yard.
Time means less than it once did.
The shadows across the grass
mirror the trees’ branches
stretching toward the sun.
Here is where metaphor
should shift the light
turning a key like a prism.
Yet, there is no reflection
in the dusk, only a foreshadow
of an unforgiving night,
where all transgressions are called
to account as leaves fall like stars.
(June 8, 2023)
by
I am my horizon.
I cannot see beyond
the emptiness between
this center and the edge.
My bones ache;
my toes are numb.
I weigh my troubles
like raw meat,
balanced against friends’
couched complaints.
These mundane cliches
clot us together,
like blood seals
an angry wound.
(June 3, 2023)
“Looking for truth but finding only memory.”
—Charles Bernstein
Not a storm
as much as
a ritual cleansing—
where bits of dream’s
detritus are
disentangled,
like branches snapped
and scattered
across the forest floor.
We tie twigs together
to bridge the days
across our broken night.
As delicate as a step
onto a stone
in a cold stream,
we wake into memory
flowing through
a metaphoric forest.
We pretend today’s
the same
as yesterday;
the stone
we stand upon
is dry;
the stream
is still
the stream;
that we can still be
all that we
might have been.
(May 26, 2023)
The years and days, important with tears,
blur to inconsequence; the exegesis
of the way conceals each stillborn
turning. The varied strands spun
upon the wheel to a single string
sing in chorus as if fate, not chaos’
echoes scoop meaning from the air,
like twirling bats justifying the walls
we lean against, exhausted by it all.
(May 13, 2023)
He filled his pockets with stones
to devour alone late at night
when no one near need hear
his tangential confessions.
With so many pockets of guilt
to tuck his scattered bits
of complicity, years crept
past him like mountains,
always present, gnawing
at the horizon’s edge.
He woke into a remorse—
a complex rendering
each day of a single act
no one else remembered.
(May 9, 2023)
by
I leave what I have done
for thirty-four years;
and just like that,
a piece of me falls away,
like glaciers calving
into an empty sea
to be absorbed
slowly, without notice.
(May 1, 2023)
by
I am
a cup of rattling bones,
a bag of dried blood,
a parched whisper.
I have lost most
of what I knew,
but have no idea
what that was.
Memory does not
parse the past;
it provides
a thin palimpsest
to cast over
the ocean’s skin
before sinking
beneath the weight.
(April 21, 2023)
My hands are my mother’s hands:
wracked with worry, the veins
thick below the skin, soft
like earth worms in loam.
My hands are my mother’s hands:
holding my face, stunned
that I am still alive, stunned
to walk through another day.
My hands are my mother’s hands:
kneading the bread dough
for one more Thanksgiving,
one more meal together.
My hands are my mother’s hands,
empty like bones in the ground.
(November 28, 2021/ April 17, 2023)
by
the day’s drudgery plods along
disrupted infrequently
by an anti-climactic pause—
the end is no nearer, nor
farther away than it was
minutes or years ago
it’s always right here
on the cusp of a wave
crashing toward a distant star
any change that changes changes
without a melodramatic laugh
in a quickly-twirled mustache
I am here, as you are there
but only until we are not
(April 11, 2023)
Next to the lake
where I will
eventually drown,
I hear echoes
of what you said then
as if they were mine.
Phrases formed and
familiar enough
to resemble our kiss,
if there had been a kiss.
Something I wrote,
or said, returns softened
enough along the edges
of the dark water’s
crumbling definitions:
a twilight like memory
which slowly diminishes
into the night lingering
only in the dim stars
reflected across the lake.
(April 7, 2023)
by
1.
three crows cross the yard
oblivious to the time, and
with nowhere to go
I spend the morning singing
as I pull weeds from the earth
2.
three crows cross the yard
then vanish in the new leaves
which cover the trees
I see only their shadows;
they are gone when I look up
3.
three crows cross the yard
their blue-black wings stir the air
with tessellations
this poem is like all the others:
old patterns within patterns
(March 30, 2023)
The second time, she dropped it in my hand:
a warm offering, somehow still alive.
2.
This morning she left it on the porch: warm
yet lifeless, before she walked casually away.
3.
That second time, I took it past the back gate
and released it into the wild.
4.
The last time content just to show me,
she left it on the porch, and came inside.
(March 28, 2023)
by
What was the best compliment you’ve received?
You’re the teacher I hate the least.
by
I can no longer see
consequence. I walk home
and everyone has changed.
I feel the same now as
I did when I was nine:
ignorant and naive—
and unaware of both.
Like crows among the dead,
I worry our future.
When I take my glasses
off, rooms blur with motion.
I find comfort in that
like our bed’s warmth after
you have left for the day.
(March 21, 2023)
In almost-spring, the trees green
the bare branch tips barely while
others feign death like lovers
reluctant to leave bed’s warmth.
I resist most change until
it has already occurred.
It rarely changes that much,
that I must not plan dinner.
Although time’s rituals resist
alterations, the stitches
still fray from everyday use.
I am not much different.
Yesterday was warm and wet;
today cold, windy and clear.
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