by
Each day I shuffle about the house
lost within the duties of the day.
I wonder: all these poets with their advice
full of absolutes and disdain for others—
when do they find time to write;
to sit alone with their words;
to scrape the burnt rice from the pan?
(June 30, 2022)
by
In the early evening silence,
cicadas and doves, hidden
in the trees, whoo and trill,
as the sprinkler fans the grass
with artificial rain.
This is enough,
as the sun tips the tops
of the tallest trees
with a light-green fire
before it sets behind the hills.
(June 24, 2022)
by
While degrees
prove persistence
more than
knowledge gained,
one cannot pretend
through screams
and violence
to know anything.
If one attends
to each breath
and stumble along
the garden path,
one’s practice should be
enough; yet, life
disguises wisdom
in each rose’s bloom.
(June 23, 2022)
by
The ghosts enter my dreams again. They dislike the arrangement of the furniture. So, they move the leather couch to the opposite wall, reset the clock, close all the doors, open all the windows, letting bugs get in, and finally turn off all the lights except the one over the kitchen table, which glows eerily as if in a noir movie from the 1950’s. I have to admit the new arrangement of the room makes for a better flow overall, yet something is still wrong. Although I see all of this, I am not there. I am somewhere else, disconnected from my life like a mirror. I try to speak, but the words come out backwards, the syntax jumbled and slurred. The ghosts look perplexed, but as an act of condescension, they don’t pay any attention to me. They serve themselves tea from a fine china teapot into matching china cups. They speak to each other nonchalantly, about memories I recognize as mine, but do not recall well enough to contradict the revisions they are making. After I wake, and then through the rest of the day as I wonder about the house, I pick up scraps of what was said, and try ineffectually to sew my desires back together as if they were a patch work quilt collectively stitched on a Sunday afternoon over gossip and prayers. Yet, something is missing: I think it might be me.
(June 18, 2022)
Together we drank and sang
into the night; we were true
to ourselves and each other.
Today, even the half-hearted
are cut down by the heartless.
What chance did our song have?
Tonight in the distance,
I hear a solitary flute player.
I think of you, and weep.
(June 17, 2022)
Which side of an equation
creates the balance?
A young student struggles
with algebra’s abstractions.
A butterfly floats obliviously
over a barbed-wire fence.
A peasant carries buckets of manure
balanced on a pole across his shoulder.
Which part of you is you,
and which part is not me?
(June 16, 2022)
by
The light fades again
across the mountains
outside the window
above his desk
where he reads
the old masters.
He looks up,
then, as if struck by a sword,
he furrows his brow.
But now is not the time
for blood to rain from heaven:
the war, as before, continues
unabated and unnoticed.
If he is to find purity’s root
within his world’s manifest divisions,
he must leave his comfortable chair
and charge into the heart of his war.
This must be done, again
and again, with an iron heart,
until he can laugh again;
and, the earth absorbs
the spilled wine
as if it were an apology
offered too late to a god.
(June 12, 2022)
by
talking to fellow Texans at the Grand Canyon
We stood at Yaki Point, silent, awed
content in the silence of the wind
through the piñon trees.
They walked up the trail behind us:
There are no words,
she expounded as if someone asked.
(But there are always words
I thought, even in the canyon’s silence).
Yet, they kept talking:
how Yosemite is more Impressive
Oh, you have to go there
The hikes— so strenuous
We were so sore afterwards
Then they walked away talking
as if to someone else.
While the wind moved through the piñon trees
filling the silence they left behind.
(June 9, 2022)
I know enough to know
I don’t know enough
to know nothing.
(June 7, 2022)
by
Death’s daughters dance
seductively
a slow strip tease;
their delusions draped
in our desires and discontents.
Without the diligence
to be dissuaded,
I take delight
in every turn and twist
of their exigent dance.
With my attention split
between hesitation and fear,
I fool myself to think
my life is more, or less,
than some other’s. Thus
distracted, I lay my hand
on the earth’s warm skin
to reassure myself again,
that I am still here.
As we spend the summer debating
death’s vague dichotomy (as if
the dead stay up late worrying
about personal liberty), Evil walks
casually along the rows with a scythe
leveling the field with each slow swath.
In early Autumn, night’s splintered
with lightning storms, first dark,
then light, then dark again like a child
flickering a light switch indecisively:
the world about us is exposed briefly
before vanishing into memory’s shimmer.
I have forgotten so many things
I thought I once knew; I remember
I shut the gate to something, but
forgot where it was, where it led to,
or if there were cows there to escape
into the empty Winter pastures.
(June 1, 2022)
subtext 