from the street below
car headlights cast shadows
across our bedroom ceiling
like an owl skimming across
an open moonlit field
searches for frightened mice
(June 20, 2023)
-
Insomnia: 3am
-
Borders
For a moment, while dreaming
I sat up: I was sitting up as I
dreamed what I was doing.
When asked what I was doing,
I knew enough to know I was
dreaming and doing at once.
And I laughed, I remember now,
at the absurdity, then fell back
into the pillow and the dream
without ever waking.
Rivers, at convergence,often hold their integrity
flowing together without
merging for miles and miles.
Where am I in any of this?The rivers, the bed, the laughter?
(June 18, 2023)
-
Broken Narratives
Within history’s shrinking confines,
poppies bloom in burning fields,
and a horned lark chitters in the grass.
Nothing I say can change any of this.
Days hinge on days. They open and close
like doors, any of two different ways.
Above, contrails crosshatch the sky
like satyrs’ claws down her back
caught in spasms of a darker lust—
and the new book snaps shut, unread.
Nothing I say can change any of this.
(June 9, 2023)
-
Mirror Shadows
The setting sun graces the trees
at the back edge of the yard.
Time means less than it once did.
The shadows across the grassmirror the trees’ branches
stretching toward the sun.
Here is where metaphorshould shift the light
turning a key like a prism.
Yet, there is no reflectionin the dusk, only a foreshadow
of an unforgiving night,
where all transgressions are calledto account as leaves fall like stars.
(June 8, 2023)
-
Edges
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)
-
Herodotus
“Looking for truth but finding only memory.”
—Charles Bernstein
Not a storm
as much as
a ritual cleansing—
where bits of dream’sdetritus are
disentangled,
like branches snappedand scattered
across the forest floor.
We tie twigs togetherto bridge the days
across our broken night.
As delicate as a steponto a stone
in a cold stream,
we wake into memoryflowing through
a metaphoric forest.
We pretend today’sthe same
as yesterday;
the stonewe stand upon
is dry;
the streamis still
the stream;
that we can still beall that we
might have been.
(May 26, 2023)
-
Day’s Confines
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)
-
Remorse
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)
-
Teacher Retirement
by
I leave what I have done
for thirty-four years;
and just like that,
a piece of me falls away,
like glaciers calvinginto an empty sea
to be absorbed
slowly, without notice.
(May 1, 2023)
-
Net Worth
by
I am
a cup of rattling bones,
a bag of dried blood,
a parched whisper.
I have lost mostof what I knew,
but have no idea
what that was.
Memory does notparse the past;
it provides
a thin palimpsest
to cast overthe ocean’s skin
before sinking
beneath the weight.
(April 21, 2023)
-
My Hands Her Hands
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)
-
Marking Time
by
the day’s drudgery plods along
disrupted infrequently
by an anti-climactic pause—
the end is no nearer, norfarther away than it was
minutes or years ago
it’s always right hereon the cusp of a wave
crashing toward a distant star
any change that changes changeswithout a melodramatic laugh
in a quickly-twirled mustache
I am here, as you are therebut only until we are not
(April 11, 2023)
-
Almost
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)
-
three crows
by
1.
three crows cross the yardoblivious to the time, and
with nowhere to go
I spend the morning singingas I pull weeds from the earth
2.
three crows cross the yardthen 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 yardtheir blue-black wings stir the air
with tessellations
this poem is like all the others:old patterns within patterns
(March 30, 2023) -
Cat and Mouse: an Allegorical Love Story
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 gateand 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)
