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)
A poor response to terror— again,
to children slaughtered in their classroom—
And again, will we learn anything this time?
The politicians and news pundits
gossip and chitter like crickets;
and nothing, again, nothing is done.
Here, a few hours distance to Uvalde,
Black-eyed Susans and Horse Mint dance
to the wind, as if nothing changes.
Each time (so strangely common) I think
of my students and the possible horror—
and pray (in my way) for redemption.
Tomorrow, my students will graduate,
and head off to college— with the hope,
again, that they will change this world.
(May 30, 2022)
by
I’m in this snapshot
laughing at a party.
I look old, like a skull
embedded in a wall.
I do not know myself,
at least not enough
to admit what I’ve done.
I deflect, disengage;
yet, I am still there,
disembodied: a voice,
thin and transitional.
My splotched skin’s
stretched thin
across my skull.
The bones show through
like field’s slow erosion.
I wear myself
against the day,
until I am erased.
(May 28, 2022)
A slow cascade into old age,
until the only choice is no choice:
where there is no memory
outside myself; where
the story is only mine
to revise, where I step forward
without hesitation
and unlatch the last door.
(May 24, 2022)
by
I have said this before: There needs to be photographs published of the aftermath of these shootings. Not the bodies of the torn up 1st, 2nd, and 3rd graders (6-9 yo), but the destruction of the room. Blood spattered across the walls where their work had been displayed by the teacher. The work the children had been so proud to see hanging on the wall. Walls that are now blood stained. These common classroom artifacts desecrated in blood need to be seen…these murders are not neat and tidy, easily forgotten (obviously). Do not show the dead children, show the bullet holes in the walls, show the blood. The blood of the innocent. Maybe that would help in bringing enough rage to the surface to bring about meaningful change. Maybe.
Among the wealthy and secure,
wealth and security breeds fear;
then fear becomes the watchword
no one will admit to knowing.
We are all entangled in their lies;
our hearts strangled with our sighs.
(May 23, 2022)
subtext 