I bend to pick up a small bit of trash,
and I think of him crossing the room
to pick up a random piece of paper.
For decades now that one small gesture,
a moment of casual insignificance,
is all that remains of an old man’s life.
(July 12, 2021)
-
-
Acceptance
by
(after J. Ruth Gendler)
Acceptance makes hot tea
for you on cold blustery days.
Acceptance waits for you
to decide who you are—
She makes no judgement
based on arbitrary rules.
Acceptance knows she is stronger,
because she knows the difference
between herself and Acquiescence,
who is too afraid to be different.
Acceptance sits near an open chair
knowing you will find a way home.
She likes to listen to your voice
as you take delight in new ideas.
She does not care they are not hers.
With the gentle reassurance of love,
Acceptance takes your hands
as if they were fresh cut flowers.
(July 1, 2021)
-
A Space Opened Into Absence Like the Sea
Where words we would have said
were swallowed, like sailors sacrificed
to the waves, possibility slipped shut.
If only we could have heard the words
we sang in secret to each other;
if only we had not died there,
feeding like fabled monsters
upon our embittered flesh;
if only we had relented
to the siren’s cold seductions,
then the screams in the waves
which smashed upon the sea wall
would not be lost to the blind pulse
of froth and spume across the wreck.
(June 30, 2021)
-
then, an ever present now (a reading)
by
then, an ever present now
The shuttlecock flits nimbly across the loom with a soft clacking beat. “For every time I’ve told this tale, I’ve told it twice again,” she implies with a sigh as she begins. She speaks of patience and home, and slow unsolicited seductions, as time unravels across the floor like red pools of forgetfulness at her feet.
He watches her hands shift the threads as if playing upon a lyre. He thinks, “There are so many ways through the woods; so many rivers and creeks to cross; so many hollows and caves to wander lost, always different, always the same as the ones crossed before.”
For years and years as he wandered, he watched the waves pulse repetitive hallucinations and horrors towards a horizon he could no longer see. Unearthly monsters churned the waters feeding one upon the other; the past devoured the past with a ceaseless hunger for more. While elsewhere late at night, she walked the halls without a light, leaned against a shuttered door, and listened to the incessant voices muttering their plots and plans for a life she abhorred.
As the story faltered to its close, there was no soft landfall upon the strand, no wreck scattered upon a beach; no violence in their reunion, nor familial embrace. What had grown between them, tangled like olive tree roots upon a cliff, could not be troubled enough to be called love, if it could be called anything at all.
-
then, an ever present now
by
The shuttlecock flits nimbly across the loom with a soft clacking beat. “For every time I’ve told this tale, I’ve told it twice again,” she implies with a sigh as she begins. She speaks of patience and home, and slow unsolicited seductions, as time unravels across the floor like red pools of forgetfulness at her feet.
He watches her hands shift the threads as if playing upon a lyre. He thinks, “There are so many ways through the woods; so many rivers and creeks to cross; so many hollows and caves to wander lost, always different, always the same as the ones crossed before.”
For years and years as he wandered, he watched the waves pulse repetitive hallucinations and horrors towards a horizon he could no longer see. Unearthly monsters churned the waters feeding one upon the other; the past devoured the past with a ceaseless hunger for more. While elsewhere late at night, she walked the halls without a light, leaned against a shuttered door, and listened to the incessant voices muttering their plots and plans for a life she abhorred.
As the story faltered to its close, there was no soft landfall upon the strand, no wreck scattered upon a beach; no violence in their reunion, nor familial embrace. What had grown between them, tangled like olive tree roots upon a cliff, could not be troubled enough to be called love, if it could be called anything at all.
-
Constructs
To connect to some constellation,
we curve toward our angle of light,
intwine our limbs
across any lattice we find.
For only in reflection
are lines straight,
a simple step followed by another,
where all our lies are justified
into sclerotic prison walls.
We turn our faces to the sun
like mirrors tracking distant stars,
where there are no explanations
for our desires, where absences
appear unanticipated
like the sadness of angels
momentarily entering a room
only to leave without speaking.
How do we know
to stand before the door
knowing it will open?
How do we know
the door is there?
(June 17, 2021)
-
We See What We Will
He plods down a street,
head bent, watching
the ground as if afraid
some detail will be enough
to tumble him into hell.
Every moment’s an edgeas each letter in each
word inscribes the air
cleanly, like a tattoo
cut freshly into skin.
(June 9, 2021)
-
I Move Slowly Toward an Understanding
by
The mud thickness
on my shoes,
as I plod along
singing.
I bend slowlyinto the earth;
my voice swallowed
by the wind.
Except for namesof the dead faces,
I remember most
versions of the past;
the storied detailsreassure me
that what I knew,
I know.
Despite other’srevanchist revisions,
I hold to a path
which will lead me home.
(June 8, 2021) -
The Whispers Drive the Narrative
by
The wild mustang grape vines
its way along the fence line,
further obscuring boundaries
between what is said,
and what is perpetuated.
The past is of no consequencebeyond familiar stories to bolster
today’s latest interpretation,
which momentarily coalesces
to cloak in ambiguity
the Absence as it festers
in vague nostalgic shadows.
(May 30, 2021)
-
We are One
by
How do we maintain a balance
between apart and a part?
Lean too far one way, one lose’s
humanity, too far toward the other,
and one loses one’s soul.
I am I, as you are you;yet, I am also you, as you are me,
as well. There is no other way,
other than each other. The hope
of god’s redemption lies with us.
(May 30, 2021)
-
Old Age
Along convoluted back trails
misted in vague familiarity,
we wonder in our ruins,
grown strange and inevitable
across dry rivers and dead grass.
Former landmarks fall to rubble,
become base for new towers,
new ways, not ours.
Then as if by accident,
as if with purpose,
we arrive each moment,
near-sighted and deaf
to regale in our misfortune,
repeating yet another iteration
of the story we all wear,
like chains forged from dust.
(May 20, 2021)
-
turn turn turn (140)
by
cycle, death, end, fate, hope, meditation, patterns, poetry, process, silence, transition, work in progress
with spring’s violence flowers burst
into bloom from winter’s death
as chimes toll slowly in the tree
mere weeks ago ice creakedtightly along the chase tree’s
twisted branches as the chimes
hung limp and people froze
to death alone at home
(May 9, 2021)
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