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It’s the lopsided charm
of this day’s superlatives—
the shortest day,
the longest night,
which for millennia
provided power
to the metaphor
for hope to console us
with heavenly promise
that peace will return
as easily as morning light
washes over dark stone.
(Winter Solstice, December 21, 2025)
by
I finished Rub Out by Ed Barrett last night. I have no idea where or when I bought this book. But I found it on my shelf a few months back and have been reading at it since then. It is an interesting set of poems as a mystery novel/1940’s crime noir as if written by John Ashbery. I’m thinking I need to read it again, over a shorter amount of time. I also think I should find someone to read it with, so that I have someone to talk to about it. Here is a quote I copied down several weeks ago: “expectation outweighs desire for most of life”
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It has been several decades, at least, since I read Eliot’s Four Quartets from beginning to end in one sitting. But since the poem came up in a conversation a couple of days ago, and Lisa has gone out of town, I read them out loud to myself in one go. It is an amazing work of art: time, faith, God, identity, sense of place, abstract while being incredibly precise in concrete details which fold back into the abstract. The usual allusions to everything in world literature and religion, but so subtle and fast it becomes as if you are reading about Jonah, Arjuna, Charles the 2nd, and many others for the first time. And such a magisterial voice and a musicality which lifts the reader to intellectual heights before they realize what is happening. When, 30 years ago, I read The Quartets for a class on the Modern long poem, Walt Litz, my prof, described it as “philosophical poetry, not philosophy as poetry.” If you haven’t read it, and want something deep, but not as daunting and dark as The Wasteland, then you should read it. It made me think about the first time I heard Beethoven’s Ninth, or Handel’s Messiah all the way through. And if you have read it, then it might be time to look again. I remember reading once that different poets often speak to you differently at different times of your life. The Four Quartets speak differently now than they once did. “My words echo/ thus in your mind.”
(December 16, 2025)
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I’ve tossed yarrow stalks on a table,
and stared blankly at arcane cards
pretending at small divinations.
Last week I’ve been reading poetry
that survived orally for millennia
before copied slowly onto a page.
I’ve done all these things before,
so much so I almost recognize
the footprint’s patterns in the sand.
Each morning repeats itself:
I let the dogs out, start coffee, piss,
as if the sun wouldn’t rise otherwise.
Yet, it does, as it will again:
so starkly beautiful, so new.
(December 15, 2025)
It happens right here
in front of us:
close enough to feel
the blood splatter;
close enough to hear
her lungs wheeze;
close enough to smell
the rusty wet iron.
We shrug and move on.
What’s there to do?
But scream,
and point fingers;
then wake up to start
another day in America.
(December 25, 2025)
by
a turn away
from pursuit
from a life
from himself
an escape
from others
from definition
from self-immolation
a denial
of projection
of supposition
of expectation
a purge
of arrogance
of shame
of the soul’s anger
a belief
in the present
in hope
in simplicity
a meaning
in the chaos
in the day
in himself
a direction
toward difference
toward laughter
toward each other
a movement
toward trust
toward friends
toward love
(December 9, 2025)
by
a soft drought-ending rain
falls overnight
and into the morning
one lives
within the moment
only
when one understands
there is nothing
to stand under
and lets the rain
without metaphor
wash over you
(December 8, 2025)
by
then there are the dreams
you do remember
not just wisps
which vanish forgotten
at fingertips’ ends
but the ones that cling
their razor tipped claws
toying with your heart
late into the afternoon
at the end of winter
(December 6, 2025)
another bleak day
what autumn color there was
has returned to brown
(December 2, 2025)
by
No blood splatted rubble
no violent clashes
between blind love’s
engendered hatreds
no screams
nor whimpers
of the dying next door—
only a silent room
is left to clarify
another day’s first light
as it expands
through an open window
(December 1, 2025)
Today as I do most days
for the last fifty years,
I write the life
I have left to me.
Most days I have little
to say of consequence;
yet, I continue
to rattle along
with a naive trust
tomorrow will arrive
trembling with nascent rage.
(November 28, 2025)
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I suppose I should
be grateful for all
the people and events
of which and of whom
I am usually unaware
who are daily doing
deeds without awareness
of me yet enable me
to go about my life
oblivious and happy
(November 24, 2025)
“The heart lies to itself because it must”
—Jack Gilbert
What fragments have been lost
along the way? What holes filled
with other’s dry detritus?
other’s bland conjectures? These limits
become, over time, tattered as well—
perhaps more comfortable and loose,
easier to disguise time’s misgivings;
easier than telling the truth.
(November 21, 2025)
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My father’s ghost has returned
to haunt me after decades
of silence. I only knew
his decline; now, I’m learning
my own, a slow remembrance.
I’m no Hamlet; to avenge
his death, I would kill myself,
there would not be a question.
Telling that story once more,
I am what remains of him.
At night looking for water,
not as broken as he was,
I see him in the mirror,
frowning at me from the side.
My body reflects his own.
My mom used him as a threat
even after he was gone:
If you could be half the man
he was…if he could see you…
what do you think he would say?
She has been gone for years now,
while he hangs on the edges
darkly brooding as in life,
a storm always eminent,
on the verge of violence.
I saw my future at eight,
and a clearer past today:
his presence was an absence
always nearby, yet distant
like a shadow on water.
(November 16, 2025)
Silence is silent.
Except it is not,
just ask John Cage.
He’ll look at you
for four minutes
and 33 seconds.
In Vermont
I met a man
from Boston.
He could not sleep;
the forest was loud
compared to the city.
In zen, the goal
is to still the mind
into silence:
to be aware
to such an extent
to become extant.
In an anechoic
chamber, one hears
one’s bones,
and the thrum
of one’s blood
beneath the skin.
(November 14, 2025)
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