by
I make our dinner—
noodles with snow peas and shrimp.
She is not hungry.
We have forgotten
how many times we’ve been here.
Decades of hope lost.
Another year ends—
Our pensions are still enough;
the night darkly falls.
We drink to forget—
Tonight we dance a circle;
again, we are here.
Again, day falls into night.
Life is inevitable.
(New Year’s Eve, 2025)
New Year’s Eve (2020)
All day the rain fell
Soaking the cold winter ground
The year ends tonight
(December 31, 2020)
New Year’s Eve
It’s all too simple—
to watch the clock strike midnight:
Dust settles to earth.
Nothing much ever changes:
we laugh, we sing, then we don’t.
(December 31, 2021)
another year
the dogs bark out back
again the wind ignores them
each to their nature
a warm new year’s eve
ends the hottest year ever
our world is burning
we live deluded
without trust in what we see
shadows form our wall
of course old leaves fall
as easy as the sun sets—
another new year
the wind is only the wind
the sun will rise without us
(December 31, 2024)
The Mundane Patterns Along the Way
another day ends
the night swallows the last light
a new year begins
the old clock rings out
ten minutes behind the time
the night knows no time
fireworks break the light
across the darkest of skies
rain falls to the sea
the morning is cold
leaves have fallen from the trees
for now the wind waits
ring out bells ring in ring out
ring in bells ring out ring in
(January 1, 2024)
New Year’s Day
Day breaks once again;
its unrelenting hunger
devours us all.
My end is my beginning;
my beginning is my end.
(January 1, 2022)
A Few Days Past New Year’s
Searching for something else,
a honey bee dances around my head,
Once, I would have jumped up
waving him away; now,
I shake my head,
and he floats away,
as I will eventually. Now
with less time than I’ve had,
there are no new beginnings
just a slow unraveling.
(January 3, 2020)
by
I finished The Wonderful O by James Thurber this afternoon. Thurber is so silly and delightful, while being deeply profound. The Wonderful O, like the other fables of Thurber is marketed as books for children, when they are far from sole audience. The Wonderful O is about two pirates who sail on the ship Aeiu, and hate the vowel O. They are searching for hidden treasure on the island of Ooroo. When they cannot find what they seek, they ban all words which contain the letter O. Cnfusin and Chas descend. The pirates become more and more oppressive with their hatred for O. The people resist, and eventually win out by holding on to four important words which contain O—Hope, Love, Valor, and what is seen as the most important word—Freedom.
It is obviously a fable for our own times although written 68 years ago.
by
Memory is all that we are,
and all that we are is what
we remember. These days
I often forget why I enter
a room as I enter. I’m forced
to wait on the blurred past
with its dead possibilities
to catch up to my present.
We sit comfortably couched
about the room. We confess
our stories again, shifting
scenes to allow for shapes
which differ, to be polite,
from others in other rooms.
(December 28, 2025)
“So many of us use when at our craft/of transmuting our life into words.//The essence is always lost.”
I have read three other books by Borges over the years: Labyrinths, The Book of Sand, and Ficciones. They have all been thought provoking and strange. I first heard of Borges as a fictional character in Umberto Eco’s “The Name of the Rose,” which makes sense as I finished “Dreamtigers” this afternoon. In “Dreamtigers” one of the themes Borges causes the reader to think about is identity. Specifically who is the real “Borges” (and us by extension) the one created by us that we present to the world as us, or the one that created the presentation. “Dreamtigers” is divided into two sections. The first comprised of parable-like reflections revolving around themes of memory, identity, creativity, and mirrors. The second section made up of poems, which touch upon similar themes and images. One of the ideas that have lingered with me after finishing the book is the thought that our unique experience of life which each of us possess and create though our life…vanishes as we die. “Events far-reaching envoy to people all space, whose end is nonetheless tolled when one man dies, may cause us wonder. But something, or an infinite number of things, dies in every death, unless the universe is possessed of a memory, as the theosophists have supposed.” I know that this is obvious, but also profound. Nietzsche said that in the end we only experience ourselves. And Borges extends this with the thought that this individual experience dies with the life of the person. Unless as he says, the universe possess a memory. And even then, that memory is changed and erased by the future which remembers us in their own individual experiences. “There is not a single thing on earth that oblivion does not erase or memory change, and when no one knows into what images he himself will be transmuted by the future.”
by
memory agitates into vision media res: the precise moment of peak self-revulsion, the inaction, the cowardice, the lie inherent in regret— when nothing more could have been done, nor anything now retroactively applied which can act as balm to the shame carried for decades through the day in those quiet moments on the way to work, waiting for the light to turn green, or some phrase, or song on the radio which tumbles memory’s cascade through the spongey canyons to again reconfigure itself into this contiguous present as some other story without static cause
(December 25, 2025)
by
There is a difference he implied
between what you do— (write
your poems), and this book—
which had been published
and which he now held out
(like a capitalist Eucharist)
before him as empirical evidence
of his claim’s veracity; the attention
toward profundity, cannot simply be.
Cannot simply happen. As if
there were no luminescence
inherent in the creative act,
no value to the happenstance.
Yet it does happen,
as we happen. The ineffable silence
fills in what cannot be said—
no matter the credentials, or what
god waits to make the first move.
The writing, the process, the evolution
of the text opens the word into light,
and power, and even glory
as has been done forever and ever.
(December 23, 2025)
I guess I am just a cold hearted humbug. I finished reading Brightly Shining by Ingvild Rishoi over the last couple of days, and found it to be a sad little retelling of the Matchstick Girl. I went to the internets to see if what I saw was not just my bitter heart. Most of others opinions loved the book for its Charles Dickins-like Christmas sadness. It just seemed all so predictable and pat. One reviewer compared it to Barbara Kingsolver’s reworking of David Copperfield in her Demon Copperhead…but I don’t think Brightly Shining holds up to that comparison. There is just not that much there. It is just a sad story about two young girls who have to deal with an alcoholic father during the run up to Christmas. I have to admit when I first picked up the book for RFB (my book group) I though it looked like a Hallmark Christmas Rom-Com. In its favor it wasn’t that, instead it was a sad tale about being poor and caught up in troubles larger than a child can handle. I’m sure it makes many shed a tear or two. But not me.
by
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”
by
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)
subtext 