Pohems

that i may be also

2011-07-11T12:44:00.000-07:00

my soul - i -
have always been
and will be.

the same as you.

this morning marks
33 years of my
bobbling and
stumbling and
stuttering about
here on the ground.

but i have come
from some other place
i cannot see but
somehow in my guts
remember, and am
going back to.

and in that heart
eternal i live
today, and have.

before
he fathered time
or mothered earth,
i was.

after whatever
is next,
i will be.

before he even knew
he would shape me
or what he would
call me,

i was a breathing
reality in the
deep places of God.

and today is only
another sweetly
plucked string in
my long unwiding
home-going song.

Acts 17:28

2011-05-02T07:54:00.000-07:00

There is life here,
there is life here!

Hidden under things:
our table, your skin.

Buried in things:
my soul, the rabbit mother's nest.

Washing over things:
birdsong, breeze and rain --
blessed sunrise falling rain.

Sloughing

2010-09-14T08:39:00.000-07:00

At this point, I seriously doubt that
I will ever be one of those people
that considers dusting the furniture
occasionally to be of much consequence.
Not that I wouldn't like to be, but at my age,
I don't see it happening.

Remembering to get Christmas cards
mailed on time, or just written, even, should
also probably come off the list of habits
I might spontaneously cultivate.

Actually, I'd say most recognizable forms
of dependability are right out as well.
Unless you are depending on me to not finish
a thoughtful, well-intentioned project,
or to not be able or willing to buy what you're selling.
Put your money down on those, friend.

Sit-ups in the morning, voice lessons,
or ever being the kind of man that
prefers hot tea to boiling black coffee:
I finally confess the obvious truth --
I've never wanted any of you badly enough.
Goodbye.

There are a few other things I'd like to
officially cast off in the crooked wake
of my life, already littered with what
I might have been or done and little
busted bits and chips of this body and soul.
They include:

a deep love of raw vegetables, especially carrots;
being a reasonable man;
juggling;
cherishing brevity above all else;
being who she calls in a crisis;
choosing tasteful, coordinated clothing;
always knowing the score;
flossing;
fixing it.

The Hour Upon Us

2009-10-21T15:49:00.000-07:00

We must write today,
because that is exactly how long we have it,
if there is to be any hope of a marriage
between what is honest and alive.
There may well be much time for poems born
of memory and an earnest desire to say what was,
but we can't, any of us, be relied on to see
it right, and say it true tomorrow.
Those are the misty, fairy poems.
The hobgoblin children that get made when
wistfulness and our romantic, refractive hearts
have too much wine together after the fire
of the moment and the light from the day
have gone out, burned down to dust.
Pride often lays hands on those works too,
and we cast ourselves better, others worse,
than we ever were -- we make tiny fortresses
of small stone stanzas -- castles in far off
kingdoms where we are kissed or tortured to death,
if not both.
And I love those poems, that enchanted brood,
yes.

But there are troubles enough to truly see
the bonzai gnarled before me now,
to hold the sunrise beyond it that
lights my early perch in this chair,
to believe that God stirs around them both
and within me.
Troubles enough yes, and the shadowed
history of the world that has brought
us both here to this page doesn't need to be
weighed long to see that infinite
else could, perhaps even should, have happened.

But I am here, with the resolute bonsai blazing
in our squandered commodity of light.
And the day is begun, and will not be held back,
and things will be decided and done today,
and God, for whom nothing is wasted, is here too,
yes.

And so I make this today, or never, and it will
be here, for us to remember, at our leisure,
or in hours of great need:

There is light.
The tree stands.
Its leaves are very small.
Trunk, thick as a child's thumb.
Roots so fine and strong they testify to truths
irrefutable:
there is a God with hands.

A Love Poem In A Minor (Hopeful) Key

2009-10-21T15:45:00.000-07:00

I knew something had shifted when I again
noticed the glory of the sun rising late last week.
I know, by now, this is the ordinary sort of brilliance
that continues to bloom, without resentment,
through the forgettable, unengaged stretches of days,
years. Those we cannot name, mark or retrieve now.

Some beauty does not die.
Some keeps on.

It was early this week that I found myself singing,
with passion, in a hard rain storm some
songs I've never particularly liked,
melodies I didn't even know I knew the words to --
that it became clear there was a serious problem.

Plant a sprig of mint and turn your back
on it for fifteen minutes,
and it takes over what you call your garden.

It's the same with love or lust.

It was just the smallest thought that I brought home.
Something with your face or scent pressed into it.
A spindly cutting with no roots of its own
that fell in some of my good soil.

And I slept one night, two nights, three, maybe --
and between the dew and sudden showers of
song my life and soul have been watered,
and the brilliant, forgotten sun has risen again
on a glorious, green Spring bed of love unexpected.

Rededication

2008-05-29T09:57:00.001-07:00

At lunch today I went for a burrito
and scored a table on the patio
and made my order and waited
for the hottest salsa in town.

A tremendous Spring day,
the skyscape wide with potentiality.

There was a couple on an early date,
feeling each other out with nervous smiles.
And two friends planning a camping
trip as the waiter brought more pints
and me with a rumbly belly, eyes open.

There were several loose pieces of paper
strewn on the ground where some of us
fed the boldest birds bits of chips.

It was poetry.

I mean literally.

Pages of carefully crafted, printed poetry.

Lost leaves of some manuscript,
there about our ankles.

I scooped up pages three and four,
pages ten and eleven, page seventeen too.

Deadly stuff.

I mean horrible.

Stabs at something and the usual net:
an awkward outing of loneliness,
some shrewd commentary on the trees,
lots of talk about grassy fields,
and apparently there was a broken heart.

There was one brilliant page among the
half poems. The bravest, clearest moment
he managed to compile before all the
numbered sheets, reading only:

"For Pamela"

It felt like quite a thing to hold, and I wonder
if he'd ever held her, or if she'd ever held this.
If these pieces came loose in a windstorm
as he rushed to bind them back at the apartment,
or if she had turned them loose from her front porch
after he left the last time, he loved her, he loved her not.
She finally let these petals fly as she wept,
Pamela's stringy red hair still wet from their
last long walk in the rainy woods.

Pam, sweet, homely Pamela --
I've found him, I'm holding his heart in my hands.
Samuel isn't dead, he never left for Arizona.
He misses you, though he could never say that.
Sam loves you, though you could never hear that.
His bottle washed up on my shoreline at lunch today.

He made this for you.

Nervous Spring

2008-04-14T15:59:00.000-07:00

The chartreuse leaves, a week old on the neighbor's oak,
look fragile and exposed against the roiling slate of
these late season snow clouds bearing down.

It's turning cold here for another night before we are all
drunk on warm rain and longer days.

A fat rabbit by the split rail fence nibbles and hops,
twitches and chews, jittery with the knowledge
that there is a family of foxes in the barn across the yard.

The barn is my shut-in neighbor's too --
everything in this scene is hers, if it is anyone's.
Her son has mended the broken roof, though it's still
trying to cave and gape -- he's done the best he could.
It stands for now, though its tired frame knows time
will have it's way and there's no fixing here that will help.

It's all right though.

The oak will hold her baby leaves despite the snow.

The rabbit comes from a large family.
The foxes can't eat them all.

The son patched the roof for love of his passing mother,
and there's nothing in there they need.

Diamond Dust

2008-02-28T10:21:00.000-08:00

The snow gathered itself in the drowsy pines
and bare knuckled oaks all night, apparently.
I was asleep.
It settled in our local woods under a new moon
midnight like news about to come knocking:
cancer, in the throat.
Or like an epiphany about to break the surface
of your sea:
God has a sense of humor, too.

If you would join me at the window now,
we see the morning, very clear skies, blue and
new and alive because there is a lot of wind today
and all that snow that fell fluffy and mysterious
from heaven broke when it landed – every flake
shattered into its icy atomic pieces blowing now
in this diamond dust storm – can you see the
refractions, dazzling and uncountable? It’s just
a Thursday, it’s just light and water that froze and fell
and is raised up on the gusty breath of our February
now, but it is beautiful, worth a moment’s watching
and remembering here together at the frosty window,
our cancers gnawing, our God smiling.

Lexiconic Laceration

2008-02-04T19:14:00.000-08:00

She was beautiful there at the table next to mine,
in the coffee house where the music is loud, thumpy,
and we sip fairly grown brews as we pretend
not to notice one another while we are caught up,
all of us reading or writing important, personal things.

She leaned toward me in a moment that halved
the haze of the place with her tongue, asked:

"How do you spell commit?"

Yes, she was sitting alone.

"One 't' or two?" she demanded of me.

Of all people.

"I hate that word," she said.

"I believe you," I said.

The Deja Vu Du Jour

2008-01-26T07:51:00.000-08:00

College should have been a great place to learn
things that would have done me some good.

Which beer should be the last beer of the night;
when to raise the bet in a good poker game;
why you shouldn't look a dangerous woman in
the eye until you know what she's after; or
how to know a poem worth your time in two stanzas.

I don't know what I was thinking, taking Astronomy.

I haven't met a single woman impressed with my
one-semester knowledge of constellation names --
whether I could quote Neruda in the original Spanish
or not -- under a salty, spangled summer night,
not one impression worth remembering.

17th Century Reconstruction Literature?
What a waste, compared with knowing what a mortgage
can do to your guts, or how to be with someone dying slow.

I was in a great institution.
Hear me: blame is mine.

Looking back though, if I was writing core curriculum,
there would have been a class on cooking for one.
Single Serving Dining 304: all the skills needed for preparing
one thick pork chop, a reasonable pile of broccoli,
an ambitious, surprise of a salad, and
an entire lecture on using garlic to gross excess.

I can't seem to manage the meal for one, try as I might.

I shut the grill off, finish the work on the stove, and
there's always food enough for two, at least.
And it's the deja vu du jour, again tonight:
I've had all I want, can't manage another bite of this,
and here lies so much still unfinished.
There is always the work of dealing with what's left over.

Guttering

2007-12-31T14:31:00.000-08:00

One more poem in the last breath of the year then.
A tiny ark for all that was as the rain begins.
Here are all the nights, spent matchstick days
huddled together:

this poem is the silky ribbon to bind them.

The chopsticks I carved,
the books I bought to read in an appropriate chair
the new scar on my left palm
the letters from the boys locked up -
they are in here.

All the steps I've paced in the basement,
and every mile of sidewalk I covered these
twelve months
are in here.

My kittens, Della and Winter, are back from
their new families to rub up against this poem's legs,
and here's their own windowsill of a stanza
to nap on for as long as they want -
welcome home girls.

All my own hours waiting, nose at the window,
those great mouthfuls of silence
are in here.

The family that rented me the room,
they're all here playing cards and still
wondering about me down in the basement,
the man living under their stairs.

My new tattoo, the two words scrawled over
my heart, they're in here.
The bleeding has stopped and all
the letters have some new skin.

Every ounce of every laugh I made or heard
this year - you can't have a poem like this without
all the laughter you can find -
all of it is in here.

A pant cuff of beach sand,
a wineglass of rainwater from the woods,
one silver firework, two purple ones,
and every hot, midnight prayer -
yes, all of that is in here too.

The stone I scoured the city for,
the perfect one the nice short jeweler brought
out of the safe, shipped from overseas,
that brilliant rock that took the long boat ride
back to Egypt - I hated to see it go,
so I'm putting it in here too.

And as for all the moves
I should have made,
things I might have said
that would have made a difference
to a stranger or the people I know -
I've already piled and torched them,
them and their shadows.
They are the smoke you smell.
It's the only thing to do
with what we didn't.

The kisses - the good ones and
the tipsy ones the sad ones and
all the harmless little ones that led to
more good ones -
I'm leaving those out.

They are free to drift on their warmly pressed
wings, flitting around this jar full of things forever,
just to brighten the place up.

Which brings me at last to you.

You, who aren't in here either.
You who won't be bound anywhere,
especially in any poem I can order.
You who have slipped off somewhere,
gone again, breaking into next year
early perhaps, or stealing into some salty,
sweetache dream I will sit up in bed from
sometime late in the second week of June.

Grey

2007-12-20T21:01:00.001-08:00

Gray is sometimes a sign for what's knocking
at the door, what's coming on:

some hairs at the temple:
middle age.
some low clouds in a slate sky:
snow.

It's the color for all that's forgettable too,
like the first two stanzas of this poem.

Or all the days that seem to be the same
day over again, looking back, sardined
together in our memory and our stories:
"...the two years after he left,
when I was drinking bad..."

Our brains, all those folds and coils are
grey matter, not yellow matter,
for a reason, I'm sure.

Gray is what happens to white when
it gets just a little bit dirty.
Or it's black, trying to clean itself up.

It's the light, fading up slow,
or dying a minute at a time.

Grey is the question color,
the hue of the blood for every
mystery that ever was.

It's also Indecision and Weakness,
Mystery's old imposters,
poised in trench coats
by a lampost in a thin fog,
trying to fool you.

Grey is lukewarm at best,
but usually cold.

It's ashes settling on what burned,
it's the dull nickle in your pocket,
or all the stony eggs in the river's bed,
or the cat, greeting me in her silent house.
It's waves and wet sand under a full June moon,
it's early morning prayers that rise and curl like
smoke over this table where the cue ball smacks
the far rail, kisses the 9-ball sweetly now,
sends it loping towards a side pocket,
some way out of here.

Green

2007-12-19T20:59:00.000-08:00

Consider the pale stem of the shamrock
bent, slight, in a sprawling bed of clover.

Green is for things alive,
things in the heavy thick of July,
and the color for things come back
again too --
what our dead limbs can't hold off but
welcome in song after the world melts.

Green is the boy's infield grass,
and his outfield too, stretching all the way
to his warning track, when life had neatly
painted lines and some rules to play by.

Green is what rooted the first time you
saw her with him.

Envy begins there:
a small emerald seed unfolding,
death, blooming evergreen,
piney in our heart's forest.

It's the light of the city we come
rattling and shaking to at the end of
our road, our tin bodies, straw heads,
and uncertain tails twitching in the
hot, late summer air
ripe with all our heavy questions,
our hopes, plump as pears,
and desire, pregnant on the vine.

Back

2007-12-03T08:48:00.000-08:00

The old man at the top of the mountain
tended the meadows here at the bottom
with his tractor.

He graded the road that winds up to
his house, too.

Mowing, making the road smooth again, are
better than sleep to him, he says.

Peaceful.

We thought he was dead:
feeding tubes, months in the hospital,
but he surprised us, maybe even himself,
and he's back.

It was his mountain, he bought it
all and sold the pieces over the years,
to family mostly, he tells me over coffee
this morning when I come knocking
uninvited with my walking stick
and questions.

Hawaii, he says, that's where
he'd like to go when he gets
his strength back.

If this was poker, I believe I'd
have all his chips.

He isn't sure what's next,
or what he thinks about God,
or if he knows, he won't say.

Roger, not yet fifty, cranks
the tractor, hitches the blade
for grading and moves down the
steep incline of the road.

It's Spring, and no time for dying.

Those islands, he says,
were like paradise.

He won't look at me now,
but stares out the bay window,
off the mountain that was his,
farther on, searching,
his eyes glazing with something.

I want to go back, he says.

Later

2007-12-02T21:43:00.000-08:00

I'm trying to imagine Lazarus,
the day he walked out of the
tomb in his death robes,
stinking rotten and feeling
his lungs go back to work,
his heart, back to work,
the bloodrush and the
sweet daylight and that voice,
calling: his own name
hammering in his ears.

I'm thinking of him that night
after the party was over,
laying there with the wife
and the quilts piled up
and the fire gone to coals.

I bet she never held him
so tightly, so tenderly.

How could they have not
made love that night?
The body gone cold, now
flushed with living and
loving again.

Did she remember, that night,
just for a moment,
her husband without the breath,
remember him as corpse
as she stared into that face,
laced her fingers with his?
Did she shudder?
Did he notice, know her thoughts?

Afterwards in the long silence,
their breathing measured
and together again in that
late hour, he confessed:

"I don't want to sleep tonight."

"Tell me a story," she said.

One chord, Lord

2007-11-28T06:24:00.000-08:00

Our guts quake and the whole world rocks
on the waves you make while all our clocks
tick down and things, souls, slip by.

Give us one song, God,
one chord, Lord:
we pace lines in the sand
at the edge of understanding
what's next:

rutting deeper on these shores or
casting ourselves through the breakers,
into the tide and the current
that carries us beyond.

She Said

2007-11-11T14:24:00.000-08:00

"We're trying again,"
she told her friend across the table.

I was just close enough to hear
her say it quietly.

She was stirring her coffee very slowly,
looked down, pulling things together
in her mind -- there was a small smile.

"Oh? Really..." her friend managed
a moment later.

There was a long silence.

I moved past them, out the door,
and onto the sidewalk.

Babies, boyfriends, all manner of
things well-intended: I began making
a list of what she could have meant.
I kept trying to decide how much
desparation there was in that smile.

Trying again.

Yes, they were.
We are.
Again today, we pick up our pieces,
make piles of our broken things
and stitch our seams tight as we can
against the waves and wind,
all these ordinary human afternoons
that batter the tiny homes
and hopeful stairs we've stacked
to lead us, up,
to where we most want to be.

Losing

2007-10-11T17:44:00.000-07:00

The worst time to write about a loss
is while you're in it.

Of course it's the only time, too.
While you have it, see --
before you lose that too,
and say something other than
what it was, or knock yourself
out describing what it all meant.

Those dramatic lies we tell
years afterwards --
or those true, pale lessons with the
smart edge and no blood in them --
we don't want either of those.
Not really.

No, the only songs about losing still
playing on the radio 30 years later
came hot out of the magma, baby.

Every good thing we have was
made after someone's great loss.

Creation happens for an emptiness.

God's boy left home,
and we made Christmas.

Van gogh lost the lobe, and we're
still staring at the sunflowered fruit.

You left yesterday, and this
morning I made a cup of coffee
and some prayers.
I'm starting small, but
it was a damn good cup of
mud though, and strong.

Last Month

2007-10-03T18:28:00.000-07:00

A few days into October
and I'm still staring at you,
September.
All your days on this floor --
a pile of spent matchsticks.

You were for the birds, clearly.

On the 3rd, the cardinal
that had been attacking his
own reflection in my car's
side view mirror, shitting mad,
finally gave up.
Won or lost or just tired, he went
brightly, bloody, somewhere else.

And the crows out my
open bedroom window,
the one above my bed,
on the 7th and the 12th
and then on the 21st,
waking me from thin sleep
with their outcries.
On the 15th I learned that a
group of crows is called a murder.
A murder of crows crying me awake.

The afternoon of the 24th
a woman told me a story
about hearing a hummingbird's song --
that tiny pearl in the world
of cackles and croonings,
something a mockingbird could
never aspire to, a voice so
soft and small from
the slighest of tongues.

And at the close, on your very
last day I watched the
woodpecker in the backyard
bang away, knocking out code
on the thick pine trunk.
I wrote down what he said,
over and over and over, that
relentless, hard-nosed harbinger:

Here comes the turn.
Here comes the turn.
Here comes the turn.

Hummingbird Song

2007-08-30T19:51:00.000-07:00

It's their movement and energy, an apparent endless capacity for
flapping and turning and speed that we can't get over, that
astounds us. I imagine even their sleep is busy -- only a
few minutes every week, eyes closed but still flying --
motoring on through their electron dreams after
long non-smoking flights over large oceans.

At just that moment when we ourselves
can't beat our silly human wings any
harder or faster or longer -- when
finally we've raced everywhere we
could and are still hungry for more,
another sweet drop, and another --
sips but never a deep drink --
just then one of them, bright
and mercurial, drunk on the
blood of many red flowers
may turn and dart into the
backyard of our life and
remember their feet,
crank them down from
tucked belly positions,
fold their miraculous
wings close by their
taxed iron hearts,
sit and stare us
down like God
and be still -
sweet rest.

In the Belly

2007-07-12T19:20:00.000-07:00

Most everything is fluid.
Or was.
All of this, us:
we came out of deep waters
and we are still swimming an
ocean with many tide pools.
Places that collect, hold on.

Today in the old chapel
I got caught in the aisle
while the business I was
on rode out past the buoys
into the gulf of my afternoon.
For a few minutes I just
stood there in the heat
and the half light among
the stacked stone walls and
ancient chestnut beams
vaulting themselves in a
100 year old ceiling.
It was raining hard
and it is summer and
all the stained glass windows
are shut up.
It was a thick moment,
all the air heavy and my face
wet with a century's worth
of wedding words, funeral
rememberances, 10,000
songs and prayers enough
to deafen angels if you
put them all together.

I didn't see anyone but
would hardly say I stood there
alone.
How many souls caught here in
the guts of this place have cast
themselves toward those
weathered rafters, the
chestnut ribs of this beast
that swallowed me whole
on my way to somewhere...
How many afternoon
thunderstorms have fallen
in response?

Outside, the rain slacked,
a crow exploded and
I slogged back down the aisle,
pushing through the steam,
a holy, salty silence,
spat up on the far shore.

Fellowship

2007-06-14T20:06:00.000-07:00

Men in the dark
around some fire.
It's an old scene.
Maybe the oldest.
It's a good place
to make plans,
cast galaxies.
The flames fling us
from ourselves
in shadows that
bleed into everything
beyond our circle
and our moment here.

We speak in turns,
out of our canyons,
our yawning caves
and in a mystery
unplumbable
the fire between us
consumes our words --
a holy incense rises --
our souls chant,
and we chime --
brothers ringing bells
in the deep night
and then we see one another,
sense the presence of
the most ancient of souls,
and in the stillness of all
that presses in around us,
we draw close.

My Brother Makes a Furious Omelet

2007-06-14T19:53:00.000-07:00

He's in the kitchen now,
and I make this at the breakfast table.
People keep asking what he can't give this morning
so he moves silently from one room and into the next.

He's a good man, and gentle.
I don't think he would take his anger
to his wife, or some stranger, no.
So instead, I see him there, through the open door
at the stove, beating eggs loudly in a bowl,
the butter getting hot, bubbling hot in a small pan
as he chops things now, making small diced bits
of things, of all the unreasonableness, all that's
unmanagable in the heart and so he cubes his ham,
pours the whipped eggs in,
waits as it fries under his gaze,
and with a set jaw reaches now for the spatula,
ready for the flip, the miraculous finishing turn.

A List of What We Think We Know

2007-04-12T19:41:00.000-07:00

It started with God in the dark.

After that, things clearly happend. Seismic things.

Much later, a tall man moved to a small city
among hills by a shallow river.

Then there was her, and we all know that story.

Much later, without her, again,
the same tall man made a decision.

The final possibility, all that was left,
was to open wide his arms in love for the
entire creation, everything that surrounded her
and surge forth into the dark world full of
spices, sailing to the far seas singing to everyone.

It was a move God understood.

How To See A City For The First Time

2007-04-12T19:16:00.000-07:00

If you have money in your pockets:
take it out, put it somewhere.

Take a long walk while the light dies:
move slowly past the restaurant
windows where people have gathered
for what's between them and a bottle
of red -- make eye contact with as
many of these people as you can.

Come up with enough of someone's
coin for one cup of black coffee:
since it's all you have, sip.

Go when it's still cold but beginning
to warm or else warm but cooling down:
go between things and seasons.

Be as quiet as you can that first night
and keep moving after thoughtful pauses:
in the bright morning, your bills back
in your pocket, now you'll know
where you want to be,
all the doors you should go in.

Painting the Moon

2007-01-27T11:15:00.000-08:00

I painted many moons,
trying to worry them
into perfect spheres
or slivers before I
realized the only way
to paint the moon is
quickly, just the way
it rises, and just the
way it always shines:

blood red in a black, twinkling night.

Before Baggage Claim

2007-01-27T10:59:00.000-08:00

We're an excited, nervous crowd
of strangers trying not to show it.
I'm here for a lady, one particular face.
But I'm watching the women around me,
how, one by one, they fold their magazines,
put the lipstick away in purses and transform.
Their lights blaze and beckon, some
good ground to land on in the night.
Fathers and friends, lovers and brothers --
women only smile this way when
their men get off planes.

Outside the Terminal

2007-01-27T10:13:00.000-08:00

They march off of their planes,
these that have been belted into
cramped seats for hours.
With confidence they stride forth
from the confines of coach.

This is what it looks like to arrive.

Some of them have connections
to make, so they hustle for those.
But most of them have nowhere
to be in such a hurry.
They're only walking this way
because they can, finally.

We won't be kept too still for long.

It's champagne bursting out
after the bottlenecking and
maddening center aisle shuffle:
racing out and running off,
frothy with phones in hand,
another spilled load.

Except for the old and the crippled.
They're in the way,
but shuffle on with what they've got.

The rest, though, feel like their lives
are somehow back in their own hands.
These modern men and women,
suited, all of them, for business.
These that have bested gravity,
that have come so far, so fast
in such an unlikely bird,
as if it were everyday,
as though humans and their souls
fly all the time, and always have.

distinction

2007-01-21T19:52:00.000-08:00

do not confuse
rest with peace.

rest is refuge from the storm.

peace is the reconciled heart
who walks the frothy waves and
was nailed to the mast of our ship.

He is peace.
He offers rest.

Ben + Carol '85'

2007-01-15T20:17:00.001-08:00

There where the river squeezes itself,
slides itself off in a loud rush between slick rocks
weary and worn with the endless sluicing --
there on a large boulder
Ben marked his love for Carol in white paint in 85.
I bet it was summer.
Today it's winter, 20 years later
and his testimony stands, weary itself
on the granite.

I wonder where you are Ben, if Carol knew.

I wonder if Fall came on and she slipped off,
just another girl you dated in high school
or if your love was good and found a good home
with Carol and someday, perhaps already,
more love words will be carved into more stone
in the grass above your heads, asleep.

I wonder what the sun felt like on your bare skin
as you both stretched to bake on this slab,
drunk on beer and cigarettes and those long looks.

I wonder if you were older than I am now and
your wife, Carol had left you in a bitter month
like this and you wrote because it was still true
to you and so you scrawled the truth that hadn't left yet --
something everyone -- even you Ben,
were tired of hearing by now and so you tried
to lay it down here in blocky, shaking script.

I wonder if you saw, as I do now,
because of your broken heart, how slight the
step from this ledge is to being dashed good
and done on all that's broken down below.
She's not worth it, Ben.

I'd like to wonder what happened on the blanket
you spread in the night alive where I'm standing
but I'll leave you two alone now -- you lovers that
murmur in the shadows here, drown out by the
sound of what rushed, what still rushes past the
rocky point there to pool in the cool bed farther on.

Robber

2007-01-11T20:55:00.000-08:00

In line at the courthouse on a bench
stretching the full length of a very
long hallway with lots of marble,
we waited to pay, to be heard.

Her baby toddled out of open hands
in shaky steps to the other wall
where he turned to smile at us,
humanity jammed up, staring ahead.

We were grown men, some fathers,
and we beamed back at him,
silly and wild in a moment.

We goo-gooed.
We smiled for him.
Well, some of us smiled.

We had expired tags.
Some of us had violated stop signs
in broad daylight.
We were the DWIs,
the speeders,
and in one way or another,
we'd all failed to yield some
right of way, so we came angry,
wishing to be anywhere else.
We came for mercy, we came without
because we were without.
We had nothing to pay for our crimes.

We smiled, knowing he'd be on this
bench one day farther on.
We smiled for all he didn't know yet,
but he smiled with all we'd forgotten.
And for a moment we put down our
anger, infractions and disregard
and our faces took up something
honest and out of our deep guts.

That kid jimmied our lock boxes,
and nabbed something tender
and real from our hidden drawers.

blessing

2007-01-03T10:43:00.000-08:00

You asked for the truth about me son --
what I wrestle in the dark.
I cannot give you this.

That dark egg is too dear
and today I don't love you enough
to deny the gravity of my cowardice.

Maybe later. Soon, perhaps.

Instead, for now, I hand you
careful lies full of fangs and well-worded,
yours to inherit.

This Winter

2007-01-02T08:02:00.000-08:00

There have been so many days like
this one -- warm, sweet surprises
unfolding themselves in between
all that's bitter, all that we expect.

This winter is brighter, somehow.
As if it cast off what had burdened it.
Dinner done, the dishes up, some
hot tea ready and the last counter
crumbs just wiped clean --
it's that sort of feeling.

I see it most as I wander among
all these rooted trees that seemed
only stripped and sad a year ago.

They feel more comfortable now,
their robes slipped off and
rustling at their feet.
They stand close together,
bold lovers, exposed --
bare to the tips of themselves --
arching and stretching,
hearts full of thick sap and
strong desires for the sun,
for the warmth they feel coming on.

2007

2007-01-01T07:22:00.000-08:00

Right up here at the head of January,
on this very first day of the beginning
of our new beginning, I declare
this to be the year of my socks.

This will be the year my man stockings
finally recognize themselves,
make some changes
and get in on the revolution of me.

I will be burning all my white athletic ones
because, I'm not.
Or maybe I'll spike them on barbed wire --
bleached and dead to me.

This year, only colored socks that
have lost their mate get picked.
Come morning, they get the nod
because they feel good, stretched
up my calves under the shadowy
ends of all my pants.

This may be the year I give up shorts
and learn about modesty, mystery.

I will only wear socks that are
glad to celebrate each other,
socks simply thankful to be out of
the drawer and into the day.

They will be pairs only because
I've called them, made them such --
one for the left and one for the right.

I resolve to move with feet so full
of grace that they're wrapped in it.
Bright, striped, wooly and argyled:
feet washed and socked with bold love.
Yes, so full they walk that way.