The clouds shift
never tire
of wringing rains
Everyday anointing
a blessing common
Like sourgrass bursts
around the house’s toes
or thirty robins
crammed with suddenness
in a mess of tree
Praises flung
repeatedly
But my turnings
are tiresome
So how can I
beseech you anew
Fresh sunlight
delivered in my words
poppies rising up
Every green stem recovering
parched no more
If only
I could turn over the mornings
Even seconds
See the veiny backside
of its flesh
Begin again
As I must,
as rain familiar returns again
Sunrise slides across my slice
of the world, pink breath
suspended for moments.
The the world exhales,
crows swinging round the cold sky.
Do I try to hear you?
Am I afraid of what I’ll find?
Still, a few magnolias open
their sturdy tongues,
joining the praise of spring late.
Even in this beautiful world,
there’s so much noise.
So many pictures to hide in,
so many gardens in which to cower.
Are you there
in hush of ice
crunch of water caught cold
The evergreens, always
steady holding a long breath
while birds bury their beaks elsewhere
I never find you
because I never really look
at the web of stars trapping me
Little earth
packed with grandeur unspeakable
unsearchable riches in stillness
When I stand still
bearing snow in my arms
I sense how the birds cut the icy air
Writing your care
All over the face of this cold place
Lines of love come alive in the quiet
The magnolia bloom seems longer this year.
Stiff pink lips releasing their word:
secret springs tucked into winter.
If we watch, we see creatures who know their work—
purpose-built and empty of resistance.
The finch willingly shakes rain from its crown,
pecks at a little seed by my window.
The soil sighs and makes a home for rain.
They do as they’re told—ride the rhythms
and quietly transform. Each day holds the promise
that I’ll finally be the me I want to be.
Each icy night muddles thought of failure,
and I wake to far-off garbage trucks, wet grass,
the flick of birdsong across the flat February sky.
The magnolias, standing there agape, again.
The world doing its work and me,
dizzy with spring’s promise,
believing I’ll do mine.
Lights penetrate the October dusk,
white space we ascribe
celestial divine.
See, the eyes of heaven.
Venus even bright through the shuddering trees.
His breath visiting
clay of his making.
Under the breeze, under the cold star-fire,
the oceans throws up a glow bioluminescent algae.
A million wonders explained away.
The green, the light dancing on your face
as the moon haloes us.
To what we once tasted on our lips,
to what we once breathed.
Strange wine strange times frayed by seconds.
Significance barging in
to undo whatever marvel
we’d made.
To reach after the edge
of the note, the contour of the moon,
the stars marching in, the planets
putting us in our place.
The way I touched your face full of light and
green mystery
already long gone.
Under the moon,
I’m far from knowing
your face.
Your face waxes
and wanes with the music.
Swells of feeling
bring you suddenly into view.
Cool, unreal light.
Is it all in my head?
It’s October, and Venus
pokes her head out
of the evening gradient.
Brilliant planet
barely heard over my inner din.
The cosmos, no match
for contemporary ills.
I try to stay quiet and catch you
anywhere I can.
Hours earlier,
with the moon out of view,
I saw a small bird
I’d never seen before.
Not remarkable
until you think about it.
Black all over with a white chest
and a little tufted mohawk,
curiously cocked.
It looked like any old bird,
some sparrow, but I caught
myself and saw it.
This small new thing
in a world that’s worn on me.
Or a world worn by me.
How many creatures do you send us
to keep the world ever-new?
Little black bird who knows your voice,
big white moon that sees your face.
The fortunate few
who catch you
as you pass.
The concrete lifts up heat,
praise for another day
peeled back by the sun’s
dominant rays.
The heat wave’s on day seven.
People sweet and slow,
conversations like nectar
fanning the flame.
How could we talk together
about anything but weather’?
Peeled back, the picture
you show me. Sweat a little
down your brow, dripping.
Our human reality.
The burning land
we huddle over, bond on.
Elsewhere, mud and mountains,
gunfire and bombs overhead.
All you can do is care
about the fire in your little life,
your local emergency,
your actual neighbor.
If only you could do that,
a life stunning with purpose.
If only.
You, darkness, of whom I am born—
lit from within by auroras,
spectacular darkness.
You send your song,
rumbling low over hills to me.
Siren flickering
warmth into my lone night.
The soft-edged coos
of a mourning dove bothering its roost,
shifting in the black arms
of the trees at night.
What could go wrong?
I lay awake
wandering toward you.
Nesting, now,
in the black arms
that will not let me go.
Cover with feather
the darkling morning,
nest of black twigs
where memory got caught.
The same birds bring us here.
Here, a world that’s waned
without you. Without warning,
the birds expire, replace themselves.
Death rolling its orbit.
Death: a word that first meant
bereft and black pain,
a word now that means
a dawn downed in fog,
a slow, careful forgetting.
A missing
memory.
In those days, we began to fear the sun.
In the hollows of dawn and dusk, with their penumbral glow,
a moon-people was born.
Relief was sought under the stars,
the chittering sky and earth, crinkling like a dry leaf
in a bit of breeze.
The world’s on fire was something we said
a thousand times before it was true. Giant fire-birds
migrating and landing
here or there in any place perfectly ready
to burn. People stayed inside in the artificial light and air,
and grew small and pale.
The music’s all wrong, is something we would have said
if we’d remembered the sun lifting itself out over black hills,
the finches, the wrens,
the mourning doves—audible still over human din,
the growing excitement, the trip of chirps and coos
growing chaotic with light.
That’s the problem, you see,
getting used to an upside-down world, getting used
to its strange song, its endless burn.
How can the birds be so careless,
tossing off their rollercoaster melodies
while, not even half a world away,
bad kings begin to rouse from slumber?
Sweet repose, bitter power.
The people screaming yes,
casting their gold at his feet.
We’re born to idols.
So how can the birds be so constant,
song sweeping off each cool branch,
briefly, before another burning day?
While elsewhere wind and waves
are whipped into a frenzy,
worthy—nearly—of worship.
Licking the land clean,
purity of weather.
We long to be ruled.
Even so, the birds.
The hinge of praise.
The life of rustling feathers
and microscopic mites
that exists all the same.
Unmistakable joy
disrupting the world.
Interrupting our wild careening
toward no good end.
Unbelievably, growing louder,
call by call, with the rising dawn.
Stripped down
to bare purpose
Intone the names:
lilac, lobelia, forget-me-not
Will the dust not remember?
The dust of bone & blood remembers
You’re in the Spanish moss
draped limb to limb, welcoming my attention
Shroud of insignificance
you hide yourself
Unknowing, our songs lift up your arms,
or what could be thought of as arms
To think of you at all, human
Hidden from each note and name
Upward you cascade out remembering
as we walk, thoughtless, right on by
Twisted into little neon parchments,
the poppies refuse to comment
on the evening. Shut their petals
on a world that’s tripping up,
cattywampus rhythms. A slip
of the moon again, skipping the sky
into storms. What God allows all this?
The earth shaking off like a wet dog,
throwing people from its surface
like drops forgotten. The lightning
licking a parched state into flame.
Hail on the beach, a mountain melting.
Who would allow this? allow us
to march into the pit we dug out
with desperate hands, the pit
we advertised with a thousand
buzzing billboards and nightly deals.
The pleasures we begged for
though we knew they would damn us.
Divine substance
wreathing around
each rock
each beam of light
shafting through hushed groves
the place of peace
imperfect yet
jay’s cacophony
slicing up the sky
as it should
it’s hard to believe
in this stillness
still you prowl
over the waters
biding time
as you should
waiting for the moment
to open at your word
How does your voice become as real to me
as the acacias’ leaves squeaking into song
in the hollow of dawn? Or the magenta
papules covering every twig and branch
in a rash of spring’s arrival? These things,
I’ve seen and believe. And even they
slip under hours, faded by whatever matter
shouts louder. The living words
evaporate fast in a warming world.
I seek you in the palms, the rustling
of a bothered breeze. I seek you
in the wood and stone and sea, sun-blanched
seconds of near-peace receding, receding.
Just an outline of what (or who) was there
before: an empty bottle, a lost glove,
broken-off stems and tracks of tired feet.
The trees are silent now, leafed out
and green. These things I’ve seen, and believe.
A second hollowed out
of exhale. Breath
burying me, a dark hallow.
What place do you curl
into, you constellation of bones?
Rest without rest, river
running over its own
abundance. To flow on
from the source, if only.
Instead, I sink into time,
spill minutes all over the ground.
Do not regard the flat sun
and its hidden work beckoning
all things come forth from themselves.
Every skin cracking in the light,
every breath becoming new rivers.
I bar myself against you
in life, in light
Making a careful trail
of sticks to mark good decisions
Virtue forced out of me like a paste
I will hold on a little longer
Nothing happens but what is expected of me
as I strain to remain still
But even a twitch of a tree beyond the office glass
pokes at the mystery
Like some possessed baton
captive to the wind’s tune
Shudders in the breeze, making awake
the tenuous mystery
Ever there in every note my eyes make
searching the room, in every pleasantry
The force I force back
with all good intention
Strike up the music,
swipe the sky with stars,
Still points under which
situations pivot, rain pelts
Some coast of no concern
to me—people can take
Only so much, local aches
overwhelm, overwrite national
Consequence—still, nebulae
think not of me or we
They’re dynamism lit with rainbow,
space folding in on itself, ever
Geometric mystery, the color living
just above every little chaos we make
Feather the winter slant-light sideways,
lie down, shadow—it’s not your hour
Like the seed that waits within,
holding whole temples at bay
Intricate structures
locked up tight, fallow,
Looking rather dead, even
in spite of all this talk
Newness and light and the season of you,
finally the person you’ve long imagined
Shining dry wisps of chittering grass
sway as the breeze takes up its act
Cheering on these short days,
purity of blue sky and taut air
Unrelenting in its severity for now
before life rounds out in bruise and blood