Recent Poems
Green Light
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.
New Bird
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.
Heat Wave
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.
Abide
Abide
while walking this world round
Step by step, seconds chasing
my ankles
Each hour we rest in
harbors its hollow of pain
or praise
The choice
Was it ever really yours?
Stay here a moment
and watch the trees
pass through
each phase
Xylem and phloem
doing their sweet work
in darkness
Hidden from view
is consistency
Faithful couriers
Shuttling lifeblood
up and down
no matter what season
The leaves crisped
or lush or absent even
Sit a while
and marvel
That your blood now travels
up and down
whether pain or praise
passing you through
each place
Gather your courage
and walk deeper
into the tree’s dark vessels
Be absorbed
in its secret work
Its blood
becoming your own
Its blood
shielding you
Bringing forth
sweet, soft buds
in season
The Narrow Way
Follow the word’s curve
cutting into the hillside.
Holy rune snaking
through the cobwebbed scrub,
through the crisping tall grass.
Follow the word’s curse.
A fleeting dragonfly, restless
in its lighting—here or there,
never where commanded.
The way through the hills, small and specific.
Follow the word
where it beckons, grassed-in tombs
for shedding skin, paths
that wind down into small points,
the sun converging only here.
There is only one way to go.
All other passes and expanses
fall away, the hard light of the first star
rips through the early evening,
single point of escape.
Perfect Meeting
Hush, the foothills lapped by purple.
Dark light rising like steam, reveal
each slope, each curve
the dawn holds in its mouth.
I throw myself under the sun’s
watchful eye. Hopeful subject
of any old worship.
The hills I walk through,
where I walk you out of me.
My blood, warm cascades
vibrating nonetheless.
The hills watch my hard-won
joy grow bitter, grow brittle.
I want to talk about the hills,
because I am afraid of you,
of finding your eyes
in my mind. Fog
on a river I’ve known
doesn’t quite obscure
the perfect moment when
the duck’s descending body
wedges softly, opening
the surface of water.
A perfect meeting,
that’s what I’ve known.
And a water between us
saying no, not now.
Not this, despite
the thrill of invisible
touch, just out
of sight under the water,
dappled dawn just out of reach.
You, Darkness
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.
Bereft
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.
Land of Fire
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.
Fleeting
O Lord, make me know my end
and what is the measure of my days;
let me know how fleeting I am! - Ps. 39:4
Each greatness
turns to bitter star,
cold fire
in a new-moon’s bosom.
I shout my praises
to the black deep,
I shout my praises.
The words, pure
for mere seconds.
For anything I thought
I am,
the redwoods balk
by standing, still.
Their orange-tinged, fibrous trunks
hold the note
a little longer, grasping
handfuls of stratosphere.
Flick off fire,
flick off rains.
Fortune, no matter.
Mocked by the world
I can’t help
but use while it cries,
while it burns, while it crumbles
while it stands.
Unthinkable Birds
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.
Holy Confines
You who made the marble click
of the midsummer moon
You who call the froth
forth from the churning sea
Purity of orbit
Whereas I’m prone
to bend each stem
snap each twig
shatter each shell
Whereas I hunger
The rustle of the bluff-grass, the skittering
of animal just out of sight
What life, what blood
What would you have me do?
Erase the salt from my tongue? mute the whirling
dust of each sun-warmed path I wind down?
Convey pleasure, no more
Keep my sun in its little box,
treasure for a holy audience
a ringed-in fire
one life
Another Perspective
Canyons of time
riven in coastal script
Little jutting things
glutted with scrub & surprise
flowers—ice plants, sea grass,
thousands of orange and yellow faces
dotting the cliffside like anemones
Here in this cut, I must see
Reckon fast
while betrayed by my inattention
The waves, constant
The waves, restless
The edge of an hour
snaps at your heels,
reveals pearlescent treasures
or wracked carapace, gutted skeleton
brought up from the deeps
Depending on the day
Depending—never—on me
The World's Work
Outlasting bone, outlasting even
root-sinew’s twisting through earth.
Hard bark of star
and abalone, scuffed
to oblivion, cliffside caverning down.
No land can be trusted.
I walk this world, fern-dotted pathways all conifer,
all wild rhododendron. I pass through,
leaving little trace. Impact blunted
by what creaks through xylem, through phloem.
The world works on me.
I walk this world, surprised the creek’s thrown itself
over there. Stones tumbled to soft
under the rough hand of sea, of wind and wear.
Nothing looks the same as it did.
Spirit of the inside of things
slipping out in wisps, smoke on the undulated air.
No world can be trusted.
Until having worked itself down to bone,
turns out the only marrow there ever was.
Remembrance
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
The Problem of Pain
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.
Logos
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
Faith
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.
Signs
Three ducks go due west, stringing a twilight
behind their guillotine wings. Flashing dark
against a colored sky. Herald what’s to come,
the signs everywhere dropping down on us
like dew. Miraculous water no one takes notice of.
Who cares about condensation or anything
that evaporates: like hope or us. Dark wings beat
so quickly away. Evening dims, closing its secrets
to me, receding with its cool, murky mystery
into a gnarled shell. Golden ratios and all that.
The signs are everywhere, I tell you.
In the dim light, I feel it—a burgundy spike
slipped through, not on my watch.
First magnolia petals I age myself by.
Years into years, dark blooms’ hush
evading us for our own good, our own undoing.
So we find a way to say he has done it,
he has done this thing.
River Running
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.
You Drew Me Out
Simply to rest
simply
but barred by shadow
of my own making
stubborn in certainty
no one gets hurt
*
To know my need
and bring forth
a fruit compelled
worth waiting for
worth laying down
*
Font of joy
watering the parched
whether they like it or not
partake in what is good
only good for you
*
Make impossible ways
forward for me
for us, a people
worth laying down for
said no one ever
fruit compelled
in a garden of cold sweats
thy will be done
*
Reach toward light,
tendril, cling on
for dear life
life sure is dear
even broken
even for you
*
Lost in a sea,
glorying in turbulence
I made my bed in the waves
and went down
but you drew me out
a stone with a new name
life drawn out of the waters,
called forth
the name it always was.
Virtue
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
Perspective
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
New Year
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