Silence, except for the insistence of ocean.

Backdrop for seabirds, arguing in a grumpy rain.

I let contemplation keep company with

a stubborn fire warming wet wood,

hungry for more than it is willing to give.

Morning.

 

These mangy hills, full-cliffed, sprung from

the deep places of the earth,

thrust their faces out to greet

a colorless sky, too dark to laugh,

too green to die, but not too proud to cry.

Spring.

 

There is a stooped and bent feeling,

cast abroad in the air, breathing heavily.

A tangled scene, untimely brought,

coils itself, unprotected against the beauty of

a moist, unsatisfied wind.

Oregon.

Is time dependent on that which we invent to measure it? Or is it merely how it is perceived? Is it what we build in, around, through and in spite of it? How different, really, are the past, present and future if we embrace none of them?

The future came and went far

too quickly to be remembered.

It left me with my foot stuck

in a borrowed door, jimmying

a lock on a broken chain

draped loosely over the sloping shoulders of

today. It ran past me backwards and

jokes still waiting for punchlines, mouthing words not yet spoken, songs still unsung,

How odd to see your own head from

behind. How disconcerting it is to

build wasted efforts, futile undertakings when

outcomes are clearer than their inspirations.

Mistakes made shame the steps

yet untaken. How lonely to stop

singing notes yet uncomposed in

company unmet with hands still

red from clapping out rhythms never danced to.

_______________

I want to think back with delight

on the future, lived, loved and

remembered in the mirror of these

moments spent writing of others spent,

yet to come – the moments reconstructing yesterdays.

But, alas, such is not our lot;

a die caught and counted before the cast.

Final pages on stories told

make little sense pasted in

the wrong book. Words, once read,

cannot be unread, only forgotten.

Horizons, once past, only open up more of the same,

yet to come. Horizons look the same

from every direction, once we awaken to

the great vast blue that envelopes us.

________________

Only when we’re drowning is any shore

a welcome shore.

Pictures found here and here, respectively

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_________________

Fluent

I would love to live

Like a river flows,

Carried by the surprise

Of its own unfolding.

__________________

Your arms are so long;

I can’t see where your hands should be.

Do your fingers point away or

back toward me?

 

Are your muscles taut or loose?

Supple or soft, sufficient to hold,

implying an embrace? Or is there sinister intent

in your outstretched arms?

 

What is in your eyes?

Do they look aside, avoiding my own

while mine nervously look elsewhere, too,

unsure of beginnings? Of the road ahead?

 

Your pavement lies cracked, unsure,

            like the radiator of an old truck;

                        built for much more but now holds little.

But the truck looks good.

 

The skylines too often block

            the yearning view of skies made black.

                        As black meets blue comes green,

the color of your gold.

 

Starched Mayflower collars,

            unbending to wind or laughing or failure,

                        press the god-filled soil from your boots,

on the necks of your serfs.

 

The voices loud, the words are tall,

            writ large across your branded skies,

                        the songs are sung by those with guns for fists,

and stripes of nettles on corral courtiers.

 

My own soul, distanced, but tempered by time,

            finds grace such temperance allows, to swallow

                        the seeds of discontent in the hearty bread

baked in twin kilns of need and desire.

 

So, stretch out your long arms.

Grab hold of one made larger, broader,

Arms made to embrace or crush are at least

around my shoulder.

 

 

 

 

 

And so there comes

a certain showering of

sparks flaring upward

like flakes of white hot snow.

The stars in rows

gather as unbidden memories

to cast their ghoulish glow

on the back, black walls –

hidden from view,

or at least cowering

among the older stars,

clumped and unbillowing. They do not

breathe anymore, but

still cast their

meddling shadows.

Their pathetic streams of

yellow light offer

neither warmth nor sight –

just scratching on

a chalkboard of a new

night, too full to care.

My pen bleeds it’s sickly sweet dewfall drawl.

Nothing inhabits this canister but dried up vowels

fit for lying salesmen and puffed up politicians.

 

The birds have picked clean the grain,

and the road is left clean enough

to walk on without sound.

 

The deer have stopped coming to taste

the salt lick that once bore the strident residue

of something that helped hold their water.

 

I’m feeding the fish with sawdust

one pinch at a time. They’re only fat

because they’ve had to eat each other.

 

Unbanish the bright and flowing nerves of pulsating ink.

Let breathe again the salacious, the rambunctious,

the florid and foul, the simple and bombastic,

that tickle, cajole, prance and pet

and set free the smallest fires.

life is not finished yet

this time between the times

the bones between the flesh

mute or stinking

 

another thought has come

crumpled but poised

crouching between the eyebrows

of have and had

 

slick and unyielding this

tricky business of friendship

of unposted letter-lives

hiding in lairs of uncertainty

 

where the dark and damp

find the warm and humble

sucking from the teet

of forgiveness breathing

 

toward a resolution

a day-night hour

pretends to see the unseen

tucked under a quivering branch

 

and just when the first bird

alights with song at the ready

the branch gives in and

dancing leaves meet waiting ground

 

 

There are the non-rhymes of indentured servitude,

like our darker shadows served up as a litany of disgrace.

The dog keeps eating his shit and it reminds me that

sometimes what we think is tried and true is merely

dying to escape and find its way back, unseen, to soil.

We cramp up, our innards telling us a hard truth:

lap up this fish water and eat the stale tree bark much longer

and the ground won’t know the difference between you and your vomit.

Bitter weeds entwine roots with the vegetables, rape them for nutrients

and laugh all the way to the bowl where even the Ranch Dressing

can’t cancel the happy devils’ rotten trick.

So, I guess we either get used to the taste of bitter herbs in the salad,

the indiscriminate odor of our own feces among the riches of earth,

or we remain satisfied to let it all grow up together.

Maybe there’s an accidental rhyme of dirt and sky, earth and heaven?

Maybe rhyme isn’t the point?

For my mother, Doris. You will always know where I live… 

She ate the fires that burned our feet,

but kept us dancing still.

An outsider to her own life,

she dwelt in the shadows with others,

unadorned, weary and unnoticed by

those who mattered most.

She was a woman of family loyalties

seen through the well-pictured mantle;

of a burdened sensitivity filtered through an indomitable strength;

of shrewd candor minted in the currency of honesty.

* * *

His love was real enough but

tentative, unsure, safe – he saw her

as through a glass, dimly; sideways, peripherally.

Though his arms were strong,

they were no match for her constitution,

mammoth by comparison; a roundness

of stalwart purpose swimming in a barrel of uncertainty.

* * *

Though his word was law, hers was heard,

and heeded in the hours, in the minutes,

in the places where we actually lived.

Wrestling one child with words, another with shrewdness,

still another with a ping-pong paddle

on which was written “for a better future,”

she forged us in fires not of our desire but her design –

on the requirements of character and truth.

* * *

Mirrors told her what they saw

not what she hoped for and always, just behind her,

skulked the injustice of vengeful time.

All the words nearly rhymed to songs sung

just a little out of tune; pleasant enough at a piano with a broken back.

Despite her stature, there was never any doubt

who stood tallest, whose shoulders were broadest,

whose voice spoke loudest, and whose purpose was sunk deepest.

No scars ran deep enough, no bruises blue enough

to raze this spirit from the earth’s deep places.

* * *

She ate the fires that couldn’t devour her…