What settles?
You. A draft.
The foundation
of a house.
This wind picks up
but never gets
alarming.
And I can’t tell
disappointment
from lack
of inertia,
as they’re both
so drab and gray
and boring.
January 7: Revisiting March 4
Even though and still
the trees are making new leaves
don’t act as if you expect it
you’ll ruin the surprise
look even now they are waiting
for the perfect moment
avert your eyes
don’t look
until they shout
their green shouts
January 6: Revisiting January 22
Lilac streaks this sunrise
against the dusky mountain
the floor moves on
with plans for discharge
or work for the M.E.
it does get lighter
earlier now
I panic in traffic
thinking I’m late
staring at the mountain
and what does late
even mean
if not that we take
so much for granted
January 5: Revisiting August 21
Sadness is thick
but more precisely
it is dense.
I do sense danger
in the sea’s laughter,
but also fairness.
Why do I return
to the indifference
of the ocean?
It gives as much as it gets,
doesn’t boast of its
limitlessness.
You wrote a book
of questions, but what
of the ones you didn’t ask?
I have a few I can’t
even bring myself to speak,
instead writing some lines
like you, like this–
Is a sinking feeling
more acceptable in sand?
January 4: Revisiting April 20
Breeze blew my papers
down into the culvert, oh hell.
My only defense
against an early rattler
is drunk bravado.
Animals here have fur
the color of dead grass,
cloud or contrail–
it’s motion that gives
us all away.
January 3: Revisiting March 1
A thin cloud drawn
across the night sky
a cloud
not a jet trail
not as precise
above it the moon
below it
stars
in some celestial
equation
so enamored
am I with this
idea of divination
two of the stars
are traveling
in opposite directions
jetliners
both going
and both leaving
but I wasn’t looking
for something
so obvious
so keen am I
on division
always wanting
to know just
how many times
a thing can go
then wanting
to know
the remainder
January 2: Revisiting October 29
Biopsy:
seeing life
but not
knowing,
not without
second sight—
and inside
of a dog,
it’s too dark
to read,
half the joke,
not as funny,
and in the lobby
on a pleasant wall
I stare at the same
agreeable painting
for minutes at a time
and never see it.
January 1: Revisiting December 29
The road paved in ice
and that damn owl
playing hopscotch
on the roof all night.
The room too warm,
the smell of snow
came in a cracked
window at three,
such an unbecoming
hour, and it seems
there will never
be enough– I mean,
there isn’t
a leap or reach
that isn’t preface
to a landing.
December 31
This morning seagulls
called out whistle-bright
above the frozen world,
camellias under ice, clear
dawning. Now it’s night,
my bags are ready,
nothing is left but to savor
life, packed down nicely,
finally, and this dry
cava, cold as a cave,
clinquant on the tongue,
like the ocean arriving,
a secret revelation,
so transient and divine
[HAPPY NEW YEAR! Optional Poetry is going on vacation, for the next week or so will be posting poems from the archives– new, possibly tropical, poems coming soon…]
December 28
The bend of a bird’s
wing seemed so sharp,
the guttural scrape
of the snowplow
clearing the road,
but it couldn’t keep up
with the sky
and its act of forgetting,
these relentless
rounded edges,
forgiving all,
and always–
The last snow walk before
the drive back
it was blowing down,
so that the path erased
itself, became new
with every step
and it was hard to return,
to leave
the banks that softened
hard lines, made
bridges over gaps—
sealing them, saying
this is now new,
all of it, what was
is now untouched, a promise
to keep, or to break
OPTIONAL POETRY 