Vineyards under snow, civilized
rows, punctuation for a run-on landscape.
Our straggling vines look like veins
without a body, the blooms
we contain, of darkest blood,
clandestine first pressings.
Even at night the drifts are
pure white under a haloed moon—
why speak and spoil the effect?
Let a suspended particle be:
Ice crystal, brix, a word unspoken—
I’m learning to let a thing fall, or ripen
White world, little distinction
between ground and sky, even
birds won’t brave the coldness.
Yesterday I saw geese fall out
over the shale lake, like lanterns,
gold-bellied, backlit by a setting sun.
The first Christmas without your call.
Today is startling in its stillness,
another thing has come and gone:
Snow coats the road and yards,
the mountains engulfed
by clouds, so what else
can we measure by besides
a sense of gain, or loss?
Sleet on the way home,
the wind’s incisors. What
do you say to a man
who is dying? I miss
the turn for the exit,
three times around
the parking garage’s
flattened concrete
helix. I vacate
my spot, I leave
it wanting. The heart
is a door that opens
and shuts.
Such a still night. There’s the silent
police light, blue cyclic, a car stopped
on the tracks. I pass, catch phrases
by surprise– I don’t care and
should we try? This day has gone
by in a thumb of pages, brisk
breeze, alacrity. People siphon off
down alleys. The city is never
not bright– two tickers wrap
around buildings– a strip club,
and headlines. The theme
is themes– the cycle repeats
itself, among angular buildings,
a ring. Meaning a call, or a promise–
such a still night. Streetcars snake
through empty blocks, warehouses
once, reclaimed, or tamed–
In the nearest modern office
someone is working late, flat
as a painting behind plate glass.
A distant siren, leaving, not
arriving. A symphony of horns,
a car reverses, but not that one–
no room for personal relief
in a leitmotif. Burgeoning on,
a still night again, but still,
cacophonies of light. How
a day expands, and yet
has nothing on its absence–
the night as a vacuum, so relatably
wanting. Downshifting,
a car announces its passing.
The streetcars are all but
empty at this hour, and this one
waits, painted cheeky green
like some futuristic caterpillar–
the night as chrysalis,
or as a cocoon, some
preparatory state, still
such a shock, to not be what
you thought, silk wings
dusted with doubt, settled
on some ledge or sill, on some
quiet night, with a long-chambered
heart, and only the will to bow
to light, to follow, lacking
discernment, everything
a moon, or acceptably close,
the night a canvas that wants
embroidering, silk thread pulled
through, completed loops,
and that dream of closure–
From the cancer ward a view, a dream
of a lake. All this glass is sterile,
frosted– we soften everything
we can soften. Sometimes with meds.
I recall how, when half-crazed, you tried
to leave and carry off a decorative vase,
and your paintings got much wilder,
vivid wet. There is no crimson here,
only windows the color of sea-glass,
and clean lacquered pine. It is peaceful
and nice– so quiet, floors above
the street, the orderly bridges, elegant
rooftops, that I can hear blunt
dread roll in my stomach as I walk
the long hallways, feel the chart’s sharp
nomenclature like needle-sticks. I never
don’t remember. But I wear hope
and a smile as a cloak, say things like
it will get worse
before it gets better. And of course,
who knows,
it might
At work, tragedy rooms–
To favor a side
is not the same
as being wrong.
These families,
they furnish the place
with love and grief–
any place can be a home,
except alone.
Tonight the city lights
don’t remind me
of anything. Sometimes
it’s as if this heater
isn’t even on.
Cold snap. A fog-borne day.
The house kept settling
like distant thunder,
but at some point
weariness edges out
fear. It will be
or it won’t, either
easily arrives
on its own–
Sisyphus, let it roll
De Kooning, the title
caught my eye–
Woman as Landscape–
yes, also a hollow house, more
curator than curated, pastel
in affect, but bleached,
not softened–
In your absence, I become
a harsh abstraction–
exquisite grit, sand, if this
is the ocean–
and all that drifting
I have a shadow inside
like bottled-up smoke
and this– husks of grapes,
eleven summers, oaked–
can conjure it up–
a caution. By the lake
today the crows were
swarming, the last
of the maple leaves afloat
on the lawn, like scarlet junks,
and at China Harbor,
an empty banquet room
backlit by bay windows,
with a hundred empty chairs–
negative capability,
like Keats said, to receive
the world, concavity,
the capacity for being
contained in the empty room,
the glass-green eye
of a cat sunning itself
on the stucco overhang,
or the low winter sun stuck
in puddles of pooled mercury–
and to see and to think only
of the hand that scripted,
the mouth that dictated
the cursive name
of the last boat
on the dock, wondering
at how resignation shadows hope,
or prefaces it, depending on
the way the light falls, the way
we imbue a word, concentrating it–
Ab Initio,
and for as long as you can, after
Too warm, but it smells of snow.
Some car sound, as if an owl–
hollow note. The night comes
on like gratitude, always there,
but sometimes staggering
in effect. I get too wan,
too brittle, my tongue
too parched to say just
how I treasure things,
but it would be a mistake
to doubt it–
no, I’m no collector,
but give me the moon
like a pearl on velvet,
some shinning look–
I could write a book
on your eyes alone,
the sluice of friendship,
the sea of love, I am
a boat borne on,
even on nights
like these, stale
and starless, it could
easily be day
OPTIONAL POETRY 