If it comes unbidden, consider it
a gift–
If it comes rehearsed,
refuse it.
These days I almost
only trust the earth,
the roots that it harbors,
the life that bursts up from it
when it cannot possibly
wait one second longer–
March 25
Drunk of this new light
this new sun right
delirious everything
is more now finally
visible for all that it is
winter has deceptive
clarity how easy
it is to forget
that emptiness
is also a state of being
fillable lack giving
flavor to abundance
March 24
It’s a real bitch to start a fire
in the damp don’t I know
and yet when you smile
I remember it’s happened before–
at least I think it was a smile
it’s sometimes hard to tell
with sidelong glances
(If I could I’d blush I’m sure)
this a more enjoyable
sort of floating
softening from sad
and sodden
to a nearly glad
and the sillier soppy
March 23
More variable rain
impulsive
preordained
in the way
that a song is
.
and trust is not
wholly incompatible
with doubt
or why
such relief
as a progression
plays out?
.
these days
it’s too hard
inside
to hear above
the deafening silence
.
but out here the chord
is always an
open
one and moving
to resolve
March 22
This old dog gets lost
inside the house now
sticks her head
into doors
that she can’t place–
is this the bathroom
or is it the lake?
And I can’t tell
from her sweet face
if she’s figured it out
or forgotten
what she came for–
and how do I stop
her world from receding
when the hard truth
is that it’s not
the world
that is leaving?
March 21
Arch, I’d like
to go see the Arch,
trenchant,
I’d like to go
see the sea–
Melville I know
about Novembers
of the soul,
and Decembers,
Januarys, and Februarys–
There’s something
about the Pacific
that tempers a temper,
dulls a sharp tongue,
I don’t know why
I get like I do
but call me Ishmael
it’s not unprecedented–
just give me a shore
and a ship and a star
to sail by
and a home
to leave–
I don’t know why
I get like I do
March 20.1
We all came through
the night unscathed
to the first day
of Spring
slow to arrive
no different
than the last day
a dead sky
hesitant rain
I’m not so gullible
as to try
and balance eggs
and brooms
and the like
but must admit
I feel a sort
of stasis
as in something
surely is holding us
in place
March 20
Inexorable tides
something like
inevitable grief
that will arrive in what–
a day, days, weeks?
Out on the coast
we used to climb
the sea stacks
and grassy
headland paths
to watch the surf
chew up the shore
and anything else
that remained below
not safely nested up
in barnacles
and pines
and is it wrong
now
to cooly observe
a breaking
from some distance–
metaphorically
as I couldn’t
get time off
and don’t want to
leave
not really
only to detach–
to try at free-living
so tired now
of failing valves
Furosemide
of watching
and waiting and
waiting–
March 19
This another sort
of entrapment–
the weight of ought
and should
even now even
here waking so late
to a colorless sky
and still-bare branches
backlit and immobile
I went to stake the peas
with sticks to try
to gather and balance
things now well beyond
reason now well past
care even the hermit
juncos stopping
to observe
my shoddy weaving–
silence and mania
in this setting
of a rescinded spring
of days that can’t even
bring themselves
to dawn– if longing
is a sickness
and love is a fever
what then
is their absence?
What then
is the cure?
(147)
March 18
suivre l’onde amère
words from a lifetime ago
what dredged them
to the surface
if not this night’s
precipitous drop
.
what precipitated it
who can say
a tide it changes
anything
might lurk
deep waters, etc.,
au fil de l’eau
il n’y ait plus rien ( à perdre)
.
the point
being one cannot
actually follow
a wave
from shore (at least)
it breaks–
any return
is subtextual
e.g. subtly below
the water’s surface
.
I feel sharp
about these words
wave wave bitter wave
l’onde is far superior
in imbuing
a sense
.
but still a chase
implies (requires?)
a space
.
tonight
I cannot fill it
no known tongue
or language
will suffice
everything
like failed
skipped rocks
mots noyé
inundate
sodden
the implication
is always
sinking–
OPTIONAL POETRY 