Autumn has put on its brittle shell, or taken off. Half-naked and too skinny in a rust-colored negligee, the oaks striptease to the high ice-music of the shifting pallor of the sky. The photograph captures an instant, the story captures a thread. Nothing’s gospel, just a little reflected radiance, motes dancing in a shaft […] Continue Reading
These are a few of my poems. Click on one to read it in its true form.
California Fall
Already late October and where did September go? In the garden crocuses push up through the leaf fall. Everything’s confused here. It’s California, caught in weird, autumnal thrall. California, like a page thumbed open, exposed to weathers, like a recitation of forgetfulness, flighty liturgy, the unearthly gaining shape as the whole continent tips westward […] Continue Reading
Penumbra
1 a space of partial illumination (as in an eclipse) between the perfect shadow on all sides and the full light 2 a surrounding or adjoining region in which something exists in a lesser degree: fringe maybe we had been talking about this a long time, the sky growing grey and still, the windows […] Continue Reading
Becoming Pearl
to love is pearl medicine terrifying transformation oozing grit and spit unwinding to original aura to love is unveiled garbage poems in the furrows a restless gypsy at the crossroads earthward and earth bound hardest homecoming a house with the dirt still intact i am covered in blood and shit still beautiful unworthy […] Continue Reading
St. Martin in the Fields
this morning my body wrapped like a cord like something caving in on itself the little stone in my chest knocking in its cavity and though the sun strikes white-gold on the evergreens and a man on the radio mentions the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, and i think how nice it […] Continue Reading
Pillar of Fire
Tonight for a few moments i was a pillar of fire i could hold my own even if a whole city was burning but driving home in the car suddenly a tidal wave knowing for the first time how much i love you and not knowing in which pocket to carry such knowledge […] Continue Reading
Bridge
Dear ones, what is it we are after on this bridge, in the frozen solitudes? What simple act of kindness will bind us forever? What is it that might solve us, absolve us? What radiant glimmering now gone? How shall we survive the tempest that swirls around our thin boat? How are we to […] Continue Reading
No one turned away for lack of funds
for Mary Oliver Everyone has their teachers, I think to myself this morning as I notice you have dedicated your small great book of poems to James Wright. We are all in each other’s debt, all filled with this inconstant music— inherited vocables, lost syllables— speaking themselves again in our mouths. The squirrel […] Continue Reading
Sonata
Feast your eyes on the gold and silver of the morning light in these trees, your ears on the rhythmic drumming of the woodpecker, the funny laughter of some little bird snickering like a mischievous boy. This is the balm of morning, its healing salve, everything in cahoots: the dark purple petunias shuddering to […] Continue Reading
Prayer
“I can lean the flame in my heart into your life and turn all that frightens you into holy incense ash.” —Hafiz, translated by Daniel Ladinsky The poem is a prayer— tendril, wind machine, shimmer, plough— how we cling to the words, little paupers, poor saviors. It sputters and burns, touching us […] Continue Reading
The World as Art
This morning dried flowers scattered on the porch. One yellow dandelion pokes through a hole in the side of a metal can – humor irony beauty reclaiming the world once again – so simply. The day is cooler but has the warm dry smell of summer. The wind an audible exhale in the trees. […] Continue Reading
The Grieving and the Dying
The grieving and the dying just go on and on. It’s amazing what a life they have, this life of loss. Neither right nor wrong, this fucking heart. Who knew the story would be all about pain? Who knew you’d be asked to give everything, then give more? How is it that […] Continue Reading
Winter
All night the ravens releasing a black crying. They seem to hold worlds we can never touch. Something akin to wisdom. Not perfection. That doesn’t have any life in it. It’s the woods where the breathing moves where Night well, you know. At some point you have to come back to your own […] Continue Reading
Sestina of a Dancer
for Susan painful mirror your body is my departure i watch you dance as light pours into a glass flawless as glass terrible mirror woman of light this body dances our departure that even now departs as brightness from the glass a shadow dance across the mirror of your body fractile as […] Continue Reading
The Heart
Impossible organ, beating and pumping our blood river to some unknown sea. It doesn’t take much, a small glitch in the inevitable rhythm, weatherbreak, wind-howl and we are set adrift. We long for order, but the heart with its incessant thump-thump thump-thump has its own music, its own reasons, if you can call […] Continue Reading
