History Lessons

that time we time-machined it
found hope-lack, forward and back

drawn onward, grit and press (what
could we gain in the rewriting?)

 

Cold like the moon

this skimmed-milk faith
glowing a bit, a movie-god’s halo
(but blue-white, LED, not incandescent)
trembling near nightfall
under sudden river-ice

*

and the reason we want a plot
a cheer-heart resolution
to this hapless wandering
(eat, sleep, cry)—who is writing
your story with its cast of millions
cross-referenced, pronunciation guide
at the end?

*

when we stood, this close
to touching a beauty hauled round
up-horizon, the glow you would know
for all its pits and crags
until you woke again
and lost it

Disgusted is not too strong a word

1.
Well. We know they have power
and you have sometimes said to me
That’s a strong word
when certainly I meant it.
I don’t wield them like weapons
but I try to have a point.

2.
after splurging on thought
(time travel, what life
we could know before TV)
and a surfeit of sad violins
nothing left for it
but cleaning (the deep stuff)
as if scrubbing might solve
this damned spot

On another crimson-gold day with leaves falling through sunshine

it is good
how things shrivel
dreams, one by one
diminished, discarded
merely achieved
this drawing down
with the season
(how the insect ceases
flailing under silk
succumbs)
as one who will not say
now i am content
if only—
not telling you
nor leaving
some void
how would you know?
an absence
of absence
you would still find beauty
or something close
enough, not needing
more words

Abundance

time now to stop apologizing
for having time to dance and play
at beauty-making (the gift
to be simple, the gift
to be free) to plan
plant and watch grow
my harvest
is free
(time)

 

Here: Mid October

I lay on warm grass
sun reaching long gold fingers—
a perfect mushroom—
listless, blue-sky studying
resolving to welcome shade

puritans

the devil told that lie
we sold ourselves
for work is all and only
guilt comes of pleasure

these things we Should
Should Not be doing
always something looming
over what we’re dreaming now

it rides our joy weary
drives it to the ground

Building the Dollhouse, Part 2

cream paint today—Buntlack
in the German which reminds me
there’s no hurry, not for me
(rain sounds like peace and wind
can’t rush it away)

if you’re a little older than when
we first dreamed up this project
that only means your skill
and taste have improved
but then I wonder

(the geese fly over
again the rain sighs
and stops)
if some twelve years of after-
adjustments have made you

want to leave these details
to me and should I be glad
you don’t mind?
we can’t be free of second-guessing
in any season

Aging Song

After the long farewell to beauty of face
when body also sighs, fades, frails
what is left to me is only this grace:
beauty to give in word and voice

You will know I have not quit my place
nor turned strident in the striving
but have found peace in this quiet, by choice
by ink-stained fingers, dirt under my nails

For poetry makes nothing happen

Don’t say you have never asked yourself
if the world needs beauty as much as it needs
food. May I toil not as a lily of the field,
starscattered while you trudge upright
acknowledged paths, useful.

Like train tracks we need not touch
to hum; with practical passion, quiet
prayer, you swim south as I arrow north
shivering, surviving, a drop-in-this-ocean
way of happening

 

Title and last line borrowed from W. H. Auden’s “In Memory of W. B. Yeats.”