-es all color dim; in a wonderless sky smeared with groundlight we strain for space, craft
-ing dread into dream: mazed, lost, shot, alone. fifty years, so unfinished in peace
-ing phase by phase, layer by layer; your maker heart left to this scream
-ing of wind through the seasons
will you take my voice, now
rough with disuse
again, the way
green pokes out from last year’s brown
leaves, bold of its welcome
no matter how thin
or straggly or
unintended
Maybe you shouldn’t have looked in here, after so many weeks
or months? to find your friends talking about God knows and eight or nine expired poetry challenges, that feeling
like skipping church for a year, then sitting in the town chapel singing Christmas carols with strangers—
didn’t you want to cry? and didn’t you stop yourself, a disciplined no? but listen, I’m telling you
yes: find what’s worth saving, a fresh heart beneath all that must
A long-lined acrostic dedicated to the long-neglected crew at Yeah Write.
clear-coat me, Lord
with carillon and birdsong
or peel through the yellowed layers
bubbled, of what has been
self-applied, find in me
that thing unfounded:
clear heart, clean brush, blank page
in this fountaining the flutter
wing-dust and scattered
seed, greening
why should you not return
to heartening beneath
your one-note lament
and need for salt don’t say
it’s always the same
for when have you ever noticed
roses blown open to rain
robins food-screeching
in your window-tree?
(lakeside)
and it turns out water
is only water. it may slosh
and splash, undulate, crash
and okay, sparkle, shimmer
gleam gold. or gray
in shadow, green in light
right down to the rocks
it caresses, rounding
here, near the shore—
or out there, sucking sand.
see, the dog will flail and swim
kicking up white froth, biting hard
at each wave (they never cease)
long tongue licking water
long-legged deliberate splash.
(no creature more prosaic
than a dog) so here I sit, done
with words. why bother noting
it dazzles? the boats drone on
and past, in deeper blue
seagulls scatter
broad summer is no time for poems
not with sunflowers nodding, laden
garden spiked with color
dart of wings and cicadas singing
rather, all this haymaking over dreams
while the sun shines
some poetic justice though, heart-pause
for rabbit nestlings in the carrots
…and huddles in the marigolds
with what I don’t know about
trees, their loves and losses
intimacies with beetle and worm
higher math. how to curtsey in
and bow out, gracefully
to say no and graciously
yes, these distances between
and how to bridge them. why
a lover fades before your eyes
or changes, or you change. how
to get up every day, new
in the eyes of dog or child
to prevent disappointment.
why words come thick
(fast in your youth, in dreams)
then vanish like the bees
though all the scented flowers
lead like a jeweled trail
to or from your heart—
and all the silent waiting
tell your autumn self, this fountained day
of wordy unmusical frustration is nothing
to regret. ask your winter self, who will make
work of the past? what is your spring self
but an ideal to grope for, in sympathy
with the young? you let those hours go.
(see the spiders already moving in, rose-hips,
crickets?) no need to reinvent or be clever
in your acts of love. your voice—broken,
burning, sleep-rough, shrill—will be here,
a sun-pledge.
sunset gold, low-slant
fires distant spark
starting seaside, spreading
beacon point to point to point—
behind my eyes
why did I glory in tales
of blood, fighting
remembered sword-grip
and how it shamed loving touch
of earth lifted, sifted
and firmed again
no more. I close the border of that land
with this drawing in, hurrying on
of cloak, hood, fences, gates
tamping down the pulse, the heart-fire
watching the thread of smoke lift
swirl, vanish
Graceful Press Poetry 