Poem for Thursday, June 12, 2014

Esto Incluye a las Estrellas

On this evening, I turn to what I cannot
see or reach.

This includes the stars.
The longest veil of cloud has tangled itself
around their throats.

Being cosmic is so thankless, you said
another evening long ago:

           a glass of Cabernet in your crescent
           moon hand, eyes bluer than Neptune
           ice, remnants of another galaxy rolling
           off your tongue.

How could I believe you then, now, or
at any point in infinite time?

Poem for Sunday, April 27, 2014

Nature's Hierarchy

There is something about the pine branches
weighed down with snow,

the lone bluebird underneath, incredulous,
questioning her springtime instincts.

On a different street, a man in pajama pants
and boots impales his yard with a shovel,
not expecting to work on a Saturday

in April. He pauses from his labor, glances
upward for some kind of reprieve and is met
by a maelstrom of rushing flakes.

Nature's hierarchy is no different from ours,
stretching vertically from ground to sky.

The trick is to move sideways, to create
your own power, to live with and not
up or down.

Poem for Friday, April 18, 2014

Spring in Flag

Raga music the evening before, tea
with lemon to my immediate left.
Outside from my porch,
the overcast sky;

just below, a light blue Chevy
Nova slugs along until it disappears
outside the edge of some
photograph.

Poem for Friday, March 28, 2014

Till the autumn tempests come to scatter the
flowers
    --So brief your thoughts of her.

                                  --from The Tale of Genji


So Brief Your Thoughts of Her

It is the time of the year
for our rituals: hanging up our coats, giving up smoking,

remarking on the fickleness of the sky. How strangely
we behaved. How often

we took for granted the
intricate signals sent from brain to mouth, the thoughts

forever tangled in our synaptic thickets. Sometimes, I
manage to think of you

perpetually dressed for
that first winter, telling me your name under the snow-

pregnant clouds. How wonderful your name, you lying
on the frost, lighting up

your menthol, pausing
between puffs to tell me this is your last one, you swear.

Poem for Thursday, March 20, 2014

Life Observation

The contents of my trashcan: rotten
lettuce, shredded pieces of paper and--
    wait for it--
two strips of scissor-cut
    denim.

Poem for Saturday, March 1, 2014 (2)

Improvising

When she said she longed for Venice,
I quietly stepped out and returned
minutes later, hands burdened with two
paper bags: one containing discount pasta
and tomato sauce, one containing boxed
wine and a single taper candle.

I brought her to the table, set a plate
in front of her and lit the candle off the
oven burner. Anyway, I said, it's
probably raining hard over there. And
who can walk around Piazza San Marco
without stepping on the pigeons?

Poem for Saturday, March 1, 2014

Harbinger

The latest form fate has assumed:

the branches of the trembling
aspen, helplessly
tangled in the wind, scraping
the claws of the low-flying
crow.

Still,
he is undeterred: a harbinger, lonely
in his blackness,
wings kissed with rain as he soars
through clueless vapors that we call
sky.