Poem for Tuesday, July 29, 2014

The Fire Gods Are Always Hungry

This is not the first thing you will learn there, but when you do
learn, the iron will make you sweat, the blood-heavy organs
will make homes beneath your fingernails like parasites in their
hosts. Someone beside you will be kneeling down; this is
for certain. They will pick up a knife, cradle it in their large hand.
They will thumb the blade into a piece of the stomach and toss it
in the stove where the flames are dancing.

You will begin to learn the hierarchy of the land. You will
deconstruct the grass on which you stand, first by the patch, next
by the blade, next by the cells inside each blade. You will never
forget how things once living grazed there under countless suns,
under countless moons, before they made it into the fire.

Poem for Thursday, July 24, 2014

These Things Are Gone

At the slope of the mountain is knee-high vetch,
violet like a storm, fields of it.

You stand there among it all,
coffee on your breath, feeling finite below
the aspen, clenching a rock in your hand.

Before you carve anything in that trunk, think
how these things are gone:

        letters we once saved in drawers,

        our footprints parallel in the snow,

        the flowers that sat on your desk

        over the years, how they all wilted

        in the same surrender.

God, there must have been thousands
of flowers.

Poem for Thursday, July 17, 2014

A Rooftop in Kentish Town

                   From such places,
                   we finally confirm
                   all our suspicions:

yes, the light dies more slowly
farther north, spilling cobalt
instead of black around
the moon;

yes, things get lost in the thickets,
a lap dog yelping from one
of the nameless gardens
below;

yes, when sitting alone on a bench,
implications vary according to
how close to the center
you are;

yes, for reasons lost in the ineffable,
this breeze-sliced night is not
meant to be reduced to a
photograph.

Poem for Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Pine View in June

I.

A woman walks her dog on the sidewalk that passes
in front of my porch. She is wearing cutoff denim shorts
and a black feathered hat that Victorian women likely
wore during periods of mourning. Try as I might, I cannot
recall how her dog looked.

II.

The children play softball and soccer in the little league
diamond behind my apartment. After a practice concludes,
the coach says to his team of Hispanic girls, "Let's not forget
the number one rule: you pick up the equipment, not us."

III.

In the same little league diamond, some drunken youth
shout from the dugout at night while I try to sleep. The
words of Naomi Shihab Nye come to mind: we were
all born like empty fields. What we are now shows
what has been planted.

IV.

In the pine outside my window, the songbirds pause
from their communication to swallow whatever is
clenched in their beaks. How similarly all creatures
live, I think, lifting my sandwich towards my mouth.

V.

A man is sealing up cracks in the weathered asphalt.
They are unpredictable in depth, in length, in pattern.
He is outmatched, but he remains dogged, convinced
that he is solely responsible for saving us all from
melting in the earth's core.

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.