compromise
I buried the bones of midnight long ago, in the silky earth of easy words, in the simple grave of moving on. The gray ice sky held its place long after dawn had given its all, a chill tangle of mist hanging onto everything in sight. Everything held still, the fog enclosing each hour. Everything held tight, the day just slipping away. By the...
Read More
I buried the bones of midnight long ago, in the silky earth of easy words, in the simple grave of moving on. The gray ice sky held its place long after dawn had given its all, a chill tangle of mist hanging onto everything in sight. Everything held still, the fog enclosing each hour. Everything held tight, the day just slipping away. By the...
Read More
sanctify
I leave the porch-light on, though there is no-one coming. I stay awake in a half-reverent drowse, watching the television as if I was only waiting for something more. The vision just out of sight, so welcome despite all these fables of lessons learned hard. The desire that final realization, your absence and the meaning of need. The light left on, pushing on that...
Read More
I leave the porch-light on, though there is no-one coming. I stay awake in a half-reverent drowse, watching the television as if I was only waiting for something more. The vision just out of sight, so welcome despite all these fables of lessons learned hard. The desire that final realization, your absence and the meaning of need. The light left on, pushing on that...
Read More
the pessimist
You can't look away-- as if that was the only rule, that one you had to follow. Even though to look means falling, you open your eyes to see. Drawn further with each vision, you fly apart by increments, just that resigned collapse near the edge of exasperation always one more step away. I would wrap you in your wings, that flicker always...
Read More
You can't look away-- as if that was the only rule, that one you had to follow. Even though to look means falling, you open your eyes to see. Drawn further with each vision, you fly apart by increments, just that resigned collapse near the edge of exasperation always one more step away. I would wrap you in your wings, that flicker always...
Read More
old light
The stars settle into the cold black sky, biding the insubordinance of all the satellites and airplanes that dot and blink across the dense dark night. They linger in the familiar constellations, they straggle and struggle and shine. They spatter and litter those obdurate depths, their light the very reach of time spilling down from the firmament. They are the distance and they...
Read More
The stars settle into the cold black sky, biding the insubordinance of all the satellites and airplanes that dot and blink across the dense dark night. They linger in the familiar constellations, they straggle and struggle and shine. They spatter and litter those obdurate depths, their light the very reach of time spilling down from the firmament. They are the distance and they...
Read More
persuasion
You arrive at the shore, but it seems different. Everything they said, everything you hoped, now just the sounds of confusion. Everything that could have been finished by the tide. Pay the boatman, settle any debt. You set foot onto tomorrow, caught in between seeing and belief.
It is always some story unwinding, some tale being embellished in the telling. The calendar reasons and...
Read More
You arrive at the shore, but it seems different. Everything they said, everything you hoped, now just the sounds of confusion. Everything that could have been finished by the tide. Pay the boatman, settle any debt. You set foot onto tomorrow, caught in between seeing and belief.
It is always some story unwinding, some tale being embellished in the telling. The calendar reasons and...
Read More
New Year
There was that last, impassioned moment, we tangled there, my hands following yours, some tender invocation finding your flesh so warm beneath my touch. That last hungry groping embrace has been the shape of most of what I am missing, watching the radiance of this winter world. My cold hands fumble as I play at fire-keeper, some ancient tribal ache hinting at my...
Read More
There was that last, impassioned moment, we tangled there, my hands following yours, some tender invocation finding your flesh so warm beneath my touch. That last hungry groping embrace has been the shape of most of what I am missing, watching the radiance of this winter world. My cold hands fumble as I play at fire-keeper, some ancient tribal ache hinting at my...
Read More
seasonal
Cold in the morning, dark in the house. All the animals are practicing their dreaming, rasping and wheezing away. My hands fumble for a pocket, they are fitful, full of cups and keys. I work what locks there are, stepping outside into the cold and glittering morning. Instantly the bones in my hands sing of their familiar complaints, my breath cast in clouds and...
Read More
Cold in the morning, dark in the house. All the animals are practicing their dreaming, rasping and wheezing away. My hands fumble for a pocket, they are fitful, full of cups and keys. I work what locks there are, stepping outside into the cold and glittering morning. Instantly the bones in my hands sing of their familiar complaints, my breath cast in clouds and...
Read More
incognito
I only ask because otherwise there is only silence. I only say because the stars are all sharpened and the weather permits. The slide from each tension all the reason you keep hiding, that slippery ease of that awful fall. Each day stretched tight around you, all cigarette and blindfold. Each day that trick of William Tell, done playing about as Robin Hood. That...
Read More
I only ask because otherwise there is only silence. I only say because the stars are all sharpened and the weather permits. The slide from each tension all the reason you keep hiding, that slippery ease of that awful fall. Each day stretched tight around you, all cigarette and blindfold. Each day that trick of William Tell, done playing about as Robin Hood. That...
Read More
antecedent
I stand and stare, backlit on the front porch, shivering, watching the rain. It is all that I can manage, just to find that room to feel. The cold air, the hard rain, the gaps in the traffic, my patchy insistence on remembering. My arms clasped tight across my chest, my breath coiling gray and strange. The rain and my heart keeping poor time,...
Read More
I stand and stare, backlit on the front porch, shivering, watching the rain. It is all that I can manage, just to find that room to feel. The cold air, the hard rain, the gaps in the traffic, my patchy insistence on remembering. My arms clasped tight across my chest, my breath coiling gray and strange. The rain and my heart keeping poor time,...
Read More
the blue of the morning, the bright of the moon
All the ordinary entanglements were lost by then, strangers in the forest, footsteps in the rain. I had walked for years in my own wake, wearing out the shape of circles, grinding down my stride. I had followed my own loss so closely I carried that air of completion. I seemed as if I had...
Read More
All the ordinary entanglements were lost by then, strangers in the forest, footsteps in the rain. I had walked for years in my own wake, wearing out the shape of circles, grinding down my stride. I had followed my own loss so closely I carried that air of completion. I seemed as if I had...
Read More
precipitate
The old ones always said they could smell it in the soil, the change in weather, the phrasings of days. Outside, I smoke with cold fingers and a wet cough. I cast a tether towards the menace of darker clouds, coiling with the coming storm. I smell the earth, see the change in the rate of birds feeding startled into flight. The years bury...
Read More
The old ones always said they could smell it in the soil, the change in weather, the phrasings of days. Outside, I smoke with cold fingers and a wet cough. I cast a tether towards the menace of darker clouds, coiling with the coming storm. I smell the earth, see the change in the rate of birds feeding startled into flight. The years bury...
Read More
the Christmas card
The air is cold, so let's write down our letters. The sky is gray, so let's settle all our distant wishes with postage and pictures cast out into the winter world. So it is snowmen or baby animals, family pictures or gilded manger scenes. Jesus versus world peace, Santa versus the eskimo. A cardboard sentiment of secular blessings or pious love, our...
Read More
The air is cold, so let's write down our letters. The sky is gray, so let's settle all our distant wishes with postage and pictures cast out into the winter world. So it is snowmen or baby animals, family pictures or gilded manger scenes. Jesus versus world peace, Santa versus the eskimo. A cardboard sentiment of secular blessings or pious love, our...
Read More