Round fire in its tent of sticks shedding chalk and cold
on the edging of my pillow.
So sad. All I can recall is no one to hold me.
After all my skin-chafing labor with the adze, the struggle
to haul your coffin across the river—
cracking and lowing like a barge
in the deep, bleeding furrow
closing in on itself—
your severed arm gone ghostly limp,
flailing like a wave crest along the bank
beneath the claxons of a migrating goose flock
beneath blurrier migrating stars.
As a single bird fixed in motion pins the sky to itself
remorse grows freely along the wetlands where compromised waters
breed few and far between flowers of great beauty and the human brain
spews soft gray clouds cloudy with truth
I am that river that cleanses—
the invention of a self set apart in ignorance of its own choosing
to be the not music and the not poison
a fluid dynamic of ceaseless production forsaking the concerned landscape
and a bitter end
Read more "In Praise of Windmills"I feared it would be like pulling teeth,
all hide-and-seek to avoid betrayal, not easy
like removal of a five-year-old’s wiggled incisor.
Then the miracle that my cupped hands
in hers hold water, no leaks,
no protruding river veins or age stains,
they look prayerful rather than begging.
My pointed toe could be bold, an arch
to perfect the gymnast’s leap in open air.
We hover low over the river. His eyes are shining,
wildfire breath coming in gasps. Wildebeests
stampede through the tall grass below us and I pray
to God everything works itself out, one way or another.
His hands are rough like mine and my father’s
before us. He’s fast undoing the knots and then
a dead weight falls away. When I look back
down, all I see are ripples across the surface
of the dark water, the disappearing backs of crocodiles.
Nighttime medicine,
Benzene blue his eyes and soul—
How slowly we fall.
Silent Lorelei,
An embrace of glassy green
On my skin again.
Dark blue, pinhole stars,
My body the midnight sky
Bending over his.
Hand on hand. Dreams slip
Into the underbelly
Of the universe.
Comfortable in the cold,
mist tendrils rising
across morning garden,
dew-dampened boots
dry in the rising wind.
Cracking this year’s journal,
I release pleasure to the river.
Behind a dome of December clouds,
the sun struggles.
My body the underside
Of a river at night, dark blue water
Strewn with a pinch of stars.
All is quiet now that I’ve lost
The will to fight. All I can conjure up
Is a lonesome silent fish, a gentle splash
Of gold on the face of the moon.
Then all falls backs into the soft,
Watery black. I’m on my back,
And my legs will not move.
All I can do is wait to be reborn.
Read more "Convalescent"Delta Mouth Moon pull swift tide bringing arrowheads quiver dropped loosened skirt strings tight arm and notch to bow dead elks bloat in the shore foam Moon swift pushing so saturnine up a slick and bawdy ship hull up a sickly girl-thigh on a naked shoreline Moon full drip ink on a violet dry notches […]
Read more "Delta Mouth"River Dogs River folk have destroyed the bridge beneath an obsolete moon their dogs run wild lizards grasped tightly in their iron jaws beneath an iron moon the bridge yaws empty a tracery of absence where the bridge once existed dogs laugh into the throat of history observing the ongoing battle between freshness and salt jellyfish encroach […]
Read more "River Dogs"The Middle Verses the past bleeds, a black river the future stretches out, a winding sheet, and all that lies in the sun bears witness to the soft vowels of the earth the sky is a radiant flower a camellia rain falls like petals like broken bones chasms open mountains echo a lost word in […]
Read more "The Middle Verses"
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