AT THE PRIMITIVE CAMPGROUND IN THE GORGE A ghost cannot gather itself inside a tree, or a peregrine, or a creek, or heaven. It cannot draw stars through the window of a building in Beijing, or on a cabin near Woolwine with spring peepers chorusing music to fit the sky. It cannot revive its mind in a trout lily, as much as I wish. I can’t tell it my name. I can’t share one flapjack, smoke, or a sip…
The Monkey Climbs a Tree I. With words come the square, the block Of sound, time and space With words, you fill the square And we bounce you hither and yon The block of time and space, ex nihilo Becomes something you see, touch, hear Smell if you’re advanced Taste if you leap beyond the possible II. An image does more, because it is The thing in a sense A copy of the thing at least But words can never…
Sundown That deluge of haze Just before sundown. Spring shakes Winter’s hand Goodbye. Now the day has truly gone. Street lamps glow A sodium pink When blue milk pacifies, The copper moon sliding up a sleeve of glass, Her luminous lake Drowning the city, A black felt hat against Heaven’s empty dome. An indigo deer slips back Through the shadow of night-green cedar, Loving, Teasing with promise. I could not look away. ___ At the End of Autumn…
THE DIFFERENT PARTS OF THE ORCHESTRA, PT. 1 The bassoon is almost as red as it is brown. It is a complicated color that was invented by the orchestra way back when. It lives life richly. It can be a dying bear when it sings, a smiling hippo when it is at rest. It is not the same. It is different. Anything that is different, is easy to make fun of. Go on, make fun of it. It’s…
And he thought about building Crafting Making things Merging the useful with the useless To some For there are beings in this world Who care nothing for beauty There are beings in this world Who care nothing for art So he would build the functional And make it sing for the tone deaf For the colorless he’d make Things bloom in usefulness But then he thought Why work so hard For them? For the beings who pass it all by…
The clearing She thought she heard The last clearing It was Heidegger’s not hers And after his keyre His turn So many turned on him But not for that For other things like his falling out of Being With the world With the world as it ought to be So she passed through that last clearing On her way to something nonfictional Non-mythical . . . beyond epic legend and folk-tale Existence comes before essence she thought Or we have…
Angles of Being I push away Like winter visions in summer Or summer sweat in the fall I fall for it all the time The angles of Being as if They existed like that Just like that in realities We can’t fathom and never Will see Because our senses are puerile In the grand scheme of things In the swelter of summer In the mists of winterish Storms and howls And legendery wooshing Like some pack of grey wolves Glowing…
MENTORS OF THE IMPERVIOUS An old trail opposed to change. A gate with the top slat for comments, “I was just here” etc. I must have missed you because the day hadn’t. Consequently, there is misery in your circle dotted I’s. Who takes the time to cauterize the wood and burn the careless pistols? Ah sure, it’s only testosterone but it’s fading just the same. RESISTING PROBABILITY Squandered, fairly innocentchimes hanging from a tree.This place has…
