There.
.
Heat furrowing sweet spaces:
Shadowy reminds,
Of yesterday missed,
Amidst the cruel promises of
Incessant tomorrows.
The daily rhythm now:
Broken,
Pulsing softly.
.
None of this can be undone.
Prelude to Drought
Category: poems
Framing the Wind – a first draft before it all goes away
How the light catches this corner of the kitchen now.
Some effusive glow that might have left us spellbound
And captive to a late afternoon pause.
But that corner hides dust and crumbs
Winters droppings and excuses and dark things.
.
This time there will be no pagan contemplation
Of this full circle before us.
No, this light pulls us away from the long dark
Where we lived maybe close within ourselves,
Intimate
In a way that accumulated warmth and a dim light can do,
Pulling you in while tempting you out
In short fidgety bouts.
.
Now, with almost forgotten suddenness,
Light piles through the window
Like the first time
When it pulled us out there.
A long ways from there.
.
And once out that door,
A long ways from here.
Convinced there were ghosts out there.
This is that time:
.
The long fetch up the hill:
Landscapes of new Spring grass
Flailing and moving.
Ever with the hard line of something
Hidden just over the hill
Waiting to knock at that broad, dark door.
Light now streaking through its edges.
Cheshire Winter
I remember tracing
Across the pale silvery worlds
Of sharpened sounds
Lit by January moons.
.
Curse you,
Impatient rain,
And how you fidget!
.
Casting this land
Into a great serpentine lapse,
Of water and light
With everything sparkling
On a mid-winter’s night.
Part II. Listening to Steelhead.
I cannot counter the edge,
Remarkable, memorable, inexorable
In an odd persistence that wanes in it’s coming.
I cannot shape this space.
Green years, short months and how the day suddenly curves away.
The center is far removed from place and time. Eyes turning to the bright prospects of hard lines on skies.
I cannot yield to grace, as the soft illusions of ease tempt me into the chilled waters.
Part 1. Listening to the Sky
Your Hands:
Coaxing stories from clouds and rocks
And other things.
Tales gliding along the contours
Of a barely wavering joy.
.
If I could pilfer your burdens,
And somehow build trees:
Respite from the sudden monopolies of Spring.
December on the Eel
Here,
Moored
By the soft calling turns
Of a river now purposed by rain,
We can linger in that patient lapse
Between the miseries of drought
And the sudden electricity of flood.
.
The Copenhagen-spitting sages of Weymouth,
And the oared helmsmen at High Rock,
Hiding in their closet cigarettes,
Share chit chat smiles of angst
In the nervous dawn light
While the Chinook-crazed bankies
Debate spoon and roe.
.
And a distant figure
Heaves arcing bright lines
Through shadowy secret boils
And long greasy slicks
In a solitary reverie
Of far-fetched feathered hopes.
.
This is far removed
From the life-gone-easy days of,
say, June,
The routines of August,
Or the Sunday light
After a passing April rain
Reminded us all things
Eventually come back to this time.
My Urban (pt 2)
Amazing how a river can hold up
An entire town with its soft calling turns,
In those patient lapses between
The long miseries of drought
and the hasty electricity of flood.
.
This town,
Anonymous lines,
Maps of hope and glee
All folded into once brightly colored boxes.
Now, the intricate creases of lives unwound,
Pressed by the tales of neighbors
On a winter night suddenly come early
And sharpened by rain
At the far side of a dead end court.
.
The long river, now purposed by rain,
Flows through my hands,
Fingers touching current,
Holding it like a breath.
.
The sound of water is everywhere.
My Urban (pt 1)
I can see hands from here,
Pulling years away from the reach of all these new places,
Savoring tarnished doors,
Held open,
In the wet air of night avenues,
Smoky corners
And back seat make outs.
.
I can see your mom on Sunday,
Toiled indifference to our follies,
Our moves to a life so big,
Deftly held in a trembling hand.
.
“Can I see you again?”
Like the buses at the intersection,
Moving to scheduled vistas
Taken like snapshots
From another overpass
With trains underneath
And billowing April clouds
Against the blue velvet of a painting
Hanging on the wall of a house
On some street at the edge of town.
Slipping through narrow places
Wild, curly haired kids still chase candy-colored rocks
Across old sea floors, dotted with dandelions,
And the long yawn of summer gone stale,
All gathered up, into a lone rusty pail.
.
This,
After swings in trees,
and secret swimming holes,
down long, easy roads,
Soothed in watermelon dreams,
While holding hands, with our heads in circles, catching the sky.
Her eyes, sparkling stars of night and oceans blue,
Whisper ice cream cones and a first kiss, too.
.
Now, sun in smoke, searing
Cicadas singing,
That long dusty road of angst and dearth
All dried and sharp,
Our once cherished mirth.
.
Hurry!
Bring us giddy hopes of weather and water,
and grand tales on the coming of storms,
Let times soon turn, and days delite
Those same stories,
Sparkling in that honey-colored light.
Something in between here
There were
New leaves on an old apple tree
When April broke.
.
There was
The neighbor’s hoarse laugh
Soured by beer and night,
Sharpening the point where morning
Turns the other way.
.
There are
Far off places where things are ahead
And different
Stirrings of home
In that way younger years
Can hold us in a spell.
Shaken Rain 