It does not seem fair
in all the measures of life
that our heavy ways
hang in expectance
on these tiny buds
just now swelling
as if even trifle error
could be swept long past
by the miracle wrought
when young leaves
break their cocoons.
We are at the gallows,
bewildered, then resurrected,
by the earth covered on end
with unbound green
regaining its place
on thawed branches.
——
For Adelaide on her one month birthday.
Does it startle you,
shake you from oblivion,
draw you to attention,
to your fear?
Or do you turn away
huddled, covering
your head and shoulders,
shrugging to save
all the warmth you can
in that last instant
before you are swimming
in the frigid air,
overtaken
by a wave capsizing,
ripping even your feet
from under you?
Lord knows how the shock
of bitterness
can drive us this way, that.
——-
Listening to James Taylor’s Fire and Rain.
How the rain pours down
with heavy boots on our roof.
We hover close to our papers someways
happier for the howling outside.
Is it so because we feel seasons
change and thank the gods?
Is it so because we are dry
and thank the gods? Or perhaps
a shiver drives us thus?
It does not matter. It is so.
Simply. And we thank the gods
with words or with shiver.
Slowly, slowly
life comes back.
Hair-fine roots
far below the surface
muster a wiggle,
a stretch,
and stir for us
the unseen process
of life beginning again.
But not every capillary
wiggles and stretches.
Some just as mysteriously
have clogged themselves up
(been clogged up?)
and no longer
bring life back,
no longer are alive
themselves.
We are left
in a daze each March
over these quiet
and subtle puzzles
driving all our world
on, ever,
lighting our dreams
on fire,
and breaking them
into pieces.
Upon opening The Way It Is after a week that convinces me that this dark marathon is much longer than I expected, even in my most hardened moments
Wake up my soul,
I ask, please.
It lies sleeping somewhere
under a pile of emails,
Congressional edicts,
cruel comprehensions,
that I have been picking through
all week.
And now that it is Saturday,
I am quite sure
it will never see the light of day again.
Fetch it for me, will you?
Rouse it up.
Help it fly back to me.
Then you and I
can still have this —
small, true,
but unending, generous.
Even as you sit smoking weed
in the room I just cleaned
and leave your papers
and dirty dishes on the desk,
not making the bed I just resheeted,
there is no amount of missing you
that is enough.
It goes on and on like the Mississippi
flows in constant cycles
from mountain top through
craggy forest, across prairie,
between savannah and bottom land
into bay, then ocean,
to be lifted by heat and wind
up through high air, gathered up
into clouds that spin round the earth,
to dust mountain tops with snow …
I observe, I count …
so missing you goes.
This year, the Mississippi.
Next year, the Missouri.
Then the Ganges, the Tigre,
the Amazon, the Seine.
Round and round,
it floats up and pours down,
sometimes out of sight,
but always on the move,
pressing down hard,
drowning the heart,
which cannot find dry land.
Poems from in between 