Category: Art
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From the contemplatives
From silence doors open — sometimes far off ringing, sometimes mute throbbing, sometimes rambling voices of ancestors, or strangers tapping at my window wondering, sometimes a tree in its final unleaving. Drawing my ear down, I pick up the thread, hold it just so before it trails away, and listen, listen.
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On watching fish and light
i. The light of our fire straining up these walls brings me back. Far away from my brothers, I followed a fish upstream, moving quickly, without a thought. The light reflected off the ripples the fish made and caught my eyes. So easy to dazzle, even now. Further up, he nestled under a branch and…
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Why is the woman with the dreadlocks looking away?
It came to me in a flash as I saw your black body escaping past the marsh, the others turned toward me, running too, that you alone saw away past the mire perhaps a thing to fear, perhaps a deeper knowing, perhaps the future unraveling like a flower, or a tornado whipping us under. I…
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My Cro-Magnon friend responds to William Stafford
Catch and let go, leaves take the light. I let them wander into my hand, praise the breeze that flits them away. Miracles abound. Last evening by the fire, light flecked the walls, throwing shadows, picking them up, dancing them onto the ceiling. It is a miracle. A simple thing, I think, light must be,…
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I heard the screen door slam
I heard the screen door slam in my head, not angry, just lazy — the workaday world suffocates in the forest, rootless, unable to press itself on its inhabitants. Hearing the slow creak of the rusted spring echo up to higher branches, mix with the bluejay’s caw, one might guess early morning, perhaps dusk. What…
Poems from in between 