Just some poems today, from my books. I can’t find a copy of my first book, a chapbook from Finishing Line called Rugged Means of Grace, but I’m sure I’ve got some around here somewhere, and will add one from that little volume.
Found
There’s a baby
in the crisped litter
of a roadside wood today, made pale
and lovely by an October snow.
Then even the skin is brittle.
It’s never the big thing
but the fine and permeative that destroys
often beautifully. How are we a thing that hates
and is so hard to hate?
There’s a boy
tucks a note into the pocket
of a coat he’s sending a stranger, saying
“Have a good winter. Please write back.”
A branch breaks, a lamp flickers,
the dog digs at a flash of something
paler than snow. A boy uncrinkles a note.
What happens next?
(from Perpetual Motion, The Word Works, 2012)
The dark is shifting almost imperceptibly
toward you. I know that much
of endings. As usual I’m mistaken,
though, about what’s moving.
Not the dark onward but you
and I falling toward it, and sometimes
it is beautiful, fanned in flame,
and some days, as today, obscure.
Hymn so cautious will lead you
humming. I hope.
( from Glass Factory, The Word Works, 2016)
[While the day]
While the day is its own
autocracy, I am citizen
staring out at world,
touch the cool glass of rain’s
mirror. Color deepens
then fades, a slow flicker
as if I am blinking,
as I must open the eyes
inside myself to keep
democracy alive.
::
the day is
world
the cool glass of
Color
a flicker
blinking
the eyes
to keep
alive
::
the
world
the eyes
keep
alive
(from Being Many Seeds, Grayson Books, 2020)
