I want to run and embrace/ this tulip-yellow light. But/ where? Where do I stand and/ meet it all? Face to face with/ beauty bigger than myself, I / quail ...
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GODS OF THE NIGHT: Fifteen Woodland Thoughts
Here in the quiet provinces,/ Wars pass via headlines, worrying us/ Solid citizens even from this distance with/ their loud report./ We in the quiet country have the luxury of/ Worry, second cousin to fear ...
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POEM: “Stephen”
Where have you gone, Stephen?/ Now, this night that I need you./ Need just you, the gravitas/ of your bulldog self. Your ancient/ belief in me. Rather, a belief that dates/ to 1977 or so./ Ancient enough …
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POEM: 10,000 Thunderstorms
If I'm to be an insomniac, a fine thunderstorm is a welcome thing. To entertain. To relish and divert from mournful or misbegotten thought. I ponder getting up. Going to my front porch, storm-sitting perch.
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POEM: The Flavor of Grief
I have been getting familiar lately with the flavor of grief. It comes on me with no warning. While driving up-river, to shelter-in-Nature. At 68 mph, passing a too-slow, white Chevy truck.
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POEM: “Window No. 1”
One of my earliest, notable windows was in the basement bedroom I shared with brother Rick. It opened to the left, sliding open with a satisfying 'chonk!' Revealing the level grass of our backyard.
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PICTURE|POEM: A Dozen Ways to Look at Chicago, Illinois
I've always been intrigued by human beings whose lives are lived just below and sometimes at the level of the clouds. They surround us by the thousands, the tens of thousands. In blue rooms, staring at TVs in their skyboxes. Doing Downward Facing Dog, 2,000 feet above the sidewalk.
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POEM | “My Paragraph & I”
'I want my paragraph to strut, carved cane in hand, the Left Bank, like a proper boulevardier. I want my paragraph to wow you. leave you wanting more. To, if possible, make you gasp. To make you—prose willing—cry. And then, to laugh. And then to laugh at your crying ...'
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POEM | “Body of Evidence”
'I'd no excuse not to grok the fact, or traffic in illusions of not growing old. Or denial of encroaching senescence. Or flipping the bird at Mister Death. It would halt nothing of my body's fade, of our decay. I was, perhaps, whistling past my future graveyard.'
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POEM | “Nous Celeron”
'Don’t you, Nous Céleron,/wish to lay down your arms?/Enter the Ohio’s cool darkness,/or the Chinodahichetha!/Sounding out each syllable/as a Wyandotte/might utter them .../
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POEM | The Pledge
We must imagine/a better country, after/the orange man in/the white house. Tote/our losses & our/wounds. Revelations/about our neighbor’s/secret selves. The sign,/the flag, rippling in/the wind. That says—/'Off with your head’ ….
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POEM | “Fridays”
I mark out my life in the passage of a flood of Fridays, the signposts zooming by in Friday cat posts by a favorite blogger.
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A Hundred Years of Silence
It should be recalled/most of human history/has been lived in silence.
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PORCH POEMS: ‘Ms. Nature & Mr. Death’
So, my day, which when fortunate,/begins with coffee, cat, and dawn,/shifts at some point, to the deck, for some sitting beneath the same old sky,/only this time, eyes closed./Climbed up on the shore, out of thetumultuous stream of thought./I’ve yet to grasp the meaning/of your collaboration, Ms. Nature,/with your ally, Mr. Death.
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PORCH POEMS: ‘Overhead’
‘The clouds don’t care,’/ he said. Blowing a puff / of cigar smoke at me/ from across the porch. / I sent a pretty good / smoke ring back his way./ We were not / six feet apart, so could/ be killing each other, should / the virus hitch a ride upon our exhalations ...
