Monthly Archives: January 2019

I take great comfort in your indifference, fair reader,

How I am shivering as much to myself as to you,

And nothing that I bluster will last much longer

Than the wind it took to breathe these words through

The letters on this page will keep for no one

The letters on my tombstone will moss and fade

The only future spirit of me is not the glory of the blade

Or the wisdom of the pen, only the echo of what I’ve sewn

It will not be attributed to me, this echo, but it moves

where my hands move, following the spirit of the hawks

That hover where all the birdfeeders are, the waves

that crash the shellfish, crush them open and seagulls walk

among the shells devouring; all the brave

stumble, no courage here, just wind in the cornstalks

On the ceiling of the world, a jumping spider leaps
From stone to stone, alone, to hunt the blown
things, the wind carries bugs up too far, they’re thrown
into the ice and rocks where these spiders creep;

Let’s say that means, the highest things, above all
biomes, above all ecosystems, above all of us
the spiders, alone rule, they march among the rust
colored and wind-blasted and sunbleached and snowfalls

Victory is theirs, dominion is all theirs, untouched
by predators except each other, I assume, they rule
this kingdom mercifully, ignoring all the lesser wretches
Only taking offerings of the Aeolians songs, only cruel
Where they can be bothered to extend their royal reach
The rest of all their kingdoms permitted to be so, below.

The pomegranate trees believe in spring so much

They burst with any sign of turn in weather

Not me. I know the cold will come to touch,

another hard wind, another long night, down feathers

piled upon down feathers, a faucet dripping

And in the morning, when the sun wakes up

the warmth will remind us of a dream of spring

But, not yet. Go back to sleep. This is night’s cup

to drink away the darkness, and grow no leaves

This is the cynical hour, the misery hour, the late,

late hour, where every gesture of the daylight flees

when damp, wet air coughs storms, wait, and wait

the shadow we cast is as much of us
As any bone or strand of hair
For to be a presence here
To be a living moving being must
Needs create a shadow; my shadow
Is alive because I am alive
It dances when I dance and tries
To reach long at end of day’s bow

Extending what I think of as myself
My physical presence into the shadow
Means my footprints are also myself
And the paths I have shorn as I mow
A footpath with just my feet, my lonely self,
To take the trash beyond the kitchen window