Sunday, January 31, 2010

A song the white road makes

a few weeks after the snows
the roads salt-
sown rise like dead man's
bones, ghost-white against
the gritty snow while
high up the feeble sun
falls like grandma's sunday morning hymn
sung softly down upon the wild
tumbleweed of cirrus vapor
sputtering its pointless
challenge to the absolute
impenetrable cerulean empire

here is what i thought
as i watched
out our speeding window:
the road dressed white
tells us how each path has
its own medicine, the spirits
that brought us together
and pull us apart
each flake of traffic
unique, blowing slantwise
under this clear winter sky
like beasts of war all is unknown
but on, on, onward our only guide
our tusk-tips

and this came blustered then:
O salt-sown, Carthage thy walls
shone diamond bright unto the verge
of atlas, a wight in wing flying down
upon mediterranean too-blue water warns
of budding empire's might
your dreamer of plans all caught upon
cruel Pyrenean heights, O winter
these poor beasts are not made to war thee.

is there no other road
no road but these of sprawling bones?
the song though softly surges on

take my
hand, either there is a way
or we
shall make one.

Friday, January 29, 2010

Winter morning from the third floor window of St. Paul Central Library

one of those waiting
when the doors opened
i hurried up
high as I could climb
for a view of the river

on this day
sun newly risen upon
high winter
three steamship replicas
first stole the view
iced in their berths
like the moment they were
made to represent
waiting still as
the river for the thaw

a long-haired old gent
in a battered leather fedora
walked up, reaching out with the
gentle cadences of his
conversation occasional caesurae
sprinkled in (he had just climbed
the stair)
talked of these boats
and how they must have
strong hulls--
and so his words went
slowly on

tracing along the ice
we came to the
billows from a riverside
building's heat plant
obscuring this rustic sleeping
water as though bearding
the cold a mere nuisance
like clouds of thought above
business people driving
to heated ramps insouciant

of the winter
that old man
reaching gentle fingers out
to the transients who had waited with me at
the door
softly pressing on the window
where i stand
bidding us come to berth
in its eternal pause

Everything that rises

When I listened
to you reading from
your poetry
beautifully I became
envious

How the loveliest and
freshest image wrapped
in the gauze of these well-paired
words would sting me then
as though I were
the mercantilist of metaphor
each simile like gold
would horde
would start a war about
how you were flooding
my soul with soft imported
euphony

but when you finish
i shake myself
from your sound
look around and realize
the beauty rising from each
one of us listening here somewhere must
converge.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Stone by stone

you heft this hammer
hammer-forged
it was
and this iron crow-
bar wedged against the lathe the flow
of the blows along its clashing length
to the teeth prizing
these rusted nails
hungry as your hand is strong

and not your hands, ringing air,
nor fiber of long-dead fir-tree
but the make of these tools succeeds
whoever first broke
stone by stone.

Monday, January 25, 2010

Apples in the afternoon

The wild shouting
of the kids
helps me know its time
to fill these mouths

i hastily slice
up an apple nerves
on a knife edge

my little girl
grabs her apple and waves
it around in the air

look, daddy, apple in the sky
somehow this seems
very profound to her

yes, i suppose, anyway
it calms me down a little

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Church Music

Gates of Beauty
Nearer to Thee

Friday, January 22, 2010

To Amelia

In the middle of the night i wake
up to hear you crying, go in
and gather you
on my lap and when you finally fall
asleep
i lean down with my ear to your chest
and hear your heart lightly
beating twice as fast as mine
the same sound that
first convinced me you
were real, alive

i know i must try
to keep these moments memorized
to hold on
as you are rushing by

Thursday, January 21, 2010

How absence makes the heart grow

I remember that
being
apart from you

how I would feel you there
somehow around a corner somewhere
inside me and then
I would stop
chasing this feeling and all
at once you would be staggeringly
present

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

The scene

how the man swore
at the waitress for some
mistake
and his wife somehow
looking at him like a little girl
at the county fair delighted
to have purchased
this giant pickle on a stick.

Examination

The doctor pats
the paper sheet
that covers the bed
asks you to undress
then steps out
for the sake of modesty, for a cup
of coffee, who knows

you sit on this bed
feel a little like
a fresh ground hamburger
bones, gristle, muscle all
of it ground together
so you try to sit up straight
and look around
at the laminated posters
of the inner ear
rub your arms with your hands
wonder how many people
have sat here
replaced when they are gone with fresh paper

the knock at the door
never fails to scare you then
feeling suddenly guilty
for your fascination
with the otoscope that looks like
it could be from the early '70s
and your skin purses up
like something's trying to escape
from it

the cold stethoscope
doesn't help matters
and the doctor asks you to breath
deeply, in and out, then a deep
breath, hold this one
and now breath
normally why
is this
suddenly so difficult
to do?

Monday, January 18, 2010

For Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

We Shall Overcome

Saturday, January 16, 2010

To a student

I remember in college
when I had gotten worked up
about some of the incurable
problems of life
real deep, philosophical stuff
of the sort that people say
oh, yes, there is that
then again, with a sort half smile
seem to say, but really
what's the point

I remember then, in that momentous
despair
someone saying look
you at your age
we would all die to be back
in those carefree college days
see, you will look back
and think how could I have been
unhappy

but now, seeing you
feeling the same way
it occurs to me
that though I have many responsibilities
and you nearly none
still, I have allowed myself
to be utterly carefree
of the questions which you
somewhat rightly feel are of
utmost importance

The lament of the former bodybuilder

it was because
he felt lighter
his limbs
climbing steps
getting up from his
office chair
he would have
become a boxer
just for the dance of it

it was because
the world was lighter
and more seemed
possible
that box of books or pushing
his neighbor's car
out of the snow

no, there was no thought
of flying, of lifting
the whole city, stopping trains
there was no thought
of his brain
ceasing this incessant
drip of thought
and exploding out into a thousand pieces
of pure physical, of breathing
in the totality of all air until
there was no difference at which
he felt, this I am, and this am not.

nothing like that,
just the increasing lightness
of each step
antaeus in this
hurculean grip.

Friday, January 15, 2010

bound away, the rolling river

walking out
by the banks of the river
in the mid-morning
the water quivering happily
in the sunlight you say
oh yes, the mighty Mississippi
and wish you could wet your toes
roll up your pants and raft
to new orleans

but how will you think
you know her
until, in the deep night
you come down to
hear her strange voice
behold her flexing
dark star-skeined skin
knowing each moment
you will never see it
again.

For you, asleep

my teeth
even ache
from holding in
the things I want
to share with you
and i can
imagine it
like this overflow
that's in my soul
breaking free
and leaving
a hollow place
for you

but now
another day's
ended
you sleeping and i
in the bedstand lamplight
listening to you
sleep surrounded by your hair
and the lovely gates
of your eyes all lashed down

i have no more room
to keep this.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

like a child

when i say
faith
like a child

i mean
something simple
unsophisticated

but as i set my sleeping little girl
in her crib and try for the
tenth time
to slowly edge
away

i realize how well
she understands
my presence and perhaps
i should be giving her
a little more
credit

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Universe Diagnostics

when the big moon
comes out like a leak
in the purple heaven
and the stars I suppose
are out there too behind the street-
light beacons that announce
to whoever:
a bunch of us humans
live here and we have better things
to be seeing

when the night gets on
to a certain point
then in our heads a switch
goes off, or maybe on,
and we are chock full of these
sentimental sayings, for example

last night, how I said
babe, you're the real thing
and if you aren't happy
something is broken
in the universe

and you replied that we should
call someone up right away
and see if they could put in an order
to have that checked on

sure, in the morning this seems
so stupid, but didn't we
believe it then? I know
I did, and I am
starting universe diagnostics
today, right here.

Saturday, January 09, 2010

Baptism

My daughters'
baptism day
we get up early, clothe
them in their best
they do not each have
a new white dress
for this, but simply look
at their faces and anyway
you will understand

but how can I understand
this standing in the front of the church
the little one with sopping hair,
the other looking slightly scared
held hovering over the water
as it flashes in the light slanting from the east
windows across the pews

she does not comprehend
and I ask this water
how can I know
this child is safe
how can I know she walks in grace?
and it will simply say
faith
in the name of the Father
faith
and of the Son
faith
and of the Holy Spirit

(and yet I once demanded
what if she doesn't go this way?
the elderly pastor looked away
thinking perhaps of his own
wayward child
and we both know there is no answer
to this thought but tears)

we all rise
give the charge and promise
we will walk beside, board by board
will build this boat,

but if our hearts
could honestly open
even at this moment as we speak this
liturgy we would be dripping
crying like little children
God we promise we will try
not to break your heart.

Sunday, January 03, 2010

To the full moon, January, 2010

the sun
long forgotten
by the air

the night cold as the devil's
heart
the purity
of your form

and your beam
is frightening

Saturday, January 02, 2010

How Silently

child cradled in
the crook of my arm
closest i can get
to understanding god

closest i can get
to a selfless love.