The Wettest Yet

/

It's raining but the dog won't come in.

All morning a sobbing sky

leaving no room for imagination.

His naked hands in November, like that, but colder

just before the heat.

That's how it is losing a heart

to the highway – like the sun sinking in half

degrees or like eating the moon

down to the rind. East is the story I make believe

in the middle of a Michigan night

with broken blinds, either always drawn or always exposed.

Oh my northern lights!

My bleeding sand dune screams and whispery pine songs!

The boats are empty now

the shores without moors.

Seiche rising.

I remember when the sun warmed my clothes

hot shirt against sweating skin

Will it rain for 40 days? The wettest yet; the impossible get.

Is it not you

looking for something to burn?

A jonquil sunrise

and ghosts of quatrain lines

pouring whiskey into the wishing well.

Is this a tango or a waltz?

Wallflowers the size of broken hearts. I saw

fingerprints on her guitar in the 23rd Psalm bar light.

Lay me down, good shepherd. Wrap me

in the lashes of a willow. Build the ark.

Sail to Nineveh.

Just do something before we drown.

 

 

 

Bookended

/

crumpled up

bed blankets of time

stretched out as hours

bookended

by dawn or dusk or black sky sleep

I cannot be the monk

his face disappearing

unscathed

because it is all terminal

yet dilution hems the want

with the expectations of others and the honor

of perception

which god demands this night-scape?

in the hills purple and dusty blue

pines grow together over cinnamon

and cones

and armless spindles forcing the eye

upward for an anchor

the swish of floating whispers speak

volumes of everything we haven't said

aloud

autumn and I would talk all night

blotting the dream path

unaware of the moon perhaps

that is what aloneness is for

 

 

Acorns Already

/

pacing the glass room –
they see me and
I see them

more than light passes, you know?
the barrier existing
still

Heiden's Sonata
over and over lifting
and the beauty

falling
always nearby

Acorns already –
the danger of it

remove the throne
and the two worlds meet
a benefactor to none

shimmering through the veil –
why do you keep hiding?
I fall apart

blue jay squawks
and the doctrine of summer
fleeting

when moons swim in puddles
one could bury the creator
and the created

yet “Am” rises
through the soil
alone

the cicadas prattle

to ignore
is to meet winter
unprepared

it will all spill
if one allows

the allowance
the fall
the amicable yet misguided
turning away from this

end

 

July Swimming Away

/

I watched the swan with a dirty neck
and the tan of eternity
all over my own face

He preens. But for whom?
another July swimming away –
staggered stops before wintertide

A warm place to tread water

Pines watch the moon
drift into them
into me

How slightly the night draws in
blue light torching
thought into hot ash

Which universe careens without the mind?

I float spring-fed on the lake
under bluejay skies, losing feathers in an arc –
an eyelet made for threading

Careful
steady now
It'll only hurt for a bit

This is how I beg for the endgame

A fawn in the may apple patch
noticing a hawk  –
the peep of dawn 

blackberry bruises
on ninety degree days
so hold still now until it cools

The part of me that sleeps

Nameless grasses and the errant
untethered silken strands
of rainbows reeling

and I watch with Tom Petty sunglasses
in a filtered murkiness
of summer solitude

Can't you hear the deer gently chewing?

Soon it will all be adrift
a frosted glistening in the air
too cold to walk the dog

The white backs of sleeping bears
huddling along the shoreline –
six months of unbroken gray

The imagination winter lacks

With what is left
handfuls of blueberries and freckled kisses
and the way ladybugs gather on screens

And light
that won't leave
until after ten

Maybe a few more strokes across the bay

 

 

 

 

 

Allow

/

Of winter's exit wounds. Of swollen buds and their secret rooms. Of the night's invitation to shoulders and chilly hands. Awake. Allow. Of dew-wet licks on morning feet. Of ground softening. Of standing wither-deep in the impatience of creeks. Of box turtles. The bees' uneven cursive. Of pine sap tattooed on forearms and of heavy-headed peonies dodging the shadow play of oaken sentries. Of sheltered skin, freckling, coming on like the leaves of October. Of love's cheating with careful abandon. A kissed photo. What cannot be found until the first firefly. The delivery of summer's woodsmoke. Of skinny dipping as the moon floats nearby. Of perennial ghasso. Blue racers in lake-flicked grass. Allow. Unscripted trees and shores and dunes. Of distance. Of cedar cabins and waxwings. On water. In woods. Allow. My hummingbird heartbeats chest to chest. Of summiting. Of hunger and sweat. Of lavish blue, calling. Of August sand turning cold at night. Silos filling with shorter days and scalped crops. Of maples on fire. Thistles signaling death and migration. Green to gold to grey. And frosted tombs. Of hunters. Allow. December's iced focus on oblivion. Of spindrift. Of snow shovels and effort. Of sleeping under all the blankets for once. Days and days and days of outstretched granite. Of irrepressible darkness. Of tracks in the snow erased already. Pining east. Praying for light. Straining to remember the heat of being near. Of meeting eyes. Of anticipation. Of allowing the rise and fall of all that must.

 

 

I'm Fine

/

Alone to write or maybe to make a space

for the things that are not allowed.

He says he'll be right up but I'm selfish

and fine.

There is more than combustion involved.

That is the only promise I can make and mean it.

The night breaks down into barking dog

chaos with the sky on fire and deep cannon

blasts raining over clapping crowds in awe

of what they do not know.

Please tell me you have fireflies

in July and woodsmoke in October

and evergreens

in February. Please tell me the color

of the blanket on the floor and the temperature

of the river that carries your glance

and the sound your steps make on the old wooden bridge.

Please

find a way to say what was never meant to be

said. Betokened.

She asks me to go to Connecticut in August and I would.

But what if I love it. What if I stay.

The sea.

And what if I visit Amherst and walk around with coffee

under the summer's late sun visiting

graves and other points of interest?

The poem is not the poem and

the visit is not secure. Yet the words birth the sentences

as the placenta ruptures on the heirloom table

my parents used to have in their dining room

at Gun Lake.

Thinking is not thinking

and I'm done

thinking. 

 

 

 

Summer I Need

/

Summer I need

you

and your confetti of petals and wings and light.

Shudder me

with your percussive storm clouds

and misty rainbow apologies seeping into the scars

of December. My skin rises to meet your mango

tongue and marigold residue

and the impossible starburst of clementine

dawn.

Summer I need

the leeward side of Lake Michigan

sending an army of infantry grains

from your dunes

into barefooted places.

Summer I need

farm fields of fireflies disco

dancing and turtles breaching glassy stills

and campfires pushing the night

back just far enough to say

what if.

Summer I need

to follow your birds home

because when they leave I am left

here borrowing time

treading water until the ice comes

and all there is clings to the last flashes

of feathered rouge picking leftover

seed from frozen footprints on the ground.

Summer I need

to stop saying goodbye 

and sending blessings on your way

because I don't mean it.

Summer I need

you to stay.

 

Let There Be

/

First fireflies

which mean nothing

except that June progresses in a way

making sense to those who tarry.

The fall of empires –

I am not as reckless as I may seem.

More anchors than lost vessels. Yet

sometimes one needs a beer

to wish a father Happy Father's Day. I'm not waiting

anymore for what is not mine.

A silver lining rounding ginger sunsets

dissected into unrealistic hues.

He wants

me with him tonight but I turn

towards the dark

towards the empty side the bed

towards a piss poor imitation of free will

under enlightenment's regime. Sandra Gilbert

makes bread and leaves it on my table.

Leave me on the table. Me, hewn from oak trees

and sky and water returning.

In the distance chainsaws

sound like children crying. Takers with the power

to give. The power to change.

The power to give the power

to those who want to eat more

than their share.

Light, let there be you.

You, let there be me.

Me, let it pass.

 

 

 

Knotted Up

/

a nickel mist
             parting
                    for the symbol offered
     by ghosts –

an arrow twisted
             in a Celtic knot
                     bobbing on the sea  

water split
              at my breast
                     and the cool glide
                                of time
feathers my cheek

  Around
         Toward
              Away

my ankles in his eddies
           my syllables on your shore

 

 

Famished Time

/

Barreling out of Detroit, two hawks

higher. All the bloated deer

with spindling legs and broken necks

lower. The funeral was an intimate affair.

An outsider's glance is worth what exactly?

I drove the car hard – 80 mph

when the music was right.

And the music is always right.

Play it. Drive it. Taste it.

Softer sweetness in cotton

candy disintegration – I make it home in time

to make time

for the one who spends time

staking pathways

in sand grains funneled 

in the head-over-heels

hourglass.

Ah tick-tock / ya don't stop / to the / tick-tock / ya don't stop

As a woman who is figuring it out that she has always had it figured out, she seems to suggest that her nakedness is part of seeing this though. And dearest timekeeper, she promises not to eat you until the end.

 

 

In a Way

/

 

 

I didn't expect – a half inch moon

                                                                        making up the difference.

Yet before all of that we (and by “we” I mean I)

                                                                                 watched the sun set

through the ears of a three-legged rabbit.

                                                                                                  In a way

the first time the fuzz

                                                               of his inner ear turned mango

is the first time we made

                                                                                                       love.

We've told that story before.

                                                   You ask for it every night when I go

to bed facing east, when I fall

                                                                      asleep on the right side

of the bed, when we sew the verge

                                                                   between what-if and was

and now. The Night Sky

                                                                                petunias tremble

in the backwash of the hungry three-legged rabbit.

                                                                                             In a way

you held me. This way.

 

Too Soon

/

daffodil hints
too soon
and

pine lashes
lowered to see
my immoderate fall

what unknowing is bared
in the cold
and love

when winter weight
lays down on me full length
and bird souls hang in the air

one may easily
mistake a tune
for salvation –

have you heard
the red-winged trill
too soon?

how my affection
is of no use
to the blackbird

how the fields will dream
in the sunshine

and deer curl
in grassy hamlets

when raindrops
shake the tulips
too soon . . .

no longer a distance
measured

or days counted
from autumn to spring

and no accurate arrow
pierces the heart
in hibernation

too soon

when today
is the only day
there is