*

*

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Memorial Day

I shook Big Jim Thompson's hand
and it was all Dolton
had to give the earth.

A parade.

This and the
public pool;
The K-Mart and its
knives;
the fathomless railyard
pressing up against the overpass:
The path to church.
That old long door swinging open.

The grass still grew prairie-long then,
past imagined saddles.

And

Those maps
and folds
and demarcations
gone diffuse
in the taconite black,
harbored
between each
star;

the truth of molten
glow in transit
across sleepless walls.

My skinny legs
grew strong
along the tracks.

Taking
a beating
was the same
as learning how to fight.

I wondered,

what parts of this life are secret?
What parts of me
have their meaning
in the way

I care about the curve
of roads
and the grain of bark,
and tie,

opening,

opening?

My transgressions
piled up.

My worlds ended.

My questions gathered:
"Who am I, and who am I to say?"

Etc.

That cold hand
of the child of me
rests still
on railing
after railing.

Saturday, May 26, 2012

Pillars of Light

Dawn. November.

Eyelids stuttered,

Found all things
That give light
Spilling
Upward from themselves.

Sudden
As a man's name,

They formed
Iridescent pillars,
Earth to sky.

There were four of us
Begging coals for fire
And fire for joe
As though
We were not filled with wonder.

We moved out
From underneath
The night;
Moved among the
Pillars.

I murmured
"Ice crystals."

Everyone agreed.

Cigarettes were rolled.

Yet even then,
All those burnt miles
Put behind,
Nothing was as simple
Or as settled.

God's hand gripped
Some of our necks:
A whisper
Through clenched teeth.

"Look at that.
Look at that."

"Look!"

I secretly remembered

Knowing.

Even then,
Hope flickered
In my ash-covered hands.




Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Happy

Blue circles spin
above

thick within
thin, green miles.

Our heels wear well
against clockspin;

against
the wilds
of compasses
confused
with iron
slung hard and
deep into the earth.

Blame bleeds
its shores upward
through the packed wet
of old forest floors

And fills
a tetanus moment,
tipsy in its
silence —

specks and planks
and planks and specks

and
shame rounding
itself against
the sharp folds of curtains
in glassless windows
and the sound of traffic
below;

soft curves
of hard roads
heaving
merciless selves
from dusk-yards
into
the west.

In winter,
we dream of buildings
old, secure: strong
as grace.

They hold themselves up
while buffalo drive themselves
in great thundering herds through
and past
and off
of cliffs.

We are happy,
because we have not been swept away.

By all rights
we should have been,
having been where we have been,
when we should not have been.

Thursday, May 17, 2012

Wilderness

Fiddleback spiders blossomed
lilac.

Everything was a surprise then:

     Footsteps on the bluebells
     loosing
     a blanket of stars.

Words used to appear
and scatter that way before me.

Treetops bloomed
into the dark.

Hands high and open,
I staggered beneath
their grace,

avenue
to God's whisper.

Or maybe
hands up and empty
beneath
the wind in the leaves.

Soon after,
came that heel
pressing
my face hard into the mud.

I fear it:

Being the wilderness.
The distance that is crossed
in the stories he tells.

Saturday, May 12, 2012

Second Earth

There is another earth
beneath.
Between.

I know my way
from here
into it;

chainlink rolled back
in scrolls of rust,

dusk
pouring in;

late rain
cold upon the branches

and leaves that push against the passage

the smell

of mud
and slickened
tie plates
in the stillness

of shouts that go
unsounded.

These unnamed Sundays
Are an unstemmed tide again,

Unanswered questions
spilling the banks,

Lineless horizons.

Unbutton
your shirt,
even though it's cold.

Wash, shave.

Pour what you call hope
into the ending age.

Monday, May 7, 2012

Gatherings

Gatherings
of spring and winter,
one after one, spinning
incandescent recollections
of beach-glass
battered smooth to stone,

and summers,

leaping
from handhold
like toddlers
wanting to walk
and stumble, and find.

I long to move
along rivers,
and fields that are like rivers,

and good parts of
forgotten towns,

shrug off those
flown-over miles

and bend down to
sift fingers
through them;
sew myself
into the hems of
slow storms

and sap-encased days,

and surround each second
with what I have been given
to give.

I name each one of them;
weave and wear them
like a tapestry
of rain-filled culverts
and sun-roughened
lift bridges
that live
to move through all the
worlds in the tired world.

I am still gathering them to me,
and there is no shame is
in that.

Friday, May 4, 2012

Again

Muscles are overwhelmed,
go slack.

This is familiar.

Over the side,
legs kick
the void beneath
the swell.

Shores collapse,
and their fires
with them.

The shadows of
conifers
remain unchanged
where they were left:

The notes
you wrote to yourself

so you would not forget.

The wind shakes
sand from
its hackles,

empties itself
of shore-light

and lumbers
up
through the jungle
to meet you,
again.

You are ridiculous,
again.

Thursday, May 3, 2012

paper

Tattered twenties
spend the same as new
but I have been
that corner
torn away.

Paper.

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

The Trees Are What Matter

The list of things
I no longer need to know
was written at dusk
in a wagon wheel rut
cut through a field of wheat
that emptied out
onto a sudden shore.

I kept it folded
in my pocket for years.

One day,
I reached for my keys
and the wind took it
from me,
carried it across the
neighbors' yards
and highway 52
into the
swaying arms
of many trees.

National Poetry Writing Month

There once was a poet named Kevin,
who thought NaPoWriMo was heaven.
But when the month was all done,
he'd had enough of the fun,
and it seemed like he'd pretty much run out of steam with the whole thing and was ready for a little bit of a break.

Fooled

Floorboards may as well be oceans.

The earth curves that way
and the tiny world
seems eternal.

Year blooms to year,
still age
does not steal us
from ourselves
until it does.

And that always a surprise.

On mountaintops,
I've seen the game:
horizon bent to a finite bow.

But then the starfields

that
fool us still in greater ways,

flat blue and silver
sprawled upon the
ceiling,

glimpsed
through
failing atmosphere,

stacked thick
with infinities
and heavens.