*

*

Friday, June 29, 2012

Almost

Almost
in leaf-tips
wind-thrown treetops
wavecrests
far from Christmas
among cicadas
shadows
slung off in
lantern swing

A remembered house

Nearly a grace
with
lamposts
bent
like trees

and life
a passage

in between
our streets,

years, wandered
and shores

lifelong
and receding
into the
dead-foot now,

almost, almost
the substance
of things not seen.

Sunday, June 10, 2012

Unwelcome

I was not always a stranger.

Not long ago, no place in the country
Was unfamiliar.

Unless I misremember,
Dragging behind me
My Chicago miles.

I find again all those
Unwelcoming places.

Orbiting roads,

Lonesome crickets
In the park near twilight,
Unfamiliar foliage
In unfamiliar summer.

Some things go along, unchanged:
Hopelessness at dusk.

All those tobacco barns slowly
Failing.

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Boyhood

I remember a long field,
no pathway through.

The way the light
climbed fathomless heights
and remained
in periphery.

Long mornings
near trains,
bruising our heels
on the ballast,
hunting snakes,
mesocyclones
gathering
on the horizon.

Each moment
was a completeness
unto itself.

I remember
the wind
in the long grass,
the leaves,
the waves —
listening the way that
children do,
waiting for nothing.

Our stillnesses
came reluctantly,
but God
was in each one.

Before the
days lost
the gold of that certain
slant near dusk,
and my feet
tramped
the tall grass
into trails.

Saturday, June 2, 2012

Summer, In Its Night

Summer
in its night
moved
open-eyed
through Prairie School
avenues and
empty eightlanes
past the furnaces and mills.

That thick stillness
of involuntary rest
coaxed apart
each slow moment
to filaments
of Cottonwood seed
and lightning
silent in the distance.

The sound of waves.

The sound
of lovers shouting, laughing far off.

The sound of

cassette
spindles
softly
unspooling
"All Cats Are Grey"
to the Bible
in the backseat,
near the shore.

Something sad, contained,
made its way
among the infinite.

Memories
of ourselves
near vast, open water,
tamed with distraction
by candy necklaces
and stainless steel
slides.

Later – much later –
inebriated
tide-racing
on ridiculous
stretches
of sand in the dark.

The story of that
which we would one day watch
disintegrate
was always written on our bones –

The compass needle
locked up sure
as an hour-hand.

We thought
because of this
that
compasses are true,
and can be known.

But they are not. Cannot.