*

*

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Cautionary

My eyes saw you with those brides,
My old self wanting a drink
And compelling you to have a drink.
God covered a great bridge in old weather,
And clouds came low the way they
do in recollection.

There was a calamity;
Rope-ways in a blizzard
Collapsed and drifted over, maybe;
Or a way home misremembered
Near Christmas.

I told you I'd seen dogs'
fur stand straight across wind
when things in the wind were ill;
When wolves and worse others
ringed up against the dying fire,
and the sun crept up
and fell right back down again.

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Traces

When I have watched my hands
break open spark
in hymnal night,
or shake unmeasured
recollection
over the faces
of my sons,
finality
leans itself
against me.

We have gone each
way we ever hoped to go
in this life or that,

and the traces
through the fields
are burnt-up
in the winter sun.

Sunday, November 11, 2012

The Crippled Gate

Oh!
This crippled gate;

Dreams of it.

Quick and silenced words
not giving ways through;

And the still-stood night,
same;

silver reach
of prairie-school
stars in branches
bought with moon,

leaves governed down

to curvature
too-soon seen,

seldom known.

And the dark between the stars
shakes like men
chased down empty streets,
and spreads like charcoal
over spark.

From Hecla-Grindstone
to Little Falls,
the hinges are seized,
the gate crippled,
thick

with riddles,
unanswered.




Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Passing

There is no moving
from underneath

the horizon
gone thick
before,
above,

and avenues
entwined
in thick nests
of dreams.

There was a derecho.
We were
pushed to rivers,
shores.

Our fires lit
a low belly of clouds.

Our eyes were wide,
and gathered to them
dying stars.

The old world is passing;
the way children were;
the way light
came through
church basement windows.