12-18-2015

Things are not
The way they were,
And have not been

Since we read about
The Mississippi valley,

The way the ancient people there
Bent saplings,

Twisted trunks to angles
Bowed
Along their trails.

Trees;
Not quite trees,

The way you woke up in a town called Wauconda,

Which is a fiction,

And decided to drive into the old city
At 3 AM
To shop for records.

Is that left lying somewhere,
Still,
A terrible dream?

The impossibly tall pines,
Empty roads?

Things are not
The way you remember
The sounds your feet made
Moving through snow,
Head angled up to
The tops of trees,
Not quite trees,
Owl suspended
On the dropped-flour moon.

Things surround themselves, sometimes,

Seeking the engine
Of their own curvature,

And God nudges new matter
Into the void.

12-11-2015

What will you do
when you understand you were never taught
how to cross rivers
given suddenly to the way forward?
When you are called to defend
the way you explain hope?
When the wide sky
circles the dying fire
and says,
"I am a great thing
among only a few,"
and tells you it knows
there is no difference to be made
in crossing, or remaining.

Maybe,
you can learn to answer
with decades of productive silence

jungled on the advancing bank,

moving onward,

chasing the retreating river,

never crossing.

12-2-2015

Far north Illinois

turned fields,

shelters

grinning on the

old weather,

corner

carved from War of 1812 borders,

jurisdictions dreamt

after

the paint factory shuttered

and all that freight bundled up

like bees without a queen.

And

you

strained

tumbled shatterings

from briefest shores,

wishing for Michigan, 

or better yet Winnipeg, 

or better still the world

that has not yet learned

to suffer you as phantom limb.