NaPoWriMo 4-15-2014

I dreamt that a man from
Global Facilities found me
in a conference room at HQ,
interrupting to inform me
that the agreed-upon move
was complete.

I spent the night in short sleeves
and thin khakis, in the cold rush, lashing pens
and desk legs to grabiron
with shoe laces and torn socks
and Canadian jam knots.

NaPoWriMo - 4-14-2014

Calm
down.

If I could
have taught your
corpse
to fly
the way
your corpse
has dreamt
of flying,

over the North Shore
libraries
and student unions,

I would have
done it by now,

showing to you
plainly
unceasing
ebbings, retreatings
of shoreline.

All that's gone along now,

And you wear the truth
of tired men.

You protect yourself
those crazy ways.
Those

arms across an earthen face,
all elbows and knees,

bones like roots.

NaPoWriMo 4-13-2014 - Palm Sunday

Later,
after the bokeh haze
of adaptations
crafted for children

concerning
your arrival,
your passing through

dimmed

from fragile pastels
to harsh, oxidized
firmament,

The trouble between us began.

Some years,
frost still
caked the soil;
and the coat racks
in the foyer
still swelled
the way they did on Christmas Eve.

Other years,
the doors and windows
were propped open,
and the ceiling fans turned,
and Sunday School
spilled out onto the
eleven-o'-clock
lawn.

We took turns
passing hands
over the cornerstone:

Remembrances that were
not holidays;
milestones
adrift
upon the ancient calendars;
and days dreamlike
and unsteady

when we were led,
hastily choreographed,
up from behind the choirloft
stairs,

confused palm fronds
waving in imaginary abandon.

When I surrendered
to your triumphant
entrance,
I was but a child.

How could I have known
the dark depths of your great will;
the dread potential
of your great silence?

NaPoWriMo 4-12-2014

Old tree, you are ever before me.

Have been.

In terror and waiting
and want,
I have memorized your
silhouette's visage
before me;

trunk and daughter limbs
reaching far above
the noise of formless
branch-snappers
that make their way
around my presence,

reaching for
the cooling stars while your
outer branches thin
and
fall and curve
earthward,

near a supposed fire.

NaPoWriMo 4-11-2014

Unembarrassed leaves
Emerge from beneath winter
And do not realize.

NaPoWriMo 4-10-2014

The house in spring
still remembers early February:
the fierce wind out of the north;
the ugly ripples of earth
pushed up by the roots
of hunkered down maples
that made the snow
drift just shy of
the foundation.

NaPoWriMo 4-9-2014

I remember hauling enormous
burlap sacks brimming with iron
each night
up indefatigable hills
to impossible clearings,
or down
to shores of hidden, kettle-held lakes.

And an anvil;

Coal;

And hours,
sometimes days
carved
from the abundant fat of my youth.

I'd cultivate fire
and sling slag first into it
then out, and up upon the anvil,
and hammer great piles of
letters and leavings from it -
the beginnings
of names, each night,
of never named
things.

And all of it seeming so easy.

NaPoWriMO 4-8-2014

The nine-year-old
and the six-year-old
beg after folding knives,
jumping up and down
the way they do,
their pleading eyes
appealing to my own youth.

They do not appreciate
the old man's memory:
that storied history of
slip-joint blades folded over onto knuckles.

NaPoWriMo 4-7-2014

After work, the ride home can sometimes go otherworldly,
moving from four lanes and
traffic lights
to other kinds of intersections.

And the day's strategic opportunities
and change-managed tragedies
slowly go to tatter and fray,
and a strange dusk-before-dusk
appears between the still-empty houses,
and the trees slowly grown thicker, plentiful.

A veil between things, over the sky
thins,
and I round each curve
expecting silhouettes
of the departed dead
in the lowering glare of the sun.

NaPoWriMo 4-6-2014 - Rivers

Are you amazed
that the river
chooses to keep to its edges
well enough that
unmovable bridges can be
lofted across it,
and you can boldly
approach, and stand,
and your children
play alongside it?

They are like herds
that stay their paths,

But it doesn't have to be that way.

Rivers are wild things,
and go where they want.

You know this.
They are not always patient,
or resigned to their chosen courses.

Once in a while
one rears up and consumes
acres of farmland,
generations
of homesteads. Towns.

Build your house too close to one
and you'll find out eventually.

Proud Chicago reversed
the course of its river.

An earthquake rerouted
the Mississippi not far from there.

But make no mistake:
they went along willingly.

And if they were to change their minds,
not one damnable suit in Springfield
could dissuade or stop them.

     And those are just the rivers.

NaPoWriMo 4-5-14

"Anything,"

I said,

because
of everything,

Palms up,

blood clouds blooming
from around my knees
in the Canal Park shallows.

NaPoWriMo 4-4-2014

One day,
all the dreams
in the house
the night before
had been so hard

that
in the morning
we rose to find
old years suspended
in the still air
of the living room.

You have decisions to make
when you wake up
finding that.

Everyone knows
it sounds humorous,
or comfortable,
or improbable,

But when it actually happens
to you
it is

A deep lake of silence.
A chain of acres
that children will
pull behind them
across all of their days.

NaPoWriMo #3

My age is always before me,
and my studied ways of faltering.

I remember
in it my sons;

and for it,
my father:

How he wrapped his uncovered hand
around my wrist,

pulled my weight
above his own strength

so that I,
at times,
among his stumble,
would float above the drifts.

NaPoWriMo 4-2-2014

I'm not sure
what you'd like to learn
from me
about
early spring,

otherwise
I would say more.

There was that southern
Michigan April -
driver's licenses tucked tight in
wallets -
when nonetheless

we climbed ladder-like
tree limbs
and continued to pretend.

Eight-barrel
evenings
pulled themselves
along
inland lakes -

over dusk and across
Sundays.

That's the way it was;

Joy Division,
Buddy Holly,
and the Gaithers.

Later, alone,
I dreamed
tin-gold dawns;
lists of ways to wait.

NaPoWriMo 4-1-2014

My wits have not been with me.

And the well-squared
concrete pathway
lately
in the southside morning
has bristled with
old sets
of stops and starts
of miles
in the low spring
sun.

And with each yard
I trample
toward
employee entrances,

thin roots
and
sunsets
underneath
still - somehow -
crave upward

for my ankles
and my calves.

And I still
murmur
horseshoes in my sleep,
and locksprings,
and pyrite,
and gunflint,
and riversides,
and old friends gone acquaintence,

And this
terrifying grace that I have
so adored
and for so long
wondered after,
heaved upward
from the earth.

In my days - these days -
with sons -
I am concerned

with recalling
treasured nights
correctly.

But if I
should fail -

again; again -

I know
my feet
owe nothing
to my wits.

Song for Early Spring

The third-shift
road crews
were chieftans
on the lakeshore
in the early black,

their efforts
and their pathways
dim flames licking
shoulders on
remembered Dan Ryan
in early spring;

and the sacrificial flare stacks
were torchlight
alongside bogs;

the chill that spilled
around and inside ears
in the sudden still
when stopped doorways
opened up
near unfamiliar
intersections.

And the messages that
ballast gave
through shoes gone thin
and yard limit signs

Risen up like skinned sentries
and things
that were only their
shadows
in the dawn

Were fanned
and embered
and pocketed
and unseen.

3-16-14

My lengths and
shadows
are exhausted,

and
lifted up to You
on hills
with every filthy
March that I can bear;

with stick
and
branch
and ballast
gathered
from among grand
trunks,

and toes raised
beneath embers.

Didn't You fill Yourself
with inexplicable dusk?

Didn't You
displace
darknesses, and silences,
In answer?

You looked away,

And stained the years
with
long acres
of safety glass
woven among
fossilized corn
stalks.

You pulled up Your words

And left me,
my deserving it,
underneath
the years you
wrote upon my face.

Weird Tales

"In the snow. The ways
Traced beneath branches
In the bath of that
Weird light. Around dusk."

His voice was vibrant,
A smile shared freely
In a wind-chilled night
Among vagrant friends.

But the words fell thick
To the forest floor.
Certain old moments
Pushed through surfaces.

Someone pulled a stick
Through the jungle fire,
Stirring spark, ember.
Hands gathered collars.

Sudden quiet came
Uninvited, spare.
The fields near the tracks
Inhaled the night air.

Eyes pulled themselves up
Around the treetops:
The silence went thin;
The cup went unpassed.

"I know you heard it.
Before this, I mean."
And of course they had.
Every one of them.

Old Passed-Track stood up,
Eyed the ensemble.
"You think I'm a fool?"
Nobody answered.

"Well. I won't go on."
The leaves in the trees
Above them groaned, sighed.
"I will not," he said.

A long stillness passed.
At last, one man stood.
"You know you got to."
He kicked at the fire.

Passed-Track's shoulders slumped.
He drew a sharp breath.
"This ain't the story
I wanted to tell."

"We know," someone said.
"But you'll tell it well.
And your miles are earned
As well as any."

So the night went long,
And the fire was fed,
And Passed-Track remained,
Pressed to small hours.

Near dawn, the sky spun
Suddenly, in one,
Quick, fluid motion,
The stars quivering.

Passed-Track settled up
The story's remnants
As knowing chuckles
Passed around the fire.

And in the distance,
A steam-backed whistle
Breached the horizon.
The ground shook that way.

A westbound hot-shot
On a north-laid track;
A sudden exit
From a long, slow curve.

The moments settled.
Gear was gathered up.
Someone poured coffee
On the dawn-lit coals.

At last, a young voice
Broke the solemn still:
"What a night it was!
I am reminded

"Of a certain tale
I know I've been told,
but that is somehow
shrouded to my mind.

"Before we catch out,
I'd like to share it,
Although, only now,
As I speak, it forms:

"In the snow. The ways
Traced beneath branches
In the bath of that
Weird light. Around dusk."

Remembering

Beginnings
And the rest of lives
Have been always
Spiraling
Misspoken tonguefuls to me;

Boots, but worse — half-legs —
Muddied and mumbled
In the hall.

A thin light
Of late comeuppance
I once could tell —
Alone, near shore-shows —
That my hands could come around

When I went arriving,
Big as dawn,

And gunmen bled guns
In entranceways of towns
Embarrassed by graineries.

The good life
Is an ember-lined
Circle,
Unmapped

And recollecting.

Near

All those bends —
Years and lamp-lit low clouds
Pouring out of you,
Fold over fold,
A glory;

The way you raised up trees
Beside my staggering path.

The way you hid,
And stayed,

Unmoving, and
Wrung me dry of
The hopes
You yourself authored
In me.

You were always
Emptying branches
And horizons;

Pulling
Blankets of cold distraction
From around my wrists and ears
And neck,

Pushing me
With ticks
And thickets
To the coasts of things.