crows in contrast

Gather

With winter waning, crows in contrast on the snow receeding,
Another season of unfulfilled promise about to take wing,
Leaving me cold and counting the days
Until spring brings her gilded green
And I once again gather
The courage to go on.

photo by donegal browne

a reverie

Woolgathering

tarry here / in the rain / falling like a melody

deja vu / like a thought / feeling for a memory

a reverie / of her voice / reminding me of music

linger there / like the rain / remaining for the moment

concurrent

Night Becomes Electric

palm to palm
a circuit completed
pulsing current through
head-loin-heart

an arc burn
scorching an outline
of our bodies
conjoined-supine-sublime

magnetized for this moment

our atoms in flux yet immutable

dusk's light dimming beyond recognition

consciousness fading as night becomes electric

beneath the repeated pulse and oscillation of polaris

mirror moves

The Parallax View

i cannot see the end

i could not see the beginning

but everything in-between,

this life,

reflected in your eyes

a thief in the house of love

Filling In An Empty Frame

and she was stolen away

the great art of her secreted away

the sweet love of her hidden away

but if i close my eyes
her portrait still hangs
in my memory
in my heart

in a way

photo: 'empty frame' by anne sutcliffe

between a rock and a hard place

Stone Wall

and i have built a monument to myself, my struggle

with
winters weathered,
summers sweltered

dying a little with every autumn
but forever defying each year's march toward death
with a spring in my step come easter lilies' reminder
of the crosses we bear and the resurrections awaiting

rolling another rock away from a tomb of my own making,
adding it to the long line of stones constructing this wall,
a humble cairn, a testament to dogged perseverance,
blending in with the changing seasons surrounding me

intimating i am still here, i was here, until i was not

all that we can't leave behind

Built Our Ruins

These places are now
ruins.

Recognize though it was we
who burned them

down.

Midnight-drunk-rant-catharsis
unleashed amidst stoic stands of timber

watching,
in silent awe of our uprooting,

how we,
free to come and go,

also added unseen rings
from year to year.

Our words whittled into the wind
and not the bark at our backs.

Our frost breath
fanning the flames of
manhood-youth-gone-mad
offerings of

smoke totems to the night sky.

Those days we spent in ragged company
of one another now seem

as ephemeral as the shooting stars
that streaked unnoticed overhead

while we
built our ruins,

carrying with us the memories of
all that we can't leave behind.

For the boys,
Wes, Doug and David.

foundlings

Orphans : Abandoned Poems Find A Home

I.

Ten Lines

and
i will
with these hands
rummage through the hours
searching for night shadow arms
to wrap comfortable and close over
shiver shoulders like a blanket of stars
to contain the collapsing atoms of a man
born into the bright white bleak light of day
and dying to be cradled in the black of sleep


II.

Oh Mercies'

a natural god and earthly demons
pulling at fibers, the very fabric of my being,
leaving my mind hanging by a thread,
my soul savaged by the same sharp lance
removed from the side of a hysterical and panicked jesus

fruit of the poison tree falling at my feet,
my own eve, vestal and virginal, innocently offering
a snake bit apple bit blindly and opening my eyes
to miseries, mysteries, tell tale signs and oh mercies'
apocrypha spilling from a tongue of fire and sweet damnation


III.

Shifting Sands (Lovers Lost And Long Forgotten)

we are a borrowed line on borrowed time built upon a world's shifting sands

where our words like dust blow away along with our crumbling concrete hearts

to fill deserts with the poets' stolen sonnets for lovers lost and long forgotten


IV.

Strange Currencies

filling the empty spaces of a life with a wealth of literary fragments,

passages plundered from books for which i am the richer man,

fabricated intellectual properties appropriated and counterfeited,

the strange currencies of a fortune found in the folds of fictions


V.

Warm Hearts / Cold Sun

winter won't let go of our coats pulled close

sheltering our warm hearts from a cold sun


VI.

Wolves

wolves watched,

with baited breath

condensing in the cold air of a winter without end

from the bare bones of a scavenged wooded edge,

the wounded animal,

within our sun starved skin

stumbling chaotic circles of an ever-circling skeletal dance

leaving us vulnerable and awaiting the vernal equinox.


VII.

Black Wind

black wind blew hard and bleak for years

out of california to cross the supposed wasteland of the midwest

on east toward and breaking through the appalachian chain

left blind, deaf and dumb in the wake of the fog that followed

its throat choking smoke smothering any sense of self

the taste of hopelessness like sulphur and charcoal upon a tongue

scraped in vain with the dull blade of a childhood pocketknife

given as a gift then taken back along with the promise of better days

indian-given but somehow still ghost-present in a certain quality of light

exposing a memory of expectation more resilient than expected

illuminating a mind fleet of foot and ready to walk through fire

to wander away from fear of failure and everything familiar

a dementia self-imposed, forged to forget guilt and move forward

through black winds blowing hard and bleak for years

freeing this tempest-torn adam to ravish his intended eve

to take leaps of faith beyond childish bible allegory of wandering deserts

a novel idea in hand instead and acting as compass and sextant

to hemingway's spain, hamsun's scandinavia, bukowski's san pedro

high ground hidden in the manifold folds of a postmodern map

relief found in ridges to run between mountains still shifting beneath bare feet

stopping only to bury belief along with the miscarriage of sentimental burdens

discarding ceremony, circumstance and the well-worn path for the thicket

beating back the thorns piercing side and crowning forehead

in search of a breeze as clear as water rattling leaves like tibetan bells

stirring gods from sleep as this ascent hastens up through thin air

and the breath from her last kiss catches fire within charred lungs

the final accelerant to push above the treeline and embrace the western sun

chemical orange, pink, purple, red carried in the womb of a tempra blue sky

birthing a notion to breathe deep the clean, the clear, the calm

heir apparent and armed with a new sense of self

assured despite everything surrendered along the way to a black wind

the waving hand atop a summit like a flag above a wasteland conquered


VIII.

Bird From Snow

little hands so cold

fashioning a bird from snow

our warm hearts take wing

a bell is a cup until it is struck

The Ring Of A Bell

last winter of regrets barely holding on like the ring of a bell

the warmth of her sweet voice carrying across the frozen lake

cold fading as i cup its sound to an ear listening for a final thaw

there then gone

I Am Disappearing

I am disappearing.

Even the night brightens with dawn for a better glimpse of my apparition.
Houdini's heir apparent there then gone apparently vanishing into thin air.

I am swallowing my own skin.

Even the sun unhinges for a closer look at the bleached bones of a ghost.
An escape artist painting himself out of a self portrait within this still life.

I am surrendering to the ether.

Even heaven cannot divine where my spirit lies between earth and moon.
A soul skipping through time and space like a stone across black water.

I am disappearing.

Even science cannot posit a reason for the vaccuum left in my absence.
Hubble alone like some glass blown Galileo searching the stars for a sign.

photo: harry houdini circa 1899

sound asleep

The Background Hum

as I drift off,

the telephone waiting for a call that won't come

the clock content with quarter of, ten to, five of

the almost forgotten crackle of a dying fire

cat, dog, wife already awash in slumber

a triptych of breathing - motion, sigh, wave

my own heavy exhale / inhale swallowing light

floating somewhere between fading sound and roaring silence

the background hum morphing into a flickering dream

population : 2

Alone Together

we are alone, together

me, with my thoughts

you, with yours

and on long walks
across the frozen fields of stubbled corn stalks,
around the lake where ice fishermen huddle over augered holes,
through winter woods which hold the weathered history of our property

we talk in hushed tones between our own thoughts
of little plans for this life together, alone with one another

bridging the pangea drift

A Sort Of Homecoming

My father's father's father
My mother's mother's mother
And countless others

From Odessa
From Mamokus Lan
From an ocean away

From lands buried by perpetual winter
To a land of hope springing eternal

Sullen Swedes,
Resilient Rusks,
Laconic Laplanders
Crossing a vast sea of uncertainty
And finding their sense of place not so displaced
And waiting for them in the bitter and forlorn tundras of
Wisconsin, Minnesota, eastern Montana and the northern Dakota

The pangea that drifted apart so long ago
Inching back together in some small way,
The physical and mental distance bridged briefly
In this sort of homecoming for a stranger in a strange land

ghost of me

Being Before Being

Gliding the late night hours,
bright lit by moonlight and man-made mercury vapor,
I crash the ether from below,
magnetic north merely a notion at this altitude,
electromagnetic radiation (a motion, a current , a tide)
surrounding the becoming ghost of me gathering
in the sensation of sweet burning essence
upon torso, upon time, upon tongue,
leaving me mute, ageless, without form
and free to drift through memories
of being before being.

dancing the collapse

No Line On The Horizon

nondescript

before the moment of surrender

where a wave forms, then falls

in the chaotic choreography of chronology

without direction, dancing the collapse

as the past collides with the present, tense

and torquing the curl of time forgotten to the ocean floor

where crawling years climb fathoms in search of the surface

carrying the pressure of memories pushed through leagues

to form then fade like the smoke from two ships passing in the night

nondescript, in darkness where there is at last no line on the horizon

image by forty-one crush

that February feeling

Melancholy Melancholia

And a melancholy sweeps over me,
from things I have seen, felt, thought, dreamt

The swell of a sad melody drifting from
a February room like a cannonball to the chest

The overwhelming squall of snow falling
to subdue the illusion of a winter sun's warmth

And a melancholia settles over me,
leaving the cold of dull grey around my heart

curtain call

Taken Before Trees

listen

for applause

as you stand

all alone

listening

to the wind through brittle frozen branches barely audible

witnessing

a bow

taken before trees

as your

witness

to a wilderness of achievements barely visible upon the wind

blue period

Chaos And Creation

My own blue period, hovering

An aeroplane falling out of the sky

Decompression, pure oxygen deployed

An inflated sense of self

Under pressure to perform

Start at wits end

Begin the renewal of intellectual pursuit

Painting myself into brilliant corners

Picasso's profile in a cloud, hovering

The crash and burn imprint of my Icarus wings below

Little boy blue's arrival, coincidence coincides

A father, a phoenix rises from the ashes of impact

Fashioning art from the chaos of this life

Painting: 'Boy in a Striped Sweater' by Modigliani (1918)

for rachel on valentine's day

Flood Of Sunshine

the perfume of you flooding my senses

an ocean of salt air

a river of sweetwater

a field of wildflowers

a wind awash with honeysuckle and heather

a flood of sunshine overhead

the morning dew of you washing over me

miles and memories

Along Pavement

two lanes split this trip

- from memories bequeathed by oral tradition and newspaper clippings
of a snow borne birth at the end of an ice road slide down through dakota

forward

toward

an inevitable destination

- to memories alternating between 15 and 60 frames per second
flashing across passenger side windows like blurred postcards

i sent to myself

a sense of myself

coming into focus the further i travel

along pavement