Category: Uncategorized

 

Whether you see or don’t see

A Baltimore Oriole sounds occasionally

Like the door to a cellar

Where sometimes a child

Might hide or having

Once been in love

A man may bury love letters

For the cries of birds

Are not what we suppose.

What ails you

Can be greenery though

You’re defended

Overtly happy

Spring has come

So who’d imagine

A whistling bird

Or two building

Their hanging nest

Can stir up

A ghost from boyhood

A hospital room

A window half opened

An echo

From treetops

That wasn’t ever meant for you?

–for Nathan Bell

 

Luther’s ink pot, play that guitar!

Happy the one without devils!

 

Leadbelly:

Gwine dig a hole

To put the Devil in…

 

Hereabouts

Lots of small “d” devs

Each with barbed wire

On the mind—

 

Please

Get a guitar.

 

For the love of babies

Play something.

 

Don’t talk “recording contract.”

Writing with dogs for company

Pages pile up

As if I’m translating

Arboreal canine sense

Nothing escapes them–

Even when asleep

And like beached boats

Filling with rain

Their feet

Make a delicate

Patter

Now that I’m old I say things

Like “bananas are good”

As if it’s Manichean

They’re of the light

Lord knows they taste fine

No one’s seen the Devil

Holding one

And certainly I’m foolish

Half naked senior citizen

Up early

Exulting in his fruit

Childish before fucking eternity

I try to savor its sweetened ash

Clinging to a toddler’s joy

Only to think of slavery

Neruda’s “United Fruit”

The sorrows replete

In every picked thing

Now my banana

Is a flavorful ticket

Eat now, be absolved later

A crow struts across the wet lawn

Like Jimmy Cagney

And I think

My students

Know nothing

Of old movies

 

Beads of rain

Fall from maples

Hallelujah!

How easy to be

Happy about nothing

Good—

there will be so much of it

 

Have you ever walked in the shadow of a castle?
It’s colder there than in the churches.
Your bones recall the year rickets
Went around the lake.
“Some have memories,” you think,
Though you’re not very old
And the morning is bright.

When I hear the dog people say:

“Don’t worry he won’t bite”

I’m a blind boy again

Feeling a spider’s web,

Knowing it’s run to a corner

And I’ve decided to press my finger there

Drinking green tea

As rain comes on

Didn’t you always ache

This way—afternoon

And window?

 

I was a sick child

My Lord

 

Rain and bloodstream

So near

In the happenstance

Library

Of lonesome

 

Fast moving clouds my Lord…

 

—after Robert Bly

 

Morning snaps on

In the trees

And the gold finch who’s my twin

Drinks from a crevice

And then nothing—

No plot in leaves

Only a private

Orphaned mind

Calling itself a soul

(What else?)

 

Recall that abacus

Given by my father

When I was sick

My fingers

Steering

From places

I wouldn’t see

Bird numbers.

There are millions

All over this world

Reading with their fingers

Equations

In railway weeds.

 

Walking in and out of my heart

Twice daily

Though sometimes more

Wild flowers

Queen Anne’s Lace

Standard butter cups

Mantle thoughts of dying

I’m in here—

 

Heart wise

Herz Weisheit

 

Mulberry, shade me

One’s hair stands on end