Monday, July 2, 2018

Our Insomnia

Something new. Still in a state of flux. Nothing great, but, you know, something.... A little vague, but briefly: A poem about 2 people who are not together but who share an interest in words.

 
Our Insomnia  

We are, the both of us, awake--Shakespeare's "soft nurse"
of sleep tempted away by the waning moon you have yet to see.
I dim the light on the table beside me. Upright, I settle
into a wingback chair and trace my fingers across our shared
words of kings, of strangers, of husbands and wives--
words that are secrets in the gravity of the moon.
 

Wednesday, April 4, 2018

Since We're Sharing...

...here's another one. A bit mushy and mundane, but what the hell.



Bank-Fishing
For my grandfather

We are fishing before dawn.
My grandfather’s remaining lung
works for breath even as we sit
and watch the bright tips of plastic bobbers.
“What are your plans,” he asks
as the bobbers drift,
the spaces between his words
patient ellipses of inhalations.
But I am ten—basic and elemental,
and I cannot answer him any more
than I can understand what happens
beneath the water’s soft surface.
I know that I have not planned anything,
that I understand little more
than expectation and guilt.
Our bobbers are together in the shallow
pool between large rocks.
Waiting, my grandfather looks at me.
I want the sun to rise.
I want to step between the rocks,
then kneel there, then reach into the water

to find him an answer.

Thursday, March 1, 2018

So...

Yes, it has been a long time. So what? Things have changed. But that's not why I'm here--to tell you that. Everything changes for everyone. What I want to say is this: I found some poems! Or, they found me, maybe. There are only 2 new ones, but here they are. Each is dedicated to a specific person. One of them is dead, so he'll never know. The other person is still alive, and he already knows.


Hummingbirds
            for Mark

I dream that the wife who divorced you
sits beside me on the patio. It is mid-January, but
the sun is warm. She has brought with her the harp
she plays at weddings, and she draws thin fingers
across the strings.

She asks me to tell her one thing that I know.
I regard the sun. Hummingbirds crowd
the feeder above the redwood planter box.
I turn to her and say that you told me
of dressing for dinner one night before she left,
that you had bought a new ring and said to her how
you would always love her, that she should stay.

She nods. She dampens the harp’s strings with the palm
of her hand, and the commotion of hummingbirds
ceases. She turns to me, then, and stands to leave.
She points to the two sequoias, noticing that they are
browning from the top down.
She rests her hand on my shoulder and presses her fingers
into my skin in a way that makes me see how any man
could love her. Lifting the harp, she frowns and turns
to leave. The hummingbirds are gone. She
raises the corner of her mouth, smiles, and whispers
that you are still dead, and that each waking day
I must know this.


Evolving
for Shawn
What fish feel,
birds feel, I don't know--
the year ending.

-       Basho

In the winter of my sixtieth year I remain
ignorant of how the heron knows to fly south,
how the salmon knows to find better water.
I have risen hours before sunrise to sit beside
a small lamp to alternate between
Birds of North America and The Total Fishing Manual,
hoping to find this morning’s answers.
This habit of leaving the bed so early is new.
I want to ask someone—my sister’s therapist,
perhaps—if the change is typical, if I should
be sleeping more. And my eyes do grow tired
so quickly now, another change, and I have started
writing down questions to ask my young physician
who nods so well.
“Are these still my eyes?” I have written twice.
Soon I switch the lamp off and press deep into the chair.
How does this make you feel? my sister’s therapist might ask
while ignoring my eyes, and I would answer with arms
that were once wings, lungs that were once gills.