Wrecked

Words tumble in
And roll right back
Down to the deep.

Time has not taught
Not to fight
Or to flail.

Pressure rises,
Letters and symbols — screaming silence
That says, “Succumb. Succumb at last.”

Fluid, but not flexible,
Lost to all of it –
Current and trade wind,

Anything that might
Fill a sail,
Or bring a ship safe to port.

Become sunken treasure –
Sought by outlaws
And vagabonds.

That rare territory –
Vast,
Unexplored.

Perpetual motion
Beneath the still-seeming surface.
Unsettled, but unbound and open,

Waiting for one –
Sweet-voiced,
Hawk-eyed –

Curious enough
To cut a path
Straight to the bottom,

Called onward
By lights
Green and gold,

One who would penetrate
Ancient, murky tides,
To drag this shipwreck sunward again.

39, Winter

This is all just narration –
Life encoded for the page.
The rewards
For attention:
Harrier along the highway,
Kingfisher waits on a line,
Winter-kissed daybreak
And a hard frost
On the field.

I come to love waking best,
Even if it means
Dreaming by day.
Counting backwards
Into territory
Grown unfamiliar,
But for the constant
Whisper of unease
That rustles through it,
Like so many
Dry oak leaves
Grasping at stems
Through the long winter.

There is a clarity
In this dawning age
That is almost more
Than I can take.
I never wanted
To see so plainly.
And,
After all this time,
I come to resent
And to relish it.

And making good –
Despite all of this –
Is an end
Worth waiting for.
So allow it –
The slow turning of pages,
Until the whispers settle
Into wind.
Then vigilance might cease,
And sleep come
To carry those
Brown leaves away.

Things People Say…

People say
The things people say.
Come to find
That birdsong
Has more meaning
Than these
Phatic phrases –
Habitual complaints
On whatever perils
The season presents.
Everything conveyed
With petulance
Or heightened alarm –
Boys crying wolf, all.
The quiet retreat
Helps evaluate
The truth –
Or untruth –
Of the matter.

Look!
The snow, ink-stained
At the edges
Where they pass,
Is still white
As a virgin page
On the field.
The frozen air
Reserves its sharpest bites
For those who greet
It so bitterly.
(It is gentle with me,
A lover’s teeth nibbling
At my ear.)

And I admit
That he is a hard lover.
But winter carouses
In the treetops.
“Come to me,”
He croons.
He offers beauties:
Snowcapped gravestones,
The soft white lines
Defining the trees’
Sharp architecture,
And a crystalline sky
That lingers
In the setting sun’s embrace.

Kisses of wind –
Snow- or spring-scented,
Depending on the day’s direction –
Lure me onward.
And always,
These throaty whispers:
“Don’t close your eyes, love.
Here are hands,
Soft enough to soothe
And strong enough to steady.”

Bird Eye

Sky’s edge rusts,
Wings to the dry grass –
Wakes the day.
And our engines pound
With its rising.
We had the bird eye –
Always this flight
At the edge of our vision.
Blindness refused,
We relished the sky’s demand
For depth,
And visions to uncover.

We bathed
In the waters of variation
Until seasons rolled away,
Picking up days and
Pulling them to a long line
Of motionless minutes
Behind us.
Each second introduced
New celebrations.
We stood outside,
Our breath casting shadows,
And we gazed upon yellow squares,
Electric blue flashing,
And the sleepers moving within.

To be one of the watchers
Is to submit to the endless alone –
But we let it all in.
We let all of it in.
This emptiness –
We were full with it.
And always,
In the stillness of dawn,
We waited for its call.

Where do they come from –
These visitors?
Playful,
Noisy,
Serious,
Silent –
Lovers of seed,
Flesh and flight.
We were vessels,
Waiting to be filled
With their songs.

And we of the long eye
Remember how water
Moves slow beneath
A solid surface,
How the sun
Gives a silver lining
To winter cattails.
And always this rebirthing –
The rhythmic pushing
Through these holy places.
We would see with new eyes,
Hear with new ears.

We tied our assumptions
Into knots
In our shoelaces,
So our pacing
Might leave them
With the other dust
On the trails
That rolled behind us.
And we let it in.
Innocent, open,
We let all of it back in.

January

To linger in dreams
Is a dangerous pastime.
But at the switch,
Suddenly,
Everything changed.
The ink freezes
Before it hits the page.
And I must breathe
On the end of my pen,
Or scratch out
Invisible messages.

Releasing this
Sustaining dream,
I learn to live
In the real again.
And as the horizon solidifies,
The geese hunker down
To wait it out.
Some kind of meaning
Ties these together.

Everything feels empty
And I must
Somehow imbue
These meaningless phrases
Of passing acquaintance
With feeling.
It has to matter more,
At least to me.

And the sun,
She keeps a low profile,
Grazes the oak grove,
And casts long shadows
Across my wandering.
So we look for each other
Out here,
While the others stay,
Safe,
Indoors.
We are so few now.

I’m not prepared.
Four decades,
And still
I have not learned
To double up
When the digits descend.
Each season
Revives its own
Hard lessons.

But those of us who linger
In the open –
We are hard and heated
And we have learned
How to build a slow fire.
Hawks and hunters –
We listen
As the geese grow
Mournful.

We have turned enough with it.
We understand winter’s history.
And we know
These little hungers
And minute pains
Will pass.
And if our breath cannot thaw it,
The spring will come
To the ink,
The sap,
The blood.
Then we can be dreamers again.

Escape Route

Today I am tempted
By unknown roads.
Can sense that dark animal
Curled against the thigh,
Now circling my hips.
He bites his tail,
Cold claw at the throat.

A screaming ripple of flesh
Cries out,
Take the wheel –
A hard left.
Find the open space,
The winter fields,
The blank page.

They’re closing in,
And these snaking lines –
Red and white lights –
Reinforce this lesson:
That only fools
Fail to plan
An escape route.

It is in my mouth
Like cotton,
And tightening,
Tightening –
Covering my eyes,
A cool slithering at the temple.

Hissing, whispering.
Bent promises
Drip from forked tongue –
A twisted request –
The façade that conceals
The demand:
Submit.

And who am I,
Anyway,
To question this authority?
But it rankles,
And it splinters,
And it festers
Under the skin.

Still surface belies
Swollen blood rivers
That rage beneath.
And in one
Blue moment,
The brakes give way.

So gun it for the open prairie,
Find an empty highway –
Holy,
Desolate,
Spilling like an open vein
Toward some final freedom.

The Long Dark

I want to understand
His habit,
His instinct –
How he can sense
The sun’s shifting
Point of view,
And whether
He has learned
To adapt,
To flex
Into these wheeling changes.

These little curiosities
Stacked one upon the other
Take a lifetime –
Or longer –
To satisfy.
And someday,
Maybe we will get to see
The shining everything
Or the dark nothing
That awaits
On the other side
Of the high wall.

For now,
Let each brick
Be a beauty unto itself:
The sunrise blessing,
Deer in the woods,
A rattling breath,
Crooked eye,
Slow water, frozen at the edges,
His voice,
His fingers and what they have known,
Words cleverly arranged
And cautiously spoken,
And that great blue heron –
Inexplicable in the hardening winter –
Swooping low over the highway
As I speed
Past the place where we meet.

These whispering mysteries –
Let them continue to descend.
Though I can feel
Time’s toothed gear in the bone,
The coiled springs,
And how they require a steady hand –
Give them the windings they need.
None of this is disposable.
And I am not yet ready
For the answers.

Thirsty

There are all these
Interruptions, intrusions
Casting shadows
On branching lines of thought.

But the compressing insulation
Of blue-gray fog
Frees us for a moment
From the all-too-much.

These seasons speed
Shorter increments of time,
And it is never enough
For this:

A wooden bucket,
Worn smooth
By so many
Centuries and hands;

A sharpness on the tongue,
Clarity of this –
Cold water,
Words from the wire.

But know this:
Though, through circumstance
Or willingness,
We may linger in stolen seconds,

Gazing, desperate,
Haunted,
To where it waits
Upon the shelf,

If our faith
In its usefulness –
Its presence –
Does not falter,

Stretching fingertips of thought
Might reach it.
Feathers gather –
A wing to brush away busy dust.

In remembering
To seek it,
We can quench
This thirst again.

Collected

Guards relieved of duty,
The gates were thrown wide.
A multitude found the way in.

And now?
And now?
And now I’ve gone –
A fool again.

On the first,
Willing, and anyhow,
He had a way with words.

But now the others,
Awkwardly engendering
This need to enfold,
Have followed.

There must be something
More than the collecting of loves,
The wanting of wives.
So here, let’s unravel
Common threads.

Driven to compose
With a composure
That suffers
When the next is forgotten.

Critical solitude –
Its nature twofold:
Both need
And the dysfunctional
Analysis that eclipses conformation.

Secrets kept close,
And the worry,
And the worry,
And the worry,
And the worry
At the laughter,
Voices in the head.

Moon-worshipping
Chanters of birdsong
And heathen prayers.
Gatherers of the misplaced and forgotten.

Makers and singers,
Fakers who linger
On doorsteps,
Afraid of the crowd.

And, too,
The safety of spotlights and stages,
Or a soapbox
Built of wires and torn pages.

Collect these clues
In a pictured oak box,
A little moonshine
In a jar on the dusty shelf,
And know
That the alarms
Were always destined
To fail.

Because these –
Unknown and unseen loves –
Are essential –

A splintering ice
That collects in cycles
Of freezing and thawing
‘Round the heaving roots –
Inevitable companions
Of the turning season.

Chanticleer

All up in time,
Bearing witness
To the beauty of uncleared snow –
We can sense the sun’s approach.

Intone the morning mantra –
Percussive click of needles
A chatty bobbin on the wheel.
A winter-shaded finch plays in the hedgerow.

We creatures of instinct
Bless the morning
In somnambulant pastime,
Broken by brash hymns only a mother could love.

Timing is everything,
But this strutter has no sense of it –
Always barging in
With an incessant, arrogant crowing.

First once, then twice his voice breaks.
On the third, trains jump the tracks –
A wilderness strewn with debris
And murderous, predatory intent.

Driven to distraction,
The rail-rhythm breaks.
Bootstomp, mad-eye, a hammering at the door.
“Just eat the damn bastard, already!”