Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, fire, soul, tetrameter on October 7, 2020| 6 Comments »
And if a cheek should find a chest,
and if a tongue should graze a lip,
and if a hand should meet a curve,
and if a hip should stir a hip,
then we might know the flesh as kindling,
know the skin as eager spark,
know the lover as the flame
that helps unthaw the frozen dark.
But if a heart should stoke a heart,
and if a soul should fuel a soul,
then we might know the self as unself—
ravaged, ardent, blazing, whole.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged fog, great blue whale, parenting, poem, poetry, sadness, tetrameter, weather on November 6, 2013| 1 Comment »
Yesterday, a low gray haze.
A fog. A blur. A sullen shroud.
At dinnertime my young boy says,
Mom, can you guess how much a cloud
would weigh? I guess a thousand pounds.
No, more, Mom, guess again, he says.
Two million pounds? He says, Go down.
I give, I say. He looks away,
then tells me, Half a great blue whale.
And guess how much a storm cloud weighs?
I say, I give again, and smile.
A whole blue whale, he says, then splays
his hands in thrill, and says, Guess how
much hurricanes would weigh?
This time I guesstimate too low—
Perhaps two hundred whales, I say.
By now I’m curious about
how many pods of great blue whales
could swim in squalls of heartsick doubt
and grief, the pea soup kind that swelled
up yesterday. Three hundred whales,
he tells me and I wonder if
the same great number found their way
into my brooding thoughts. He shifts
the conversation to how heat
is what makes clouds suspend up high.
Meanwhile, a foggy thought repeats.
A dozen great blue whales swim by.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Art, detachment, entropy, photography, poem, poetry, tetrameter on October 19, 2013| 1 Comment »
A thin blue line. One paler blue.
A gray rectangle. Six brown squares.
Four cylinders of cream. Thin smears
of white. And many, many clear
isosceles. It’s easier
to take the story this way: parts.
Forget that it’s a shattered window,
broken door outlined in blue,
a fallen roof, the beams collapsed.
The house belonged to no one you
knew. Find the angle, click the shutter.
Tell yourself you’re interested
in how things fall apart. It’s not
catastrophe this way. It’s art.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged alone, couplet, infinite, losing the self, rhyme, tetrameter, unlearning on October 12, 2012| 8 Comments »
—poem on a line from e.e. cummings
Rubble, smoke, sparrow, stone,
she wakes in darkness all alone.
Angel, master, docent, thief,
she wears the scars of love and grief.
Furrow, honey, Chopin, moss,
those are veils that are her loss.
There’s more, there’s more to be undone—
milk, lattice, lily, plum.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged couplets, lace, letting go, process, soul, tetrameter on November 11, 2011| 2 Comments »
Soul, you are the empty space
honored by the maker of lace,
you the holes that are always there,
and we the threads that frame the air.
You the gap, the empty, the naught,
and we the ones cutting away the cloth
to arrive at the nothing that links us all,
unweaving, unbraiding, elated, enthralled.