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Posts Tagged ‘window’

Every Poem

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on November 30, 2024| 5 Comments »

 
 
has a double-hung window inside it,
the kind that allows you to let in
a little more air when you feel as if you
can’t breathe. Sometimes, seeing through it
helps you find a new way to frame the world.
Sometimes it makes it easier
to feel as if there’s distance
between you and what the poem says,
as if you’re on the outside looking in
instead of the other way around.
Though when it’s dark, you can’t help
but see your own reflection.
When a poem makes you uncomfortable,
its window opens wide enough to let you
climb out, but not without things
getting a little awkward. I mean,
you are climbing out the window
instead of using the poem’s back door.
But mostly, the window lets the light change
so every time you re-enter the poem,
it feels different—familiar, but new;
and you wander around inside the lines
and wonder, did the poem change?
Or did you?

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Three Months After His Death

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on November 29, 2021| 7 Comments »



Let’s say there’s a window
at the end of a long dark hall—
the more we walk toward it
the farther away it feels.
And then, let’s say, we stop
trying to get anywhere and meet
where we are. That is how
I found myself on the other side
of the window, released
into sky—blue sky, then tangerine
sky, then sky dusky pink.
That is how I found myself
talking with my son the way
we used to whenever he went
to camp—through the sky.
Only this time we didn’t talk.
We just were. Together.
I would say we were fused,
but more truly, perhaps, commingled,
as if our atoms were diffused enough
to commune. To know this
for a moment is to know it
forever—how it is that
there is no separation.
How it is that we are one.

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In the Distance, the Sound of Chains

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on December 19, 2014| 1 Comment »

No space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunities misused!
― Charles Dickens, ”A Christmas Carol”

Through the window, I see myself,
dead. The white sheet doesn’t cover
my feet, and they stretch, stupid and pink,
off the edge of the gurney. There is too little
callus on them. They should be dirty
from walking the world. What a waste to die
with clean feet. The earth would not be
so covered in dirt if we were supposed to stay clean.

And there I am, facing away from the corpse.
So human to want to turn away. My sleeves
are rolled up, but my hands hang empty.

And here on the street, I see in the window
some semblance of my face,
not quite transparent, but substanceless.
I pick up a rock small enough to throw,
big enough to break the glass. No.
I drop the rock, untie my shoes instead.


This poem is a response to a picture, part of Rattle’s Ekphrasis challenge …
http://www.rattle.com/images/ekphrasisbernal.jpg

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Three Windows

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on September 24, 2013| 1 Comment »

how did it enter,
this thought
wearing bells

*

scraping morning frost—
sometimes it takes so little
to clearly see

*

shuttering
the pane—still something
slips through

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It Was Something about Hungry

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on January 19, 2012| 5 Comments »

In the backseat,
Vivian says, Mom,
I want to know
the darkness,

and so rolls down
her window
and shouts,
Hello Night!

And then she
whispers something
to the air
that I can’t hear

though I strain
against the rush
of road noise
to decipher her words.

The conversation belongs
to her, though, and
to the night, and to
the window that

already she has learned
to open herself.

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