The End in the Time of Coronavirus

A glimpse out the window
at blasted apple blossoms
and snowfall blotting out
the first green of spring
and the doors barred
to keep contagion out —
the world could end
with an ellipse
at the end of a message
as
all
traffic
ceases.

A poem for COVID-19 and ten inches of snow

I don't write poems as much as I used to, mostly because I've gotten to an impasse with poetry. I know from experience submitting poems that my poems don't quite have what it means to be great, and I don't seem to be able to figure out what they are missing. I also think they're too short compared to modern poetry. But here's a depressing poem for today:

A glimpse out the window
at blasted apple blossoms
and snowfall blotting out
the first green of spring
and the doors barred
to keep contagion out —
the world could end
with an ellipse
at the end of a message
as
all
traffic
ceases.

Elegy (For Les)

Cells expire,

Molecules cleave,

Life departs.

Your atoms scatter,

We breathe them in,

We breathe your love in,

We breathe your magic in,

Your last communion.

Eulogy

Mother Magpie leads me
past sere cornfields and buried bones
to the place where people say their goodbyes. 
There we eulogize the man
whose fireplace we huddled by,
who shone light in our dark corners,
and we leave that place with light in our pockets
to bring to others.

Lughnasad

Lughnasad

As the afternoon holds its breath,
you disappear,
my summer love.
I drink the apple wine without you.

Feeling a little outspoken today

My God speaks to me in birdsong,

In waves of grass,

Rustling leaves,

And a feather falling to ground.

You speak for your God

In booming voices,

Condemning your lost children,

The ones you yourselves have cast out.

You say your God will love me

If I do what you say –

But what does God say?

I cannot hear him from your yawping.

Chasing the Muse

My muse appears, elusive in the street,
skipping through foot traffic, disappearing
in the crowd. The chase begins again
at the edge of the forest where the light
through the branches conceals. I never
touch his arm, he never kisses me, we do not
ever meet.

A poem from the book I'm editing

I'm taking a quick pass through one of the books I've neglected before Camp Nano -- July session happens. This might be my most transgressive poem -- something about the mud ..

I don’t know whether I want to hold you
Till I feel your heart in my chest,
And we entwine like the Trees,
Or mate with you
In the mud, in the rain, in plain sight.
Either way, we become something new.

Poem

Tell me a story
in a vaulted cathedral at midnight,
give me your story
as the flood roils down the creek,
tell me more
in a pasture turned minefield,
I'll hold your secret
in the silence of the eye of the storm.

Healing

This is a very personal poem about being healed:

My body has been torn from me.

My soul has splintered.

Sheer will moves my feet, my hands,

and keeps the molecules from spinning free.

The body remembers being whole.

The soul remembers being one with God.

May this touch give the memory of being,

so you can find the path back to yourself.

My body aches from carrying these cares,

My soul tires fast from holding self together.

I cannot ask again to be a child,

to be tucked in, to be without a care.

The body remembers the cradle of the womb.

The soul remembers union with the Infinite.

May this touch remind you of your Source

and bring you back to its seeds within yourself.

Eentsy-teensy poem

Somewhere there’s a museum full of you,

White walls and crimson leaves, repeated over.

I flick the light switch off and close the door,

And step outside into the misty autumn.

PS: The Words Are Important

I had just enough words left in my mind for a poem:

Just words,
all I have to offer
in the darkling storm.

You, my stranger,
read the words as rain
from a storm you cannot touch.

To you, the story
is that you found the words
when no one else noticed,

the words only important
when they crawled into you,
and became fluttering birds.

A Really Short Poem

Note to readers: I'd like to call this Elegy, but only if it plants doubt rather than certainty that the subject is dead. Anyone want to weigh in?

At the reservoir,

Fishing pole in hand,

I tell a story to the wind you’ll never hear.

To know is to know is to know –

We could have argued that

All afternoon over coffee and tea,

But the distance between

Is words and stories and seas.

I tell a story to the wind you'll never hear.

Short poem

If a writer sits in a forest

And the tree doesn’t fall,

Does anybody hear?

Too late, skip that,

Hey there, nice hat,

How you been, good day,

Hope you feel better soon

If the bird sits in the forest,

Keeps his song to himself –

Does anybody know?

No time, too rushed,

Gotta go catch my bus,

Still don’t know why

I don’t have any time.

If a forest lives

In the heart of a writer

And nobody sees it,

Does anybody care?

A Short Poem

This, as always, may get revised. I like how it started being about one thing and ended up about something else:

Ephemera

I do not see pictures in my head,

Or not as you do – this old slide

Of yellowed Kodachrome slides past my mind

I see hair or expression, never both.

I stare at you when you are here with me,

I memorize your patterns: swinging hair,

Glasses, a squint, a laugh, a lumbering walk,

All of those together equal you.

I fear to lose you in a crowd;

Too many people almost look like you

I live on faith that you’ll come back to me