Category: poetry

Fog Like Horses

Each bright day with wind
arrives like San Francisco in ’68.
The fog pours in like horses 
across the Golden Gate, the seals
cough down at the Wharf. 

City Lights opens its narrow stair
and Ferlinghetti is at the top 
to turn and welcome you
with his slow smile. 

And the feeling 
of reaching toward the bread 
of something solid, the wine
of something still to come, 
the sacrifice not yet required,
the circle still unbroken.

The Compass Line

Solid brass, a cold and heavy circle
in the palm. The needle crazed
and swinging like a drunk against
the shadows. It finds a point
to fix itself upon within degrees
all tacking north, a region
that is known by where it's not.

All elements descend upon the
solitary walker: light and dark,
the scudding clouds, the whistling air,
the sliding rain. It does a person well
to face into the wind, to feel the force
implacable, to lean against that shifting
wall of fury. To cling like Jacob to 
the arms of his assailant in the dark: 
'I will not let you go until you bless me."

'Be true to duty as the needle
to the pole.' So I was told
and hewed the line as best I could
against the odds. The needle swings —
roll, pitch, and yaw — until it settles
close enough to show us where to go,
where we have been — though every move
we make will set the needle dancing
once again.

Potential

The preacher enters the pulpit.
The waiting watchful befriend her like a cloak.
In the round silence of those before her
she breathes — in, out, in.

But this moment!
Perfect communion lies within her,
just as the infinite bowl of the sky and
the sea — arms open — enjoy their widest horizon.

A poet lays down a line, scrubs it out,
tugs a thread of memory up to the light,
tests its tensile strength, rappelling down
the sheer face of terror — almost delight.

On the sea cliff a diver waits, counting the waves,
marking his breaths, holding this moment —
all heart and bones — as near to
prayer as the cry of a newborn.

Each one
enters Creation
innocent of the abyss,
the leap itself containing all.

Counting Miracles

Let us be true, truly be,
let us be. That was the refrain
I sang under the moon I lost
some months ago.

There it was at last, low above
the trees, the trees black and still,
the birds silent, only a car passing
on the road behind me, not staying.

I know this moment contains worlds,
universes even, possibilities unheard of.
This moment, then the next, and the one
after that; I will count them out carefully.

Thoreau says, "All change is a miracle
to contemplate, a miracle happening
every moment."

The asters I planted on faith in April
have bloomed so bluely, so proudly,
so briefly. They are sighing now as
they lie down in this October morning.

I am counting now — No! I have
ceased counting — to take this moment
as itself complete, so full as the moon,
which I had lost, now waning behind me.

The News

I am reading poetry these days
more than I read the news.
I gather armfuls of poetry: Whitman,
Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, Keats,
Yeats — Whitman again.

I scoop up handfuls of Glück and
Rilke; they must be pored over,
examined in the hand, turned over
like seeds and nuts in the palm, rationed
carefully.

I take a pinch of Emily: a little bit seasons
the stew. She is the salt that brings
up the flavor of these potato days and
the sigh of attention to the diamond ground
upon which
I walk.

There is Milosz and Szymborska and
Herbert — both Zbigniew and George —
Heaney, Hill, and Kavanaugh, Neruda,
Bishop, Olds, Harjo, and Frost. Always
Frost, even in summer.

Collins, Stafford, Kooser, Hirshfield,
Basho, Beowulf, Sidney, and Howe.
Shakespeare then and again and now;
Larkin, Levertov, Wiman, and Brooks.

Am I Donne (not yet) or Job or the Psalmist?
St. Paul on a good day, St. John's Chapter One,
Isaiah, Jeremiah, or Solomon's Song? Or
Morrison, Clifton, Hayden or Hughes?

I am reading poetry more than the news,
for the news does not change; it's not new.
But the poetry I read can be read more than once,
gathered in armfuls, held in the hand,
salted and savored and sung on demand,
and carried like water in these desert lands.