Rhyme #1: ‘Its use is not a burden’
Its use is not a burden but a clue There’s something after it, or me, or you. Rhyme can also make hot arguments Hop along, less hot, or harsh, or sad; Or, bind some disparate thoughts, as if they had A common quality of resonance. Young boys may have their soldiers, girls their dolls, But plastic playmates make for lonely souls; Twins have each other, though, and the delight Of tickling each other’s feet all night, Even the thought of which might be enough To thwart, in part, the flesh-inflicted curse Suggesting things are here to share, like love, A night, a couplet, or the...
Read MoreLast Days of Uncle Arnold (a poem series)
I see you perched on a Nebraska hay bale communing with your delirium while all around the rolling Sand Hills gently beckon to one whose life was lived among them. these Sand Hills, this ranch, home for far-journeying winds, sandhill cranes and willful, way- ward nieces and nephews Nebraska hayfield brother, cousins, uncle and grandma’s dinner bell our rancher uncle as the cancer advances I drive the pickup on a last outdoor errand checking on his newborn...
Read MoreThe Sky is Bursting with Rainlight
for Angela Humphreys Staley 1965-2016 With sunset comes rain and the sky glows with it. The sky is bursting with rainlight, it sweeps the court of people. Even the giant moths circling the overhead lights hang it up for the night. And for a while we stand together against the fence, our fingers hanging from memories like hooks. The moon closes what the sun begins. On the empty court, puddles of moon light and tell me Angela can’t be smiling there in that light, in that bright, trembling light, and we won’t turn the lights off on her, not tonight, not...
Read MoreOff the Road to Hana
for Angela Humphreys Staley 1965-2016 Last summer the doctors found a gray smudge on her lung and I found the clouds puffy at the edges like scabs after swimming all day in the lake. And I know scabs aren’t the color of clouds, but how lucky I was weightless with my wife floating in the lake trading words for clouds. I can keep you in perfect peace as you stay close to Me underlined in her bible, lightly the word funeral in the margin. She was headed all the way back to the initial breath like a bubble in reverse. My brother called to say he unplugged her life support. I blew...
Read MoreFacing East on Basho Pond
Every day, I trod the imperial Basho Pond, feet placed neatly in footsteps by the latent water. Staccato tongue cuddled the acrolect of frogs and mist, pugnacious through ice-capped moss. Saffron robe cast up night’s cutlass blades like refuge drawing lava from crater floor, sparing my quiescence its silhouette against these rustic plains of forethought. At the chirps of robin’s nest, up the Tea House Hermitage, a life of incense strong-winged over bead- drops of dew, distilled into innards of cicada-hued wood beams, more arcane than any frankincense tracing veins of dead ghosts....
Read MoreFollow the Recipe
In the kitchen I look over this clear glass bowl filled with ordinary white flour. I push play on my vintage iPod and then go back two decades, when I was an unknowing, bendable thing. I shape my hands into spoons, and as if entering a warm bath, they gently descend. Open palms press down to the bottom; they bloom into starfish. Sand as smooth as the ocean; softer than delicate coffee grounds. My knuckles are tucked in, already dreaming. Then, like being carried to the shore, my hands resurface, accompanied by little waterfalls, outlining a traveling timeline on my skin. Cascading...
Read More