poem yourself

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Koi

2010-01-29T11:20:00.000-08:00

The wind sock on the balcony is writhing

in the cold January air.

It is shaped like a fish, a Japanese koi

red and white with mouth agape.

Like so many things, it was here before I was.

When we moved into this city house

the owner had left it behind

dangling.

It has become mine

not by signing mortgage agreements

or insurance policies

but slowly

as the concept of owning land

of owning a home

has begun to make sense.

This koi can tell me

part of the story I wasn't around for,

can explain how the apple tree grew to be so big

why the rose bushes are everywhere on the lawn

what the crooked door frame is all about;

can help me understand that my time

is part of the bigger, endless moment;

that I am young but not forever

that I am here but not forever.

Standing outside, I wonder

about koi and the past

hoping I'll be well remembered.

You Are For Poetry

2008-08-29T06:36:00.001-07:00

They say you are attracted to someone for 4 years
then you slip into something a bit different; you learn to live together and love each other.
Or you don't.
That might be so.
I don't tell you in quite the right way,
how you are a potter, and I am a poet—
there may be a chance that we'll just go on being attracted
to pots and words, lines and clay bowls
the turning wheels of stone and the turning pages of verse.
I am for your hands
and you,
you are for poetry.

I Try To Be Playful

2008-08-05T11:09:00.000-07:00

I try to be playful
even as the weeks go by.
I realize what everyone has been saying,
that life gets harder.
It does.
Our particular creases get deeper,
our particular wearing points get more worn.
Our ideas get old.
Now, when a friend is gone
or someone moves away
it is much more important.
This is valuable information,
to know how to carry the things we need
as life happens.
In the romanticizing and justifying and imagining,
to have some tools that do the real work
that sometimes needs to be done.

The Mind To Find A Way

2008-08-01T15:40:00.001-07:00

Lately I've had classical music playing during the day,
hoping to add whatever effect daytime classical music might have on my life.
It comes from the other room, through speakers I've hauled across America.
My stereo is a heap of equipment I have collected over the years.
Tinkering here and there, gathering disc changers,
digging an unused receiver from a friend's basement,
that was a real find.
I haven't paid a dime for the whole get-up.
To be separate from the world-turning force,
even in a set of speakers and some wiring,
even with just an antenna and some dials,
to have a screwdriver and two hands and the mind
to find a way.

Get Some Plums

2008-07-30T09:38:00.001-07:00

The night before you left we went to the grocery store.
A crate of plums was conspicuous
dark and sexy next to the pale peaches,
water beading on their tight skin.
"Get some plums," you said, your lips forming
as if you were eating one right then.
Later, alone with little to do
I ate them
trying to feel decadent, holding the pits lightly between my teeth
imagining how you might do the same.

I Could Not Have Believed You

2008-07-18T12:44:00.000-07:00

Had you told me there would be more smiles
I could not have believed you.
Yet here I lay, smiling like a fool
twofold? tenfold? more frequently than I ever thought
smiles could come.

The Little We Do Each Day

2008-07-15T10:24:00.001-07:00

The little we do each day,
well, however much we do
(though it is little, in the grand scheme)
is a making of ourselves.
Would you string a glass bead in with pearls?
So why let a day go asunder with unwanted pursuits?
The arrogance of decision
is perhaps a needed arrogance.
The day is a miniature portrait of nature
of the cycle and the source.
Waking and resting you remember and practice
what has come
what will come.

The Source

2008-07-08T13:06:00.000-07:00

Today I stood at the source,
story place and paradise of the Dakota people of Minnesota.
Named in our short history Pike Island
by beefy Zebulon Pike himself.
Sacred meeting place, the source of the universe
now the source of a park and an army fort
United States style.
Still, I went there to stand and try to see it as the source,
leaned on the swollen trunks of massive cottonwood trees
caught my breath in the soft light of canopied maple forest
put my feet in the sand at the confluence of the two rivers
on the island that is the turtle's back.
The island is still there
with frolicking deer and the gentle serrations of elm leaves.
The web of bridges and electricity and buildings is thick,
but the rivers still meet and flow
the land is still there, wet and wooded and waiting.
There is still a source.

About the Storm

2008-07-07T18:57:00.001-07:00

All day there have been announcements
about the storm
on its way,
licking and slurping its way
through humidity and breeze and that
—i don't know what it is—
that feeling that says storm's-a-comin'.
And it comes
the trees shiver and bend
the streets are pocked with the falling drops,
branches sway, traffic slows, water flows
and still it is a show,
still it is a production, a performance.
Gusto, bravado, panache, all those words.
That's how it is with these crashing summertime rainfalls.
That's
how it is.

Life Always Improves On A Balcony

2008-07-03T06:44:00.001-07:00

Life always improves on a balcony.
A dash of sparrows and whisked cirrus clouds,
being in the air—like near moving water—
rapt by the mysterious rhythm
simple beyond understanding.
There doesn't need to be much to say or do.
anything, really.
Leaning on the rail,
one part human to one part sky.

I Like the Sound of That

2008-06-13T07:24:00.000-07:00

Sitting here, in the same chair I have sat in all year
I am barefoot again, like I was when I first came to you.
It is warm enough now to not wear anything, if I wanted.
I like this corner of the room the best.
There is a window onto our street
the cat likes to sit on the ledges and hurl his eyes at the pigeons.
We eat breakfast here in this corner every day,
after we struggle out of the knot our limbs tie—we sleep so close together.
It is like nothing else, how little space we occupy in our big bed.
It is how I sleep, how I've tried to sleep for years.
I have been thinking about it all year in this chair
in this corner
of our apartment.
Our apartment.
I like the sound of that.

With the Sun Caught in a Net of Pines

2008-06-10T10:57:00.000-07:00

With the sun caught in a net of pines
dusk released like an aroma
calming the mountain pond we dangled our toes in.
All around us, arms of green mountains caressing
and the blips and blops of trout
rising to gulp in the mayflies of early summer.

This is a real place.
I was consumed by that,
awed by that.
There, trees leaned on each other like calligraphy against the horizon's light.
Here, tadpoles swished their feathery tails, huge and swelling into full frogs.
We, barefoot, lying on a moss covered rock.

We will grow asparagus in patches around our big country yard
push spades into mountain earth
make mounds and trenches and rows of growing things.
We will grow.
We will grow into anything we want to become—into a family, into a life,
into whatever it is that happens to us
when our breath has passed and the light has stopped.

Talking between silences, we find silence is our muse,
the quiet time that two people can have.
It is what we use all our words for when it is gone.
It is what we need only to close our lips to have.

In Vermont

2008-06-06T06:48:00.001-07:00

We're thinking, let's get out there
to the exotic north of Vermont.
We picture driving along European-style roads
past wood-fenced fields of plump sheep
sneaking through green mountains full of bushy Vermont trees.
What a state of mystery
everyone knows nothing about what is there
in that deep chest of mountains and lakes.
Maybe some hemp-clad young man
tending to his bee hives
will invite us in to his yurt,
offer us fresh goat milk
and rub our feet with organic rejuvenating clay.
Likely, we will be charmed by the same stars we see at home,
kept safe in the same world
met with the same winds.
But in Vermont. In Vermont!

You Love the Moon

2008-05-27T05:38:00.000-07:00

You love the moon.
I can see it in you,
the silver curves
in your slimness
the distant blessing of the earth.
In the light of open windows
you grow the way it does,
in slow pieces I can relish.

Moving Skirts

2008-05-22T09:51:00.000-07:00

The apple blossoms have puffed
their petals
and dropped like egg whites around the dark tree.
This spring is a flash of an ankle
under moving skirts.

A Quick Tug

2008-05-21T12:20:00.001-07:00

The blossoms are leaving the trees, now.
I waited so long for them to come.
It is alarming, the rapidity of spring
how for so long I can wait for something
that is so short.
A yank of shocking freshness
all here and gone in a quick tug.

Comet's Tail

2008-05-08T10:13:00.001-07:00

I am a comet's tail
swaying, blazing.
Being alive, consciousness is the hard fireball
slicing before me.
I am holding
fishtailing in the light
arcing, arcing, arcing in the wake of existence.

Robin

2008-04-30T09:29:00.001-07:00

Much of what a robin is for is telling me that it is spring.
They are for worms and nests and song, as well.
But they, and I, and we all carry a sign of change.
The stigma of life is on us all
whatever we are for.

Dead arm

2008-04-11T07:34:00.001-07:00

I remember waking in the night, briefly
as if something had fluttered past me.
My arm, stretched above my head
was dull and lifeless.
Held under my head, it was separate and bloodless
sodden with weight.
I lurched my shoulder,
wrangling it up onto my chest
suddenly frightened
waiting for the trickle of lifeblood,
the sharp sparks and cracks of awakening.
I lay there with my dead arm
breathing heavily
feeling the indifference of our end
cold and without feeling
slumped on my chest.

Just waking up

2008-04-08T11:23:00.001-07:00

It was so simple, just waking up
to a day where life became dull and difficult.
There was the sun, the apartment, the refrigerator
all looked the same.
The running toilet trickling into the afternoon.
Youth or innocence or optimism, I'm not sure—something had peaked
tipped the scale the other way.
What was poetic became tragic.
What was holding-on became pathetic.
Shallow, all shallows
my length of life wading through shallows.
There was the sun, the days, the people
all there behind a gauzy layer of glass.
That day and days after
thankfully a pool in a moving river,
thankfully a lull in a moving cycle.
But how they seemed forever
how they seemed permanent,
how they clutched my identity each long day.

Chime

2008-04-03T07:14:00.001-07:00

The wind chime has been outside our window all winter
hanging from a string of twine, dripping sometimes, with icicles.
Music, chime, sound frozen and mute in the flakes and rolls of snow
the layers of cold wrapped like tight sheets.
Today, in the sun, I hear that chime
I hear spring
I hear robins with their peculiar chubby sounds, and Canada Geese
hoarse honking in their rough throats.

Outdoors, optimistic for early spring

2008-03-24T15:35:00.000-07:00

Taking a minute, breathing in the soft light of 3 o'clock.
I sat outside, pretending that March was May
reading a book of poems by a poet from my home state,
someone who has seen what I have seen
grown where I have grown
felt, been, swam, shouted, leaped where I have leaped.
I am cold, but it is a surface cold.
My body's spring has a swelling warmth that I feel even in the ends of my limbs,
the tips of quivering branches waiting, waiting for the split and push
of the buds of young, ready green-growth.

Beach day

2008-03-19T09:49:00.001-07:00

Gulls prod the sand with their strong banana-yellow bills
searching for clams to grapple in their beaks and clamber into the air with.
Letting drop over and over on dark rocks or the blunt sidewalk
the birds coax the shy clams into gently loosening their psuedopod grips that hold shell edge to shell edge
in a tight, oceany heart.
Opened, alive and quiveringin their briny soup
the clams find daylight and the sharp pierce, then tear of erratic gull beaks.
Flesh from the sea to flesh on wing,
soggy clams packed in feathered bellies like wet clay.
Gulls circling and squawking above the quiet beach, through the quiet day.

Reading

2008-03-14T12:45:00.001-07:00

I've heard that the only people who read poetry are those who write it.
I thought, untrue! untrue!
I remember many years of sitting with a finger tracing along lines
taping poems to my bedroom wall
long before I looked lustily at a pen.
Two days ago, burrowing through my pages and notebooks
I came across many lines
written in my own hand—writing that looked familiar but felt far,
from another:
all of us, we are poets, in our minds, our hearts, our thoughts.
If living and seeing every day is no poem, what is?
What is?
I suppose reading a poem is writing a poem.
Poetry is moments, life is...moments.