New Century Poem

The seasons

Beautiful, involved, 

Lovely like elevators

And the floors of thought 

Who thought the party 

Was always where 

The lamps were on.

Glasses arrange themselves 

In the green light. 

A familiar spirit 

Changes into a hush 

On the hills in the evening. 

When the room darkens,

And we can see no farther 

Then the face in the window 

See the centuries pass

People as in the theater 

Waltz out from their seats 

As lights turn on 

And new ones waltz in.

First Fiction in Film

 I remember you were wearing purple

as the tangerine sun lit room

Accented the crochet. I was six.

The day continued.

 I stopped looking.

The orange cat was always around.

I ran around the table

The pictures capture that.

Also, you waving into the camera.

And teaching others to say hello.

To pose. To walk slowly.

To pretend to walk before

Stepping on to their plane

Waving goodbye and flying home.

Organizing Flowers into a Bouquet

Under Wednesday's umbrella

We shape our eternal dress

Did you avoid trying to say that
Glowing in jars of youth.
Breathing out layer-cakes.
We've grown silent

In these last careful months.

The marshland of notebooks

Many remaining instruments
And the hint of citrus twist 

Our words into a particular curve.

This one here and that one there.

Is much of what it all comes down to.

Until stepping away we see 

A thought no one 

not even you

Knew you could think. 

 

All Life is like this Afteroon

All life is like this afternoon

on your young sandy face

the weight of the stars

the body tasting like snow

a slipcover of communication

fleeting through the blue geography

Twilight paintings

firecracker mysteries

calm whole hurricanes

sandwiched within 

the intricacies of the day

before you knew it

even existed.

As Long as Russell Edson Lives

I am fine
but the moment
he is dead
I become
too hard to
figure out
my growing

room
labors like
tiny inventions
glancing
at each other

locked in the deciding

who came first

who came last

and who came at all.

Post Title

There was an internal destiny

the waterlogged nasturtiums missed it.

Like the ferns jutting from a moth's nose

Sal starred from his bed for a long time.

He walked out of his hotel room

and down the hall to the ice machine.

There he met a girl who smelled like kindness.

It was later that evening I was born.

I know I owe a lot of people 

looking for a cold drink

or who hear the rumbling of ice

now that the world is melting

and we are fleeing its shorelines.

I know. I pulled my car over, stopped,

for a moment to look back in hope 
that this extinction 
might give birth to something.

The Toast to Hours

The hammering of a flicker

ties us to one another.

And together the old sense 

comes round like an approval

from sleep,

comes to sip the universe,

an old fashioned cocktail 

mostly beautiful.

We need this intermission

The brute ankles of the problem

sometimes weave

sometimes glimmer

sometimes shine

from lilac loss.

The bay touches a chamber of the heart

Walking around the market before it opens

may repair the wildflowers 

before the rain.

Switch to something in the experiment

The use of glass immediately

drains off this sunny, sunny toaster

looking natural before the gardens.