I favor nor Intent nor Chance
And take alike a Mark, or Stain:
Alike the Accidents of Hands,
Or weighty Musings of a Brain.
What am I?
A Riddle
Reply
what / should I fly
what
should I fly
unto
my senses
delight
with
crowns and rich apparel
dance and then depart
show
what magic can perform
and do
a thousand
deeds?
I
shall
The tree grew up overnight
The tree grew up overnight, the first anyone knew
Was sunrise and passengers tumbling from cars gawking
At that tree, its lower branches wreathed in fog,
Its upper branches gathering the fog into
Towering clouds. Crow winged out of the sun, squawking,
And drove the dogs away from the tree,
And we danced, we danced down the sun and the fog,
We danced the concrete into dust, the dust into the sea.
Continue reading
The Proper Tense with Accidents
Accidents may happen; then they do; but after that
They were not accidents; they are just facts.
Sonnet: Against Sonnets
God’s sake, don’t write a sonnet! What’s the point?
That boy you like will still be fully dressed,
And other poets still be unimpressed
(In fact, their noses may go out of joint).
Feeling is first! Form’s just an afterthought,
And rhyming’s unforgiving work at best,
When every single line feels like a test.
So, should you write a sonnet? You should not.
Oh, Petrarch, Shakespeare, had their vogue, it’s true,
But really, fourteen lines is awfully long.
Best get in — cut the middle — finish strong.
Who wants a sonnet? You should write haiku.
Trust me, I’ve thought this through and through: put down the pen.
The sonnet’s day is gone, and will not come again.
From this height one sees everything
(after Li Po)
A younger me would have stood on his head
To prove the earth and sky are of a size
Then seeing beneath his feet the sunlit clouds
Strode off upon that opalescent path.
These days the sun has turned her face from me.
The autumn wind flings tiny knives of frost.
Far down below, the slow east river flows
Beset with whitecaps, fishing boats, and gulls.
Yes, younger, I’d have turned things upside-down:
The sparrows and the swallows at their nests,
The small birds perched among the date tree’s thorns,
All would have stopped, and quirked their heads to see!
But these days I’m no gymnast, me.
Sundown, I’ll sling my sword upon my back;
I’ll set my feet upon the dusty road
And head off down the mountain, muttering of home.
I gazed into my wine cup
(After Li Po)
I gazed into my wine cup
Till after darkness fell.
Out of that dark pool
The vines grew up
Twining me around
And the wine was in me
And I was the wine.
Then I dreamed I stood,
Lost in the wine’s dreaming,
And the moon was there
Beneath my feet, there
Where I walked, midstream.
Somewhere an owl hooted
But nobody was there
To wake me.
backseat stationwagon
the endless susurrus of tires
strove with us through the night’s great room
we trusted to its purpose: home
Paradise Lost, or The Inevitability of a Fall
as a kid i always knew the wind was up to no good
as a kid i always knew
the wind was up to no good
for all it never did me any harm
in the stories it was always
driving the hapless schooner on the shoals
then becalming the shipwrecked sailor
who clung to a spar a ragged shirt for a sail
or it was sidling down back alleys
and through the branches of landlocked trees
under moonpale clouds in the dead of night
squirreling away skeleton leaves
ghosts of plastic bags
and stale shreds of news
to deliver them unlooked for
months and county lines away
or it was whipping up prairie dissent
sometimes slamming a straw straight
into a phone pole
like a hammer drives a nail
or it was snooping up water for later
then freezing it to hail
the size of golfballs
pelting houses and cows
and fleeing into the stratosphere
so i knew not to trust the wind
even though it might never get around to
marooning you or
slamming a soda straw into you
ponder the still eye of the storm
you ll see what i mean
Under the hood:
Bag of Anything 