Tag Archives: poem

as a kid i always knew the wind was up to no good

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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:

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Supposing Wishes Fishes, Night a Well

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I spoke a wish into the dark,
as if I dropped a fish into a well,
then paused for a returning sound to tell

if water caught it, not dry stone,
not dead coins only. Not a sound came back:
That wish went its own way, and left no track.

The night is long. Where may a wish not go,
when every word’s alive, and each is true?
In such a span of time, what can’t it do?

Under the hood:

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Visiting the Taoist Priest Dai Tianshan, but Not Finding Him

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(after Li Po)

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I heard his dog barking down by the creek, but when I tried to follow
A hard rain fell, scattering the peach blossoms, hiding the path.

I’ve long since lost the dog, the creek, the path; I can’t hear the temple bell,
And one stand of bamboo is like any other.
I think it’s spring now, or will be soon: it’s greener, anyhow,
And sometimes I see deer, off in the woods.

No one else can tell you the right way to go, that’s what he always said;
Meaning, I thought: Trust yourself. See where that’s got me?

 

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No rain that summer, my father said

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No rain that summer, my father said, the grasshoppers’ song bringing
No relief among the dry weeds. Then the buffalo came like thunder,
My father said, they came like the flood
That follows rain. The hunters went out singing
In the cool before dawn, dark shapes going along under
A dark sky. My father said by the time they came back again,
The whites were heaps of bones beside their heaped goods,
And the grasshoppers were singing up the rain.

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Drinking the driven storm, the sturdy apple

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Drinking the driven storm, the sturdy apple
Dances, between sky and earth, her spring-young leaves.
Knowing no purpose, knowing only season,
Her spring-young leaves, storm-driven, dapple
Earth and sky; all that my eye perceives
Dances. My eye drinks in the apple’s spring-
Young leaves, her dance that has no reason:
Only the storm, driving each dappled thing.

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This poetic form is called san san, which means “three three” in Chinese (and is a term of art in the game Go). It rhymes as you see (a-b-c-a-b-d-c-d), and also repeats, three times, each of three terms or images; here, the driven storm; the spring-young leaves; the dance.

Here are a few more of these.

 

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o no na po wri mo

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4285992318_39c699be64_bthe month of april
which is poetry month
is insupportable and ill timed
it’s still nearly winter when
words didn’t help us get by

it’s still nearly winter now
there was a season that made sense
that stoppered life that held us to
one single obligation just to last
to ride it out and not to

burrow so deep that there was
no coming back
to the surface again
that was wisdom that was
really a better idea than this

I never trusted spring
this coinflip season
spring with its rotten
ice and its seepage
spring with its alarming growths

winter was better better
to hide out better to live small
to listen to the wind
and the rain passing better
to be a clever animal

better to wait out the cold
better to forgo what sunlight was given
easier to survive then
than to live
now:

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I Won’t Get Up Today

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(a song for music)

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I won’t be getting up at seven
I won’t be on the bus at eight
I may not get up till the weekend
Everybody’s gonna have to to wait

I don’t care if the coffee’s brewing
I don’t care that eggs are in the pan
I’m snug and warm and I ain’t moving
Is that so hard to understand?

I won’t get up today
That’s all I’ve got to say
It’s just gonna be that way.

Last night I dreamed myself a city
Where everybody spoke in rhyme
Smelled nice, and everyone was pretty
That’s where I want to spend my time

That’s why I won’t get up today
That’s all I’ve got to say
It’s just gonna be that way

 

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If I Was Ever Going to Say It

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Last night, everything still,
I still, all the people still, the world still,
A dream slipped in
Like a memory, not a dream.

He didn’t say Hello
He just said, Hey.
Hey. I got over it,
He said. The way you do.
It wasn’t so hard, or so bad.

And the time we live in now
Is the important thing
When nobody has to say I love you
Which is really Goodbye
Because nobody’s dying.

Then he told a joke.

Then I learned there wasn’t
A single moment
I could have changed.
Just all of them.

Later the stillness broke,
I waking, the whole world waking
As the line of dawn runs around the world
And the sky brightens and then
Everything starts to hum
Like there’s something inside everything.

That was the time to say Goodbye,
If I was ever going to say it.

 

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The Geology of Slush

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SONY DSCThe dirty snow
As it retreats
Leaves small moraines
Upon the streets;

But melt that flows
Into the drains
Deposits eskers
Not moraines.

A moraine (as the Encyclopædia Britannica reliably informs) is an accumulation of rock debris that has been carried or shoved, then dropped or abandoned, by a glacier. A moraine is a jumble, for all it may deposited more or less neatly:

Glacier National Park, Montana. Terminal moraine at the foot ...

An esker (says, again, Encyclopædia Britannica) is a ridge deposited by a subglacial or englacial meltwater stream, with the deposited material generally sorted by grain size–the sort of attention to detail one would expect from flowing water. “Eskers may range from 16 to 160 feet (5 to 50 m) in height, from 160 to 1,600 feet (500 m) in width, and [from] a few hundred feet to tens of miles in length.” So:

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A tip of the hat to James Harbeck at Sesquiotica, for his learned discourse upon the history and flavor of the word esker.

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Question Mark

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We’re not so happy in the future,
Are we, dear? Indeed, we’re not as happy here
As once we were; and what’s the future, but the past
Sharpened to a point at last?

Time’s our sentence, marked with doubt
Just as a question ought:
So from its terminating period, a plume
Rises like smoke; like foolish hope; like doom.

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