Prologue:
It takes a deep breath to quell the pressure,
jokes that a blank page looks like snow,
assures everyone the ink will be green.
We ask for more lamb and less lion.
Both characters are essential to the plot,
it replies, but I’ll consider it.
1. Epic Fury
It’s the season of grief,
though next of kin haven’t been notified.
It’s the season to drape ourselves in colors
like coffins arriving from the front lines.
It’s the season for patriotism,
for dollar store flags made in China.
It’s the season for men in uniforms
to stand on porches, hat in hand.
It’s the season of war –
have you decorated yet?
2. Ghosts
The past is a like dead shadow
I drag around the house.
Some nights I am in the company
of all my former selves
who don’t mean to haunt me,
they just have nowhere else to go.
3. Blood Moon
She hides in my umbra, slowly coagulating
like an old wound reopened.
I keep her close, direct wavelengths like traffic,
scatter the blue, bend the red toward her,
let her grieve for the things she has witnessed.
Tomorrow she will emerge from the shadows
wearing her classic pearl gown, smiling on cue.
But she will remember; yes, she will remember.
4. Maybe
A sudden jubilee?
An unscheduled miracle
arriving just in time?
5. Classic Rock
I heard a long beloved song;
it occurred to me how old it was,
and that I remembered when it was new.
I felt such a sense of loss.
6. Wind
The March wind speaks clearly
of the man in my childhood home
who mumbles in the dialect
of dementia and surrender,
who remembers what didn’t happen,
who often forgets his son’s name.
The wind swirls soberly around me,
offering the first condolences
for the telegraphed death
occurring just behind the door.
All winter I breathed
and listened to the clock,
and now the wind fills my lungs,
and now it measures time,
and now it is prophetic and wise.
It follows me into the house,
it gently lifts the curtains,
it blesses the photographs,
it sounds like a song
that wasn’t meant to be a requiem.
I know it will happen soon.
I think the wind knows too.
7. I Hear You
But there are chord changes that trigger dopamine,
and poems just heavy enough to tip your scales.
There is still a cardinal perched on a lamp post,
and a pair of misfit dogs to save you every night.
There are infinite blends of ethical coffee,
and libraries about to escape from their pens.
There are fields abloom solely because you noticed,
and there is no one who can challenge that claim.
There are angels in sweat soaked uniforms
pulling the levers of the world on your behalf.
Somewhere, silence has just won a staring contest.
And those scars? Lacquer and powdered gold.
8. Three
a. Daylight Savings
Earth practices his dance moves,
the clock washes his face and hands,
Selene searches for a missing contact lens,
the calendar smuggles daylight,
and we all become time travelers
folding the morning into a smaller morning.
b. A Death
Why do we expect stars
to dislodge from the sky,
leap into our hands
and explain themselves?
c. International Women’s Day
One half of us
holds all of us together.
9. Gone
Your absence ..
unmelted ice
cracks in your glass.
10. Dark Energy
Everyone
is moving toward
and moving away from
everyone else.
11. What (part 1)
What is courage
but trudging on despite fear?
12. Nevermind
See above.
13. Just For Today
Let’s turn down volumes,
tear up notes, stop overthinking,
and accept blank parchment
with messages in its margins.
14. Mid
This is the time that cannot decide;
this is a brief arrangement of dust and fire,
a body breathing air older than language;
this is the flower moon texting from the future,
the split second nature of lions and lambs;
this is a box of ashes carried across a border,
a storm imported from the recent past;
this is grass poking through white crust
like stubble on an old man’s face;
this is the ghost noise between radio stations,
the infrastructure’s bend-don’t-break strategy;
this is a throng of people in the distance
cheering for something beyond my sight,
and this is me, grappling with the idea
that sometimes, it’s better not to know.
15. What (part 2)
What is discernment
but finding meaning in feedback
and the silence between notes?
16. A Monday
Rain falls;
it has nothing
else to do
17. Green (St. Patrick’s Day)
Green arrives gradually
like a mulled-over decision,
leans into the sun and rain,
bleeds like watercolor into everything.
Green is a soft insistence,
an answer to unasked questions.
See? I was only sleeping,
the earth says.
18. Anima
She doesn’t need a name,
the dark doesn’t need a name –
but I call her Lavendar,
and I call it Always.
I don’t know why.
19. The Day Of
The clock ticks –
an empire is built,
an empire collapses.
20. Equinox
It is rumored there will be blossoms
breaking through earth, shaking off dust,
and sunlight to greet me in the morning
with the gentle, creaking rhythm of a faithful dog.
Word is there will be music in new leaves,
and everywhere the clean snap of colorful flags.
I’ve heard fences will become places of meeting,
and time will gather in hollows like rainwater.
Someone predicted an outbreak of miracles
from which no one on earth will be immune.
There are murmurs that lions will be vegetarians,
lambs will rise up like benevolent kings,
and we will all, finally, lay down our arms.
But let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves.
We shall take the small wins we are granted –
the jonquils, the stars, the puddles of time,
the pomeranian, the aria, the neighbor –
and pray to be startled by what is coming.
21. Verity
Everything
has one thing in common
with everything else –
it will end.
22. Narraubade
To be here with you for two nights
feels more like an exile than a visit
because I am still myself, as far as I know,
but you are a stranger. It’s not your fault.
I knew you when you were yourself,
when you still remembered my name,
the name I inherited from you.
Outside the window across from your bed
there is darkness, there is rain,
and the tail lights of a passing car
getting smaller, growing dimmer.
23. Black Oak
The day loses its grip
one finger at a time;
darkness drips like syrup
onto the edges of everything.
A sick bed remembers a body,
water holds its shape in a glass.
Outside, something unnamed
moves through the branches
without caring if we notice.
24. Sentence
So much of life
consists of moving rocks
from one pile to another.
25. Meta
This day has too many metaphors;
I need a map with one dart in it.
26. What (part 3)
And what is wisdom
but knowing a room is the same
with the light on or off?
27. Finitude
It must be inevitable,
it must be imminent –
all possible love triangles of words
will play out like sitcom plots,
every music note will come
before and after every other,
every configuration of clay,
of crystal and granite and ivory,
every combination of color
will be reduced to mere addresses
of lost lane ends and gravestones.
The world must overwrite itself.
There will be no untold stories,
only abstractions we cannot articulate –
swarms of molecules rustling the world,
our unlikeliness in a vacant universe.
Neighbors will nod across fences,
spouses will practice telepathy,
believers will put away their wish lists
and bow, and wait, and listen;
poets will gather themselves
like sweaters from the backs of chairs,
go back to their sodding and seeding,
their overalls and waterwheels.
And all of us, when we try to speak,
will realize the world already ended
and we are just noticing now.
28. Change Is Its Own Form Of Repetition
Today is contradicting itself;
it seems off kilter, wobbly,
like warped vinyl changing speeds.
29. Palm Sunday
Hosanna! they cried
as he entered Jerusalem,
a revolutionary who would topple sin and death
instead of Rome,
a king whose realm was the heart
instead of the land.
30. War Poem
The war is over, but refuses to leave –
it sits on the curb like a man without a ride.
A shop owner sweeps the sidewalk,
each back and forth motion saying
it’s mine – this ruin, this exquisite grief.
In the newly reopened market,
a woman gently shakes pomegranates,
then chooses the quietest ones.
Children return to their games
as if they had merely been paused,
and resume their argument over the rules.
The day is oddly beautiful, and yet
the oak trees move tentatively,
having lost their trust in the sky.
At night, the town settles in slow motion
until somewhere a door slams
and everyone wakes with a start.
The dead rearrange the living,
who weakly declare the war is over,
but their words hover in the ether,
prayers with no clear destination.
31. Apollo’s Lament
The wild hyacinth returns,
its royal poison bleeding into air.
Epilogue:
My work here is done,
says the lamb.
Behold my successor ..
A groundhog appears,
hungry, horny, defiant.
