Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
what i had taken for a path
you knew to be home
your long striped road of a body
coiled in last year’s leaves
poised for whatever the first
day of spring might bring
to a hill scarred and scoured
by centuries of exploitation
i study your legless stance
you gaze off to the north
your tongue flickering
i hold out marshmallow hands
show me how to inhabit
one thought at a time
even if i cannot simply
crawl out of an old skin
i could hone my cravings
till they’re small and sharp
the morning’s only cloud
rises from the paper mill
beside the bypass
with its thump-thump of tires
going elsewhere at seventy
miles per hour
as death comes
to a white-footed mouse
struggling in a trap
spring dulled by rust
the wide-screen tv
still in sleep mode
below the old skull mount
twelve antler points scored
by rodent teeth
a hat-rack now
zebra stripes of road salt
out on his black truck
and a cracked rib that aches
when they hug
only to pull apart
gazing up wordless
as silver syllables tumble down
from tundra swans
it was just then
she’ll tell you years later
craning my neck I felt
your first kick
this ignorance of mine is deep
as the cloudless sky
in which a small
woodpecker is tapping
having somehow heard
the faint stirring of a grub
i follow a deer track
to its source in a deer bed
a snow-free patch of leaves
shaped like a body
in the pines in the pines
where the sun comes undone
i follow a creak
to its source in the wind
rocking an oak snag
upon which so much must hinge
a barred owl query at noon
elicits a raven croak
this too is poetry
i only have to listen
Short Mountain
February 18, 2024
i compose myself
for the sniper
the hundred-year flood
the flint of winter
spring-loaded
like a mountain rabbit
i could be the type specimen
for a new extremophile
hardy as a tardigrade
tender as an endolith
the laundry basket holds
all my changes of heart
still warm
from the late Carboniferous
like the wood lice
that wander under rocks
i am crepuscular
my sky is stern
uncanny heat
for the tenth of February
but the creek’s trickle still hits
the right notes after dark
the evening jets rumble
somewhere out of mind
i disturb a sparrow
in the juniper tree
that holds my house close
to its accretionary trunk
and the fluttering of wings
where a heart would beat
tells me to go bury my head
under the blankets
to bed down with the radio
dead air hissing in my ear
and dream a killing floor
of windblown sand
where pump jacks raise
and lower their horse heads
and flare stacks
burn eternally
for unknown soldiers
it’s essential to keep
the necromance young
the lovely refrigerator
humming in my kitchen
depends on it
and the space heater
and the halloween ladybugs
awakening in the walls
too early
with a burning thirst
like a bloodshot eye
with a black pupil
crab-walking across my knee
a blacklegged tick
oh lovely horror
i take three photos
then decapitate
with a persistent thumbnail
the meek are inheriting the earth
with increasing speed
last night i came home
to an old cocoon
from one of the giant silkworms
lying on my doorstep
fabricated from a single leaf
like a dolma tied with silk
long since vacated
and weathered to old gold
and now the wind has taken
some interest in it
this empty shroud
that gave birth to wings
and to think i almost didn’t
crouch down to look
where does it come from
this disinclination
to get down close
and attend to the details
where the devil is said to dwell
among the flies
forefeet coming together
like prayerful hands
that’s what will finish us off
the piety of carrion-lovers
i tell a clump of sagging puffballs
on a stump beside the trail
their blunderbusses pointed
up down and sideways
i give one a tap
the smallest gray cloud of spores
spurts out and rides
off on the wind
Plummer’s Hollow, February 9, 2024
in the stories i tell myself
i am sour milk
good for pancakes
or a cat if i had one
sitting somewhere warm
fur shining white
i am empty-handed
and approximately dressed
but look how much pine
can be knit just from sunlight
evergreen needles
barely moving
though i feel an icy breath
on the back of my neck
coming out of the rocks
where i’ve arranged my seat
just below the crest
of a high wooded spine
the tall pine is hollow
with a stripe of dead wood
from a devastating flash
severing the present
from the past with its absence
of woodpeckers
i follow the shadow
to a seedling pine
on a small carpet of moss
laid out on the rocks
the stories shed
their owl pellets
time to hunker down and scavenge
the best bits
Rothrock State Forest above Barree
Feb. 3, 2024
a clarinetist crossing
the country by bus
gives his instrument
the window seat
locked in its case
dreaming of a sea of reeds
old ice dull as the eye
of a dead turtle
yellow stumps of alders
carved by yellow teeth
where waterlogged oaks
grow skirts of moss
and a thorn forest reclaims
an abandoned pasture
a school bus has graduated
it sports a satellite dish
encircled by the sighs
of half-dead pines
the musician’s fingers
grow restless on his lap
caught in the clarinet’s
clear net
shadows on the snow
stretched out as if in prayer
the sound made by a spring
as ice smothers it
news that breaks and breaks
on slow snowshoes left right
here the urgent leaps
of a white-footed mouse
there a coyote pair
taking turns breaking trail
squirrels in heat
their labyrinthine urges
skeletal feathers of frost
where a vole is breathing
all just uphill from the interstate
a thing shown on maps
and a town in the mountains
taken over by mountains of snow
in every parking lot
another white peak
the pigeons rise
become a flock of rock doves
revolving in the blue
like a stuck tire
a connoisseur of oblivion
i begin with small omissions
goodbye to the twigs of my fingers
farewell to the far in my feet
my neglected face goes feral
till i’m lost in a forest of fur
closer and closer to the color of snow
as i grow colder
away from any furrow
burrowing into the twilight
catching flakes on my tongue
that taste like nothing else
*
Chionophiles are any organisms (animals, plants, fungi, etc.) that can thrive in cold winter conditions (the word is derived from the Greek word chion meaning “snow”, and -phile meaning “lover”). These animals have specialized adaptations that help them survive the harshest winters.
Wikipedia