The last three days worth of poems

When building space stations,
space itself
is a matter of concern:
the space around
the station itself,

the too cramped
space within

room for little
except to breathe


Lingering,
yesterday’s image
now
nurtured,
keeping 
all
near,
not
escaping--
conversations in the hall
something about
poetry

The ache
of the impossible

Finally, this spring
a day with
warmth

 
That some truck
hit a bridge
so that the train
was delayed
and I caught
busses
instead.

Chaos of contingency
and accident

(In the rush
I almost forgot
your birthday)

Quiet before storm

Here are today's and yesterday's poems

Some afternoon
or when
passing a slow
hour
in a quiet classroom
and watching
her 
at work,

brow creased
her attention 

focused,
her eyes distant



walking the edge
of storm,
a static energy
in the gathering 
clouds
air stirring
with
expectation

Life exists
at the edge

Sudden rain
suddenly
bright

Angst

Longer
than the dark
has wrapped
the space
between stars,
before this
a gnat’s
now
beating wings:

As if it never happened

Nothing
after

MayDay

From elsewhere--
who is
not? What
we have labored
to build
or salvage
or demolish
or
not

Chaos always
at the beginning

“Yes”

Climate March

It is too late
to undo
the changes:
ice melts,
tornados reap
the mid-west 
fields,
tides rise.

410 millebars
of C02

“Deserts grow”
said Nietzsche 
long ago,
though speaking
of mental
or spiritual
deserts.
The dunes shift.
Winds curl
a fine sand
off the dune’s
crest,
thoughts 
sweat
in slow
unrest

Mowing

Smell 
of cut
grass,
wet,
as crows
fly
toward
a
gray
sky,
and the mower
chokes
clogged.

Clover, mostly
not grass.

A hundred 
days doesn’t get you
what it used to.
This break in the rain
our one chance
with only
rain ahead.
Hard? Listen,
it doesn’t
get easier
from here.

Light

Darkness
is not absence
of—it has
a weight.
It settles
over the shoulders
like a coat.

It presses
against
windows.

Light, rather,
is the absence
of dark.
The morning
is weightless:
all the leaves
and pollen
drift
in sun shaft
without
gravity.
in the light
anyone
can fly

Cipher

Two eagles
nest
by the landfill
(a magnate
for rodents?)
I wish I could
be as enigmatic

as this evening sky

a hermetic code,
a cipher
of eagles
and highways,
of broken limbs
and green,
and of black crows
scattering
before a bluing screen
of a darkening
sky

What can I say?

Is this a poem?
the wind
trembles
through new leaves.
It is cold
and I am
tired.

(Tax cuts
for plutocrats)

Can one
(me)
pull words
from the thinnest
air? What can I
say to
disperse this 
cold spring?
What do I say?
Can this day
sing?

Mistakes

(No winter
wetter,
the archives
concur)
When building space stations,
best not to cloud
facts
with ego.

Bluster
does not matter.

Mistakes
must be owned
and shared
as soon
as discovered;
as with politicians
(most of whom
have never
acknowledged 
this trait)
lives
depend
on it.

Geese

Another day 
splattered 
like rain 
against the windshield. 
The cold breeze 
scuffs 
the brown 
surface 
of puddles. 

Another day 
to work. 

Wild geese 
preen 
under their wings, 
wandering between 
rails, pecking 
at spilled grain. 
A passing train's 
whistle 
startles: 
flying wedge 
against 
gray

The Day After

Every day
is the day
after
some day:
every day
carries
a weariness
from the day
before.

Which is to say

I am tired.
Which is to say
the dull gray
of these featureless 
skies, suffers
in comparison
with those brilliant
skies
yesterday.

Catching up

Here are the poems for the 17th through the 22. I was traveling.

*
Counting words or counting birds
in the alder trees along
the river. Seventeen crows haunting
the branches

New leaves glow green

against the never-ending gray.
Each crow its own shadow,
each word its own stone
disturbing the silence
 
*
An Armada
martials
a certain rhetorical
madness
off the coast
of Korea
“Mother,
will there be
war?”

None whom I trust.
Listen,

the leaves struggle
to unfold
despite the unseasonable
rhetoric.
New buds swell
on twigs
pushing toward
flower

 *
Wind turbines
rising 
from behind
the low curve
of the hill.
Driving toward
twilight
into the dark.

An “expected death”
illness

Growing old,
it seems,
even if falsely,
that the world
grows old
with you,
the familiar
always fading
away.


 *
Falling 
into silence
those familiar
voices
that mingled
with the television
over couches,
clatter
of kitchen tables.

Cold:
this driving rain.

Gray hairs
and shoulders wet
settling in the pews
remembering
stories
they have told
time and again
over numberless
years
 
*

Or that everything
has changed
is
or that everything
goes away
and is replaced
is
or that

(so many are gone)

But,
conversations
over spaghetti
and wine,
the old mixed
with the new:
the stories
that are finished,
the stories
now beginning
 

*
Topping the hill,
falling
into endless sky,
storms stalking
the horizon
their darkness
eating
the fading
light

Mountains crowned
with cumulus

Slant light
on pavement,
aspen leaves,
gold,
blinding off
the river’s water
beside the highway
the song
of the tires
humming 
home.

Easter

Morning star,
evening star--
that the world egg
should hatch
flowers
(grape hyacinth’s
purple stain
in grass)

This was Venus’ day.

The proclivities
of rabbits
being, for one,
a sign
of her influence
in the returning
world

Lobsters

“Two men walking:
One will be thinking
of Plato, the other
of lobsters”
Emerson.
(Platonic lobster dreams)

When building space stations

One must account
for the differences of imagination
and focus them
on the same dream.

Good Friday

“For whom
is this day
good?” Fair
to ask.
Whispers
of disaster
everywhere.
When words
are bombs.

If the rain stops

If the world
continues
beyond this cloudy
horizon,
if there will be
summer
days

Currents

Child in bed:
conversations
heard through the walls
of the room:
creek bottom quiet
of their voices.

So much is gone.

Or going. 
Stone turned or sliding
click and sigh
under 
cold currents’
slide

Tree

All 
that there 
is
about the tree
growing skyward
that we can never 
touch:
its gathering 
leaves.

All that there is

The root
of all 
that is not
us. We 
can never
know

Optimism

Amid the gravel
of the railyard,
the remnant puddles
mirror
a bright sky
no one believes in.

Unobscured,
the mountain rises

It is far too early
in a long day
for optimism.

Wisdom

Stillness
or the quiet
passing of a moment
here
in the room
afterwards.
Morning sunlight,
afternoon rain.

(as if it ever)

As if I ever
should embrace
or possess
such wisdom

Ocean Poems

Here are the poems for the April 7th, 8th and 9th. I had little or no internet during those days

Roar  
and rattle 
of the wind 
off the sea, 
combing back  
the blond 
dune grass: 
Spring storm. 

Watching from behind glass 

Longing somehow 
to be at its center 


 
 
A half dozen horses 
tethered  
on the beach, 
standing by the white ranks 
of pounding surf. 
(airstrikes) 

Waiting for riders,  
quietly 

(this is how war begins 
(or doesn’t) 
riderless. 
 


What must  
be 
ten thousand 
sandpipers 
skim over wet sands, 
bank 
and swarm 
over the gray surf 

There are no words 

Equestrian tourists 
trot 
up the beach 
beside this  
miracle 
 
 
 
 

Rests

It is the stops and rests
that matter most
that give the tones
their phrasing,
their boundaries

I need deeper silences

Edges to define
the hidden center

this day

This, first,
always,
what words define
a day,
this moment,
on the train,
looking out at the train.

Muddy ruts flooded fields

Birds,
giving it all meaning

blizzard

A blizzard 
of pink petals
in a gust of wind.
The smell
of fresh rain
on asphalt

The mild scented air

Talking war
with Korea

Serious

A blur of green
among the branches
bud leaves.
(Serious absence)
the promise of the day,
lost.

The trees will green.

What’s lost found?

Soot

Their coal fired dreams
of soot
covering their deceptions--
((rising seas to erase
the rest)
(coastal elites))

(Predictions for sunshine
exaggerated)

(Yesterday’s
beers)

half marathon

This is for yesterday, the first

The cherry trees
blossom
beside the river,
beside the trail
where runners
run
toward some
imagined
goal.

(beer colored memories
later)

(victories)

Respite

The cats
are restless
and alert,
sensing the stir
of airs and wings
beyond
the window’s glass.

(like a lamb?)

High clouds
thinning
toward blue.
(The news
is anything
but new)
One wants 
to forget
all but
the scent
of hyacinth
and daffodil,
in this brief
respite
from cold
and rain

Orting, WA

The river
rages
between the banks
furious
to find the sea,
foaming
over stone,
tearing
at roots.

Mountain
behind
clouds.

This town
built
on the graves
of forests.
The boulder
in the park
placed there
millennia ago.
Real estate agents
whisper their
required warnings
then smile.
Profit
before
people
always

autobiography

Scrapbooks,
disconnected tales
we tell around
photographs,
the context lost,
but re-imagined,
the narrative
of a life

Of our lives

That memory
is fiction:
scraps of recall,
scraps of stories
we have told
so often
they become true,
dream scraps
that lost their place
in shadow,
words
filling gaps

Bored with rain

The stems
of last Summer’s
petunias
stand in concrete
urns, trailing
webbed leaves
in coffee
colored water.

Still,
it rains.

Now that they can
sell my history,
any history,
will they try
to sell
these rainy days,
my restless
boredom,
pulling one book 
after another
off 
dusty shelves

fragments of uncertain location

Fragments
of uncertain
location: We
mortals make
cities, he
could not decipher
the apocryphal
text (secret,
mysterious)

(if Prometheus molded)

Larks dart
through midday
over sea,
no smoke rises
from a poet’s
sacrifice
(and you’re not 
of some
other clay)
I sing only
what
is well
attested.

gods

I awoke
to the sound
of wild geese
flying overhead,
my mind
still lingering
in the dark.

Dreams, 
still vivid.

Down shadowed
stairwells
to a cellar
with a hard dirt floor.
Looking
not finding.
She said:
We do not
pursue
the gods; 
the gods
pursue
us

Crumbs

(Whatever 
I dreamt 
of
has vanished
in the gray 
light
leaking through 
a gap
in the curtains

less than fragments

crumbs, 
perhaps,
pecked from the grass
by the robins
that hop through
the back yard,
then startle,
all at once
at a stray dog’s
bark)

Contigency

I wrote this yesterday, but posted today

They will
afford
you no care.
“Failure to thrive,”
they say of thin infants.
So this
government

Building space stations

One must plan
for every
contingency,
have a clear path
for consensus
for moving forward
every life
depends on clarity
of function
and action.

Already

There will be
new leaves,
already
two cherry trees
brighten
the dull slope
above 
the railroad
tracks.

Spring sunlight slants

across mud
rutted fields,
clouds, already,
muting the sun.
The silver light
dulling
to pewter
on the long rows
of standing 
water

Eaves

The eaves
on which the pigeons
sit, is stained
with green strips
from moss
and continual
rain.

(They fly away)

The windows
in the brick
below are curtained
closed--
nothing to see
out here
where the sun
has turned
away
from us

Daffodills

All things 
being equal, 
can we,
at last,
dispel the darkness
which has crept
into every
corner?

(This vernal dawn)

It does not take
a congressional
investigation
to uncover
the surprising yellow
of these daffodils
blooming
among cut
rose bushes

Life support systems

When making space stations
it is not enough
to consider only
the power
and life support systems.

One must consider

the life
which systems
were designed to support.
They will not be
perfect
machines.
One malfunction
could
endanger
all.

cages

This was written yesterday, but late and I was too tired to enter it into the blog

despite 
the absent
sun, birds
pic through
the growing grass
and spreading
clover—spring
won’t be
denied.

(the music died)

(your lies
are the bars
of a cage
you can’t escape:
none of this day’s
promises
are yours)

Last train

This was actually written yesterday, but I didn't get it posted until today.

So,
last train home,
or maybe,
some different track
entirely,
switched
to a side rail
to idle.

The curious crows

hopping beside a puddle
standing water
everywhere
mute testimony
to these winter rains
resisting
any spring
sign

judgements

Budgeting 
fear,
as if walls
and tanks
made anyone
safe.
(blue skies
drifting
back to gray)
sad-
ness

A departing airplane

Day-
dreams of
Hawaii
where warm seas
wash pristine
sands
and
Palms sway 
content in
sound
judgement

Damp protest

“Beware—“
the rain’s
tyranny
oppresses these
gray afternoons.
The sodden
policies
of resistance.
These silver
rivulets.

Banners of sunlight

limp on poles
carried
ahead of the damp march
forward
toward a more
brilliant
spring.

PI

The circle
I draw
in the sand
becomes
the moon
on water
when the tide
washes
in

The imprecise ratio

“If nature
had to calculate 
Pi . . . ,
there would be
no bubbles”
(Buckminster Fuller
attrib.)

Equation

Skin-
script: equation
inked from
elbow to wrist,
the gist of which
explains all,
or some,
of it.

A waveform
collapse

The realized instant
(unexpected
white crocuses
in rain) the cat
is merely 
annoyed.

Crocuses

A few petals
despite
the cold
as if maybe
spring
or
that there is
some breath
beyond

Cluster of crocuses

A
ragged purple
beside the sidewalk
among
last year’s
dead
leaves

algorhythms

The algo-
rhythmic
dance 
of ignorance
and defeat--
the wind
whips
the banners
above the street:
swirling
litter.

Hold your hat.

If you
iterate
over your steps
the sequence
becomes
clear.

Shadows

There are no
data
for how the rain
bleeds light
from the day:
trees limbs weave
shadow.

The dampness intrudes

A certain dimness
spreads
from the conference
hall corners

Refuse

Taking refuge
amid
the refuse:
tent pitched
under an overpass.
Drum of
commerce
on the highway
overhead.

At the edges—

(a side glance
out the window
passing by)

Ash

This moment's
moment
after, the taste
of ash
in the mouth--
sometimes
I embrace
the rain: 
standing
wet.

Listen, 
or not—

Starlings
rising from railyards
shards
of thought.

Standing Water

Some-_
thing
about the bright
water that stands
open
in every field
distracts me
from the usual 
lies.

(Shards from dreams)

No patience
for platitudes
this morning

Restlessness

When
the promise
of bright mornings,
falls
to the restlessness
of dull afternoons
(a vague unease

(what’s left undone

(as if
given enough
time)))

Green Lake

The surface of the lake
borrows its colors
from all
that surrounds it:
white aspen,
sky,
clouds.

This encircling trail.

We too reflecting,
reflected.

Recusal

Spring has 
recused
itself. The wind
chimes attest
winter will never
end. The trees
sway in concert.

These cold mornings.

Rain blur
afternoons

This day

For every day, there is a day
in which it
is no longer
remembered, 
its light lost—

(his late recusal)

this day

Reflections

Trees, standing in water, 
paint the surface--
these one-time skies--
a gaggle of wild geese
caught between

Wetlands beside warehouses

March

Purifications

After this cleansing
month, 
the impure is
still impure.
What has ever
changed?
Snow traces
mud ruts.

Wet Fields

stretch toward
the mountain
obscured
in cloud.
I should say
something
that matters, 
but the matter’s
unclear.
Too many words
spilled
to no purpose.
Puddles 
mirror
gray skies.

snow lightning

Snow
              lightning:
we have 
hidden
the lancing light
in a confusion
of flurries. Thunder
rattles
office windows.

As if

the storm were hidden
within a white
gauze, a veiled
secret, an
impossible wound
of energy
and anger,
torn,
from the brilliance
of which,
perhaps,
a hope.

Space Stations III

When building space stations,
it is wise
to double check
everything. No one
is immune
to lapses.

Earth light

through port glass
blue seas
and brown continents
under swirls
of white cloud.
Only disciplined
precision
and a cultivated
attention
allows
a pause
before such 
beauty

More Snow

Bright morning
dims
into a gray afternoon
                     /   It’s not as if
                         we can name
                         the day’s
                         sadness

A whisper

of rain
that might turn to snow
in our dreams,
adrift,
in the endless
white hallways
we wander
looking for rooms
whose purpose
we forgot.

Light

Beetle thoughts
exposed
scurry into darkness.
Light is
“the enemy
of the people”
We feed
on Shadow.

Tell me

Dawn grays
revealing
the morning
for exactly
what it is:
an old horse,
blanket on its back,
stands
steaming
alone
in a frosted
field.

Flurries

Just enough
to whiten
the blackberry
leaves, to give
the firs
a ghostly presence
in the dawn.

Wet flurries.

White tracings,
a gray world.
Some days
we need a lightening
to remember,
some days
we need
a cold kiss
on the brow

Nausea

Nausea 
was Sartre’s
metaphor
for existence:
bending
over the sawdust
after 
a carnival ride
(so many
memories)

The ride

The seemingly
endless
whirl, the constant
assault on
equilibrium
as the world
turns
upside down
sideways
and back
(as the stomach
churns)

Read

That he doesn’t
read
is perhaps
condemnation
enough. (flicker
of late night
TV news (what 
pundits
pontificate))

(about nothing)

Nothing to hold
on to
when the ground’s
washed away
beneath him
adrift in
muddy waters
with coke bottles,
Styrofoam
cups

Solon

“If
you suffer
through your
own fault,
don’t blame
gods.
You walk
in the footsteps
of foxes”

(Solon’s words)

“Your minds are
sponges,
You listen to a man’s
tongue
and clever words
and never look
to what 
he does.”

Rain

Since the ab-
normal
has become
the normal (so that
the rain,
in its very
mundaneness, 
is comforting)

(So that

So when
the next news
breaks,
we can look out
at wet streets
and damp lawns
and carry
on.

Dream

In a dream,
I flew above a road,
gliding
toward a vista
I knew
was spectacular.

Optimistic dream.

Waking, less so.
The dawn
shrouded in fog,
veiling rain.
No grand vistas
on the horizon
this morning.

Mud slides and crows

Mud slides
(actual
(and figurative))
so many roads
blocked.
This quiet morning
blue skies
between rain
squalls.

Crows caw:

Messengers 
from another world,
They glide
into the trees
and warn us
of the troubles
just ahead.

Where have we spoken

Where have we
spoken
of it? (Here, 
or in the hallways,
on the street
corner) these
words

or those--

When words matter, 
when what 
we say
has some purpose
or some
currency--
what if
then

Lupricalia

There are wolves
enough.
Maybe we should run
naked
through the streets
snapping people
with leather thongs.

Purifications.
Aversions.

Maybe drive
the evil spirits 
(the men)
who would rule us
back
into the dark.

Valentine

Say it is
habit, 
habituated, 
inhabited:
this place
we call
home; this place
we sometimes
call love—

A holiday.

(A way to push
consumption:
the floral industry
and chocolates.
A saint
without identity.

Commute

Rising sun
through fog,
shining
on puddles,
threaded
between furrows
in fields.
A wedge
of wild geese.

Commuter morning.

World framed
in a train window:
always the same
yet
different
each day.

Light

Wild geese on the lawn
beside the lake
gray skies
thinning
to blue: sudden
clarities of view--

Sound judgements.

The light on the fir boughs,
the flash off the gull’s wings

Valve

Building a space station:
one cannot
prejudice
facts. Wanting
a valve to close
does not
close it.

Venting air

is not a matter
of opinion.
Alternate narratives
lead to
suffocation.

History

Gone as quickly
as it came
so much more
than the snow.
Puddles scuffed
by the wind.

What persists

What is not silenced
in the end
is called
history

break

Through a break
in the clouds, 
the sun
shines through
rain drops streaked
on the office
window

just now

one moment
of clear sky
before dark clouds
return

light

Rain
on snow: 
pewter puddles
in white fields, 
where crows
rise—an unnamable
quality
of this light—

While courts

decide legalities
of exclusion,
the sky
opens
wide.

Paeduma

Trees
have mostly shed
their burden--
snow heavy
on the ground.
(schools canceled
hallways
empty,
adrift)

((No paeduma 

(No inconvenient 
facts
to rain
on snow))

Snow II

Is it fake news
that the snow
has whitewashed
everything overnight.
(erasures)
White tufts
clotting 
bare twigs.

All traffic

stopped.  Blank slate
for fresh 
contemplations

Snow

Snow again
to cover
this young year
in silence. The streets:
black wounds
in the white.
(gleaming)

Say nothing.

Say this: 
the dreamer
awakes.

Murmurations

A moment’s stay:
(murmurations)
starlings sweeping
between trees,
against
(framed in glass)
a gray 
screen of sky

((our interiors)

windows
to the world)

Space Stations II

building space stations:
the breaths we breathe
poison us,
moisture condenses
on the walls
without filtration systems

simple necessities

for living 
together

Shadows

So, 
if the day's 
shadows
are long (the light pole
bent over the train
platform) 
this cold morning

Or, winter

without
end

Purifications

The rites of purification
are (this cold, 
bitter wind) 
(even the rains
were not enough
to wash)

(burning sage)

(juniper)

City

The Olympics
crystal
bright
in the morning light
on the western
horizon
behind tall,
red
harbor cranes

(trains)

Steam plumes
from stacks
beside harbored ships, 
swarms of gulls
above stacked
containers. The daily
ride into the city
past warehouse decks, 
tarmacs, 
skyscrapers ablaze
on the skyline.
(Sanctuary
for resistance)

Strangers

“Both strangers
and beggars
are from the gods,”
sang Homer:
the rites
of hospitality
in inhospitable
worlds.

(estrangements)

“Strangers
were found
in places
where the presence
of strangers
had previously
been unsuspected:
the process. . .
undid
the familiar.”
Foucault.
We’ve turned
everyone
into strangers
denying
the gods.

Tarmacs

Sunlight
filtered through
fir boughs
and bare
limbs. Morning
shadows
on the winter lawns.
Take
a breath.

Pause.

No longer
the hope
that we claimed
to be. Dreams
shatter
on the tarmac.
Everything
feels smaller
somehow.
The pale sunlight
fades
as clouds
return. As always,
the rain.

Closed Borders

Nothing
crosses the borders
of your closed
mind.
Drapes are shut
fearing
the view
from the window

contradict

illusions.
You are small
and afraid
behind too big
a desk.
The world outside
can die
at the foot of your wall.
You will deny
even
the bones.

Outrages

Frost
that melts
as soon
as the sun
touches
(a few
white patches
lingering
in shadow)

Outrages

These days 
in which we live,
beyond anger.
The last requirement:
to deny
what you see:
the moon
is the sun
and the sun
will never
rise.

January 25, 26

*
Rain 
has embraced
this city again.
You wonder 
what she sees 
in these streets.
Wet 
sidewalks
glistening.

(Sanctuary)

Rain
murmuring 
down drains, 
caressing windshields
of stopped cars, 
red light
smeared like blood 
on black 
pavement.
Undocumented,
but fresh, 
she gives
the city
life.

*
When we walked
just beyond
the breakers fall, 
the blue
and clouds
painted
on slate sands 
(sandpipers)

(gulls)

(((so much more
than I
ever hoped,
you) a world
that is,
perhaps,
less) still,
this day
with its memories
of salt spray
and moving
skies)

January 23, 24

*
Gulls float,
mirrored
and remirrored
between
bank towers,
(captains
of capitalism)
banking
away—
beneath
high 
thin cirrus

(habitual)

The commute,
a mobius loop,
home to work
to (the question
is 
one of action,
or escape
from perpetual
inaction)
The question
is


*
Steam flows
down
from a chimney
drifts across
a rooftop.
Construction cranes
tower above 
the city.
Crows.

Colder

than it will be
(warming world)
(let it bake:
their policy--
let the tides 
wash
through Miami’s
streets.)
Sludge from pipelines
plopping
into streams.

January 21, 22

*
2 eagles overhead
raise cheers
from the gathered
crowd, now
that the day
of reassessment
is come

(auspicious)

If millions flood
the streets,
surely
some debris 
will be washed
away;
if millions shout
surely
someone hears
(and cannot
deny)


*
The air is still,
but heavy.
The gray firs
are hushed
their limbs
un-
moving.
Burden
of sky.

(weighted)

That there are
no
“alternative facts.”
The tactic is
delegitimize 
and lie;
that with each
morning
they’d erase
the previous
night

January 19, 20

*
The day before
the day
in which all our beginnings
end (cryptic
disclosures (encrypted
answers))
(tea leaves.)

Prognostications.

So many words
spill like blood on the ground.
You have talked
until you are empty,
a wordless
ghost.


*
“that
every poem
has a 20th of January”
What do the augurs 
see
in the gathering
crows?

Inauspicious:

bare trees
and drooping hemlocks
weep 
against the sky,
gray, 
expecting rain.
This date will be etched
in grave stones.

January 17, 18

*
Building space stations,
you cannot 
take for granted
anything,
for instance,
air--
(the void pressing 
against us)

(avoidance)

Rain beaded on window glass
looking out at a city,
two dimensional,
against a flat gray sky.

*
On thin ice--
the trend
is disturbing
(but they will not
let it disturb
their profits)
(gulls

ghosting)

Rain whipped
through cottonwood,
cedar and fir.
Storm off the Pacific.
(Denier in chief)
Tree limbs sighing,
moaning.

January 15, 16

*
We may not yet be
beyond
history:
nothing moves
in blue skies.
The fir trees
are still.

Expectancies

A certain 
dread
of the approaching moment.
Boot treads crush
the brittle ice.
Your word.

*
The wounds of history
still ache
in the cold.
Our bodies
bear the memory
of each bruise.

Despite

or however much
we choose
to forget.  “Hatred
does not conquer 
hatred”
(before the coming
rain)

January 13, 14

*
What appeal
to re-
peal? Sun
on snow.
(Little songs bound
and on the way)
ice
crystals
glitter

(collusions)

Beyond the white
tufted fields
and trees,
the cold horizons
of willful
ignorance

*
A man without decency,
in the clear,
cold
light of day.
(bloodstains
on the bridge
to Selma)

Speak:

“find a way
to get in the way”
breath
condensing
in the frozen
air

January 11, 12

*
Among trees, 
standing waters
gray with ice, 
edges laced white.
Crows gathering at twilight.
Moonlight 
on 
snow. 

Winter

Face to the wind.
There are beauties
that freeze 
the heart.


*
At last, 
all we confirm
are our fears--
bundled against the blue ice
of these clear skies.

(if

(what can compromise
one who
has no shame?))
I dream of summer.

Poems January 9, 10

*
Moonlight 
smeared on a thin layer of cloud.
The unvetted ghosts
that haunt the night.
(hypocritical oath)

Snow

in my dreams, adrift:
whitening convolutions
in my brain


*
Not that we are likely
to fare
well:  "Against 
the insidious wiles
of foreign influence
(I conjure. . .)”

(partisan) 

“A uniform vigilance
to prevent
its bursting
into
flame”

January 6. 7th, 8th

*
Matrix of concerns:
incursion denials  hubris
nondisclosure indiscretion  hubris
or
“there is an old proverb
among men. . .”

Listen:

(porch chimes tune
the cold wind)

*
Iced gravel
along the edges of the river:
this is where the crows
gather all at dusk

Twilight.

The river swirls,
even past any hope.

*
That they have
plagiarized
their beliefs
(or that there’s this moment
of stillness between
gusts of wind)

(breathless)

Some mornings bring
only paler shades
of gray. 

Poems January 3, 4, 5

*
Hold back
(none
immune)
if you were to apply
Actual Intelligence--
tracing the florals
in the frost.

Dawn

(when stars fall.)

*
Truth of place: ethical inaction--
so many pigeons dart overhead 
and then settle, 
weighing down the power lines

Better

not to feed them

*
Sun 
without heat.
You witness an event
that never occurred.
(that season
in which viruses
are spread)

Gleam:

new ice
in car headlights.

Introduction

Perhaps we may say that every poem has its “20th of January” inscribed? Perhaps what’s new for a poem written today is just this: that here the attempt is clearest to remain mindful of such dates? But don’t we all date from such dates? And what dates do we ascribe ourselves to?

Paul Celan, “Meridian.” Translated by John Flestiner.

I have been writing a poem a day. The poems reflect the events of the time--the date itself is written into their structure. I will post several in groups to catch up with the current date, and then each day I will post the day's poem.

Here are the first two for January first and second

*
Discord
into chords:
harmony unlikely
this
civil year. You can
pass through a door
in either direction.

(snow)

(silence)


*
The first day
after the
(arbitrary)
first day.
Snow lines upper branches.
Sky cover blue.
So
cold.

Mockery

spur resistance