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)