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)