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