Friday, July 17, 2015

small batch





Common Plight

Everyday soldier at home with weapons, trained
to kill with them, caught in an endless ceasefire.

            *


Accounting

Darkness keeps a careful book,
absolutely strict and utterly indifferent to the just.
Whatever walks in light casts shadow,
whether worn by itself or grafted to another’s back.

*


Shards

the pleasure of right action

   soft rain after drought  


_________________________


joyful    sorrowful            deep

_________________________


 quest
      for
  less

            *


The Danger

(an addendum to Browning)

Always reaching and reaching too far
     too far too far too far
can make of grasp a fantasy act
without power to add or subtract
     or fully attract
     or really bar—


            *


Door Too Fast  

Old man pulling from that side
while I push from this, lost in thought,

not seeing him through the little window.

The door flies open, sending us both                
scrambling to stay upright on the slippery tiles.


            *


August 15 2012

The world is small
and stretched tight like a drum

Everywhere I go                                     
I hear your quiet footsteps beside me

______________________________


Who has not seen
the glow of loved ones
vanish, never to return?

Who has not seen
each night the pitted moon
rise here, rise there?


            *


It Can Be Hard to Tell                                   

Half-stoned on a new drug, or just
another sleepy being in slow springtime.
Brain-molecules swaddling synapses
in cotton junk, or a seed shrugging
tumid shoulders in damp dark, tuned          
to the rumour of warm, light-filled
presences that will require nothing.


               *


Keeping On 

     vita longa ars brevis

So hard
& rare
not

to get worse


            *


Allowance                             

(i)

So many great poems lost                                                     
because an inner voice said That is not
what a poem should be, not what it should contain.

And if for poems one reads: moments, hours, lives?


(ii)

My gate so narrow,
only rarest diamonds pass.                    

My gate so wide,
diamonds tumble among the trash!




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