MORIBUNDITY

away from the creamy
smear of a gibbous moon

I hide myself in Shakespeare’s
coat sleeve breathing only

when I remember to breathe
and coming out only to eat

the stale offerings from
an old man’s crooked hand

High Lonesome

"High Lonesome"

watercolor by Terry Clark

Winter comes effortlessly
on the High Lonesome Ranch,
where the snow piles up -
white on white,
and the elk scream,
in the frozen pine forests,
like banshees.


I imagine what it would be like
to stay there in the cabin -
enduring the brief ghosts

of miners, cowboys, and outlaws
humming in the corners.


I’d see the stars arranging
themselves around the
windows at night,
and resting on the trellises,
as if they were the white
and lavender Columbines
of summer.


And in the utter stillness,
I’d hold the moon close
to my breast and listen,
over and over again,
to the rising silence
of my thoughts.

A WINTER'S NIGHT

A WINTER'S NIGHT


Out in the pasture,
the cows
are wide-eyed
and bellowing,
as a flock
of birds wheel
in the snowy
air above them -
like a multitude
of holy angels
in the December sky.


Now, everything
becomes a promise –
the smell of hay,
the curl of smoke,
the icy fern along
the frosted path,
the kitchen where
the sausages are
hung high and the
walnuts are crushed
and sugared - where
warm gingerbread
steams the windows,
blurring the moon.


And night’s breath
breathes on us again
in our deep slumber,
as the cows lumber
in silent resolution
into the warmth and
light of the little barn.

MAP ME AGAIN FREDRIK AND PIET

MAP ME AGAIN FREDRIK AND PIET


Out here on the celestial equator,
I am Monoceros, a faint constellation
barely visible among the brightest stars
that shine radiantly from the great circle.


I go practically unnoticed - like blood
seeping through the reddest terracotta,
or like minor chords being played slowly,
woefully over an elegiac reading of some
dejected and plaintive poet…


I want to be mapped again by the Dutch.
Instead of a shy unicorn – I want to be a lion,
an eagle, a bear, or a glittery whale
spouting water, like crushed diamonds,
around an imaginary sphere of infinite extent,
tilting and swimming in all directions at once.


I want to be on a different quadrant of an astrolabe,
a fresh copper engraving, pictured in a star atlas -
or just clearly visible on a plastic plansiphere
that rests deep in the pocket of an old woman,
who has designed her days by studying the stars.

Walt Whitman's Death Mask

WALT WHITMAN'S DEATH MASK

You started out superbly.
No one was more gifted or blessed.
You called yourself
a freakish character,
saying it was “damnable”
to be tailorized after a mode.
So, come on – admit it
you were a little Rabelaisian!


You were one of those big sprawlers –
your masterful words never touching
the lines of the white ruled paper
upon which you so liberally wrote.


You were a winger too -
an open-air man,
whose feet were
never really needed
for traveling.


Wasn’t it just yesterday that you
lolled in your high board bed,

over on Mickle Street -
eating pickled peaches
out of a blue glass jar,
while listening to sounds
from the street below?


And now your face
is all repose, and sweetly so,
with eyes closed and lips tight
and your splendid head
at its noblest and most serene.

LIKE, COOL MAN - HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN ALL YOU CRAZY CATS!

HAVE A BOSS, CHROME-PLATED NIGHT!

WHO GOES HOWLING

Who goes howling without a key -
a plot, a scheme, a mystery?
Knots are tied and knots unraveled
along a road that’s highly traveled,
winding in some mysterious way,
puzzling pedestrians night and day,
while water cries and wind speaks
and frost makes roses of our cheeks.
And who’s the potter and who’s the pot?
And which is the vessel and which is not?
For these queries, avow – avow!
The answers are being written now
on onionskin paper, smooth and light -
on sleeveless arms, ghostly white -
on leaves rustling on far away trees -
on hills and in hollows, such as these.