Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
I don’t like to write about myself too often, but a personal blogger can’t avoid it altogether. A few things about family here, too.
a sky with just one aperture
would fit in a briefcase
you’d hear it in there
clacking its beak
i miss the flesh of my flesh
lost during the pandemic
i have been drowning lady beetles
in the toilet in the sink
the oaks are dangling blossoms
before every passing breeze
green and yellow like snakes
in the old folk song
i argue all sides of a position
and call it prayer
i am sung to daily
by my followers the flies
found in peat
part-way to coal
the hide under his fur
has weathered further than leather
and his rib cage still holds
a deathless canary
he’ll never fix that leaky faucet
you know the one
a chip chip chip
off the old flint
adamant under pressure
something gleams
the green of moss on an oak
three years dead
the green of greenbriar
on which a deer has grazed
the green of a bench in the woods
where vows were once exchanged
the green of garlic mustard
before it becomes too bitter
the green of ferns that have borne
the weight of snow
the green of winter wheat in the distance
when the sun comes out
the green of lichen on a rock
finding everything it needs
the green of leaves that won’t return
to a toppled witness tree
the old green of trailing arbutus
rushing into bloom for a few cold flies
Plummer’s Hollow, PA
March 17, 2024
It’s below zero Fahrenheit with a howling wind just two nights past the longest of the year. The juniper tree I planted next to the house thumps against the eaves. In my youth I’d be living it up, blasting the stereo while getting roaring drunk and feeding wood to a stove some visitors once dubbed Ol’ Sparky. Now I am apparently grown old, it’s sit hunched over a keypad and worry about what to do if the power goes out.
Every winter I vow to winterize this old plank-wall farmhouse. Every summer, foolish woodrat, I forget. I blame Janus, that two-faced bastard. Resolutions aren’t solutions.
*
Just about every decade, I re-read the Norse sagas, I’m not sure why. It’s hard to look away from their grimy brutality and insights into human and inhuman character. Today: Eyrbyggja Saga. I’d remembered it had some horror elements but had forgotten just how many walking dead there were—holy hell. It’s the world’s first folk horror novel! Complete with a haunted cow.
i was your beast
of unburden
the arctic and its
crickets of ice
grew on me like fine
hairs of mold
i mistook a molt
for metamorphosis
but once we all knew
how to make change
now they round us down
to the nearest hole
and hand out wafers
of ukrainian jesus
my poems are ladders
that lead nowhere
i could be on a jet writing
contrails across the sky
instead of these two
scrawny lines
giving my apple core a toss
watching it arc
and land in a forest clearing
i think of you Dad
saying where should i plant
an apple tree today
a habit from boyhood summers
at your uncle’s orchard
continuing into your college days
on a motor scooter
with Mom exploring every mountain
and forest in Pennsylvania
the fall and only the fall
was for apples
culminating in your favorite
the stayman winesap
but after all those cores
for all those years
you’re in the ground
now yourself
and i keep looking
for those wild apple trees
the sun was a letter
of the alphabet then
my stomach could pronounce it
better than my mouth
on the walk to school through
two centuries of wreckage
past a ghost village
and the end of town eaten
by the interstate
along train tracks we knew
to get off of when
they started to hum
up over the wooded hill
in the center of town
with its water tank and cemetery
past hidden rooms
with walls of wild grapevines
whispering truancy
down into the industrial classroom
a prison of numbers
where zero seemed to hold
all the keys
without issue i can feel the forest
thicken within me
build up fuel and hunger
for that incendiary spark
ah to slash and burn
plow and harrow with my ancestors
or cut down the old giants
and replace them with windmills
deadly flowers scything
the air for migrants
our doom laid out
like a meal for ravens
fates intertwining like fingers
at a lovers’ leap
a mile and a half up a mountain hollow
under the green banners of the sun
I live above a crawl space
too poor for a cellar
my garden is a banquet
for slugs and meadow voles
the wild mountain mint hums
with solitary bees
Never having believed in happiness, it occurs to me, might have had something to do with why i never actively pursued it. If it showed up regardless, well and good, but in general, day-to-day contentment seemed enough. And you know, maybe it is. For far too many around the world, it’s an unattainable dream.
But what about love, Dave?
And you call yourself a poet!
Pleiades
syncopating
crickets
1
ruby-throated hummingbird
fresh from the jewelweed
hangs in front of my mouth
like an unhoused question
I spread my fingers wide
skin wrinkles like old bark
2
I grew up climbing trees
hugging the trunks for dear life
or digging for treasure
at the old farm dump
that green- or purple-stained glass
that once held whiskey
3
buzzing from one bright
flame to the next
what rain-soaked radiance
precedes a fall
and where might petals unfurl
if we ever woke up