poem yourself

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Koi

2010-01-29T11:20:00.000-08:00

The wind sock on the balcony is writhing

in the cold January air.

It is shaped like a fish, a Japanese koi

red and white with mouth agape.

Like so many things, it was here before I was.

When we moved into this city house

the owner had left it behind

dangling.

It has become mine

not by signing mortgage agreements

or insurance policies

but slowly

as the concept of owning land

of owning a home

has begun to make sense.

This koi can tell me

part of the story I wasn't around for,

can explain how the apple tree grew to be so big

why the rose bushes are everywhere on the lawn

what the crooked door frame is all about;

can help me understand that my time

is part of the bigger, endless moment;

that I am young but not forever

that I am here but not forever.

Standing outside, I wonder

about koi and the past

hoping I'll be well remembered.

You Are For Poetry

2008-08-29T06:36:00.001-07:00

They say you are attracted to someone for 4 years
then you slip into something a bit different; you learn to live together and love each other.
Or you don't.
That might be so.
I don't tell you in quite the right way,
how you are a potter, and I am a poet—
there may be a chance that we'll just go on being attracted
to pots and words, lines and clay bowls
the turning wheels of stone and the turning pages of verse.
I am for your hands
and you,
you are for poetry.

I Try To Be Playful

2008-08-05T11:09:00.000-07:00

I try to be playful
even as the weeks go by.
I realize what everyone has been saying,
that life gets harder.
It does.
Our particular creases get deeper,
our particular wearing points get more worn.
Our ideas get old.
Now, when a friend is gone
or someone moves away
it is much more important.
This is valuable information,
to know how to carry the things we need
as life happens.
In the romanticizing and justifying and imagining,
to have some tools that do the real work
that sometimes needs to be done.

The Mind To Find A Way

2008-08-01T15:40:00.001-07:00

Lately I've had classical music playing during the day,
hoping to add whatever effect daytime classical music might have on my life.
It comes from the other room, through speakers I've hauled across America.
My stereo is a heap of equipment I have collected over the years.
Tinkering here and there, gathering disc changers,
digging an unused receiver from a friend's basement,
that was a real find.
I haven't paid a dime for the whole get-up.
To be separate from the world-turning force,
even in a set of speakers and some wiring,
even with just an antenna and some dials,
to have a screwdriver and two hands and the mind
to find a way.

Get Some Plums

2008-07-30T09:38:00.001-07:00

The night before you left we went to the grocery store.
A crate of plums was conspicuous
dark and sexy next to the pale peaches,
water beading on their tight skin.
"Get some plums," you said, your lips forming
as if you were eating one right then.
Later, alone with little to do
I ate them
trying to feel decadent, holding the pits lightly between my teeth
imagining how you might do the same.

I Could Not Have Believed You

2008-07-18T12:44:00.000-07:00

Had you told me there would be more smiles
I could not have believed you.
Yet here I lay, smiling like a fool
twofold? tenfold? more frequently than I ever thought
smiles could come.

The Little We Do Each Day

2008-07-15T10:24:00.001-07:00

The little we do each day,
well, however much we do
(though it is little, in the grand scheme)
is a making of ourselves.
Would you string a glass bead in with pearls?
So why let a day go asunder with unwanted pursuits?
The arrogance of decision
is perhaps a needed arrogance.
The day is a miniature portrait of nature
of the cycle and the source.
Waking and resting you remember and practice
what has come
what will come.

The Source

2008-07-08T13:06:00.000-07:00

Today I stood at the source,
story place and paradise of the Dakota people of Minnesota.
Named in our short history Pike Island
by beefy Zebulon Pike himself.
Sacred meeting place, the source of the universe
now the source of a park and an army fort
United States style.
Still, I went there to stand and try to see it as the source,
leaned on the swollen trunks of massive cottonwood trees
caught my breath in the soft light of canopied maple forest
put my feet in the sand at the confluence of the two rivers
on the island that is the turtle's back.
The island is still there
with frolicking deer and the gentle serrations of elm leaves.
The web of bridges and electricity and buildings is thick,
but the rivers still meet and flow
the land is still there, wet and wooded and waiting.
There is still a source.

About the Storm

2008-07-07T18:57:00.001-07:00

All day there have been announcements
about the storm
on its way,
licking and slurping its way
through humidity and breeze and that
—i don't know what it is—
that feeling that says storm's-a-comin'.
And it comes
the trees shiver and bend
the streets are pocked with the falling drops,
branches sway, traffic slows, water flows
and still it is a show,
still it is a production, a performance.
Gusto, bravado, panache, all those words.
That's how it is with these crashing summertime rainfalls.
That's
how it is.

Life Always Improves On A Balcony

2008-07-03T06:44:00.001-07:00

Life always improves on a balcony.
A dash of sparrows and whisked cirrus clouds,
being in the air—like near moving water—
rapt by the mysterious rhythm
simple beyond understanding.
There doesn't need to be much to say or do.
anything, really.
Leaning on the rail,
one part human to one part sky.

I Like the Sound of That

2008-06-13T07:24:00.000-07:00

Sitting here, in the same chair I have sat in all year
I am barefoot again, like I was when I first came to you.
It is warm enough now to not wear anything, if I wanted.
I like this corner of the room the best.
There is a window onto our street
the cat likes to sit on the ledges and hurl his eyes at the pigeons.
We eat breakfast here in this corner every day,
after we struggle out of the knot our limbs tie—we sleep so close together.
It is like nothing else, how little space we occupy in our big bed.
It is how I sleep, how I've tried to sleep for years.
I have been thinking about it all year in this chair
in this corner
of our apartment.
Our apartment.
I like the sound of that.

With the Sun Caught in a Net of Pines

2008-06-10T10:57:00.000-07:00

With the sun caught in a net of pines
dusk released like an aroma
calming the mountain pond we dangled our toes in.
All around us, arms of green mountains caressing
and the blips and blops of trout
rising to gulp in the mayflies of early summer.

This is a real place.
I was consumed by that,
awed by that.
There, trees leaned on each other like calligraphy against the horizon's light.
Here, tadpoles swished their feathery tails, huge and swelling into full frogs.
We, barefoot, lying on a moss covered rock.

We will grow asparagus in patches around our big country yard
push spades into mountain earth
make mounds and trenches and rows of growing things.
We will grow.
We will grow into anything we want to become—into a family, into a life,
into whatever it is that happens to us
when our breath has passed and the light has stopped.

Talking between silences, we find silence is our muse,
the quiet time that two people can have.
It is what we use all our words for when it is gone.
It is what we need only to close our lips to have.

In Vermont

2008-06-06T06:48:00.001-07:00

We're thinking, let's get out there
to the exotic north of Vermont.
We picture driving along European-style roads
past wood-fenced fields of plump sheep
sneaking through green mountains full of bushy Vermont trees.
What a state of mystery
everyone knows nothing about what is there
in that deep chest of mountains and lakes.
Maybe some hemp-clad young man
tending to his bee hives
will invite us in to his yurt,
offer us fresh goat milk
and rub our feet with organic rejuvenating clay.
Likely, we will be charmed by the same stars we see at home,
kept safe in the same world
met with the same winds.
But in Vermont. In Vermont!

You Love the Moon

2008-05-27T05:38:00.000-07:00

You love the moon.
I can see it in you,
the silver curves
in your slimness
the distant blessing of the earth.
In the light of open windows
you grow the way it does,
in slow pieces I can relish.

Moving Skirts

2008-05-22T09:51:00.000-07:00

The apple blossoms have puffed
their petals
and dropped like egg whites around the dark tree.
This spring is a flash of an ankle
under moving skirts.

A Quick Tug

2008-05-21T12:20:00.001-07:00

The blossoms are leaving the trees, now.
I waited so long for them to come.
It is alarming, the rapidity of spring
how for so long I can wait for something
that is so short.
A yank of shocking freshness
all here and gone in a quick tug.

Comet's Tail

2008-05-08T10:13:00.001-07:00

I am a comet's tail
swaying, blazing.
Being alive, consciousness is the hard fireball
slicing before me.
I am holding
fishtailing in the light
arcing, arcing, arcing in the wake of existence.

Robin

2008-04-30T09:29:00.001-07:00

Much of what a robin is for is telling me that it is spring.
They are for worms and nests and song, as well.
But they, and I, and we all carry a sign of change.
The stigma of life is on us all
whatever we are for.

Dead arm

2008-04-11T07:34:00.001-07:00

I remember waking in the night, briefly
as if something had fluttered past me.
My arm, stretched above my head
was dull and lifeless.
Held under my head, it was separate and bloodless
sodden with weight.
I lurched my shoulder,
wrangling it up onto my chest
suddenly frightened
waiting for the trickle of lifeblood,
the sharp sparks and cracks of awakening.
I lay there with my dead arm
breathing heavily
feeling the indifference of our end
cold and without feeling
slumped on my chest.

Just waking up

2008-04-08T11:23:00.001-07:00

It was so simple, just waking up
to a day where life became dull and difficult.
There was the sun, the apartment, the refrigerator
all looked the same.
The running toilet trickling into the afternoon.
Youth or innocence or optimism, I'm not sure—something had peaked
tipped the scale the other way.
What was poetic became tragic.
What was holding-on became pathetic.
Shallow, all shallows
my length of life wading through shallows.
There was the sun, the days, the people
all there behind a gauzy layer of glass.
That day and days after
thankfully a pool in a moving river,
thankfully a lull in a moving cycle.
But how they seemed forever
how they seemed permanent,
how they clutched my identity each long day.

Chime

2008-04-03T07:14:00.001-07:00

The wind chime has been outside our window all winter
hanging from a string of twine, dripping sometimes, with icicles.
Music, chime, sound frozen and mute in the flakes and rolls of snow
the layers of cold wrapped like tight sheets.
Today, in the sun, I hear that chime
I hear spring
I hear robins with their peculiar chubby sounds, and Canada Geese
hoarse honking in their rough throats.

Outdoors, optimistic for early spring

2008-03-24T15:35:00.000-07:00

Taking a minute, breathing in the soft light of 3 o'clock.
I sat outside, pretending that March was May
reading a book of poems by a poet from my home state,
someone who has seen what I have seen
grown where I have grown
felt, been, swam, shouted, leaped where I have leaped.
I am cold, but it is a surface cold.
My body's spring has a swelling warmth that I feel even in the ends of my limbs,
the tips of quivering branches waiting, waiting for the split and push
of the buds of young, ready green-growth.

Beach day

2008-03-19T09:49:00.001-07:00

Gulls prod the sand with their strong banana-yellow bills
searching for clams to grapple in their beaks and clamber into the air with.
Letting drop over and over on dark rocks or the blunt sidewalk
the birds coax the shy clams into gently loosening their psuedopod grips that hold shell edge to shell edge
in a tight, oceany heart.
Opened, alive and quiveringin their briny soup
the clams find daylight and the sharp pierce, then tear of erratic gull beaks.
Flesh from the sea to flesh on wing,
soggy clams packed in feathered bellies like wet clay.
Gulls circling and squawking above the quiet beach, through the quiet day.

Reading

2008-03-14T12:45:00.001-07:00

I've heard that the only people who read poetry are those who write it.
I thought, untrue! untrue!
I remember many years of sitting with a finger tracing along lines
taping poems to my bedroom wall
long before I looked lustily at a pen.
Two days ago, burrowing through my pages and notebooks
I came across many lines
written in my own hand—writing that looked familiar but felt far,
from another:
all of us, we are poets, in our minds, our hearts, our thoughts.
If living and seeing every day is no poem, what is?
What is?
I suppose reading a poem is writing a poem.
Poetry is moments, life is...moments.

Ambrosia

2008-03-07T09:08:00.001-08:00

My dreams, of late, have become simple and ambiguous.
I dream of being warm and happy.
I dream of paying the bills a little easier.
These days, I need simple things to dream about,
to be able to turn them over in my mind and know them.
I love plums, for example. And even though right now
they are coming from Mexico or farther away, even though
they have drug a comet tail of semi trucks and diesel exhaust to get here,
this week there are plums at the store,
plums like soft warm lips of lovers
plums like little beating hearts
plums like luscious ambrosia handed down in bushel baskets from the clouds.
Bright, huddled pyramids of plums with soft, sweet bruises from gentle handling
swaying, rocking over roads in wooden crates
full of the juice of foreign spring.

Ginger ale

2008-02-28T12:37:00.001-08:00

I'm drinking a ginger ale and wishing it were a beer.

San Juans

2008-02-27T06:20:00.000-08:00

We are three packs headed into the valley
toward some crater lake, so many are named crater.
The San Juan mountains poking out of the earth like sleepy animals,
foggy and damp.
They are brothers, and I am like a brother.
There is the smooth swing of legs under Colorado pines
and the odd welcome of shouldering a burden.
We have whiskey, some rope, extra socks, a mandolin.
The important stuff, and some food.
An old avalanche chute gives us a view of the water
below the switchbacks and moss and meadow grass.
The lake could be made of tears, I remember thinking that.
The beginning of a stay in the mountains,
three peaceful beings equipped for peace.
The fullness of feeling that this was just starting, and—with that rebellious itch
that comes from time in the wilderness—we could fold ourselves away
into all the crater lakes across the pine-needled world.

A regular jagged empty area

2008-02-26T07:35:00.000-08:00

There's really not much to say about it.
I'm lonely.
I can feel quite definitely the place
where the missing piece should be.
It is a regular jagged empty area,
nondescript, but real.
I feel fond towards it most of the time
knowing the piece exists,
that I've carried it in me, complete.
All of you, everyone that I am far from,
I am well and full and brightly being myself,
but tonguing that jagged hole
like the sore crater of a pulled tooth.
I am fascinated by the pain.
I return to it, feeling, feeling, feeling.
You should be there.

Song

2008-02-25T12:40:00.001-08:00

I've got this song I've been working on
I strum through it when I pick up my guitar,
wrote most of it and then kinda let it sit.
It isn't finished, but sounds good
when I hum it or sing it or speak it
in its parts that aren't put together,
in its incomplete gathering of sentiment.
It keeps my attention—every time I hear it
I am singing it.
It can't be heard anywhere else, the way it is different
every time I offer it up.

Oatmeal

2008-02-21T10:01:00.001-08:00

Getting groceries, we do the usual
asking one another what we thought we needed
pausing by things that looked either good or necessary
stopping a moment to think if this aisle may have an item we need,
then getting corralled out by another shopping cart
piloted by someone with a much more defined sense of purpose than our own.
Other than the grocery store, we don't go to places of this scale often.
I often get a bit caught-up in looking around,
also feeling like you standout from the shoppers
so singular and beautiful, a smile blooming on that most beautiful stem of yours.
I see oats and we need oats, I remember.
I lay the thick metal scoop deep into them, twist once in their light resistance,
watch you walking off for cauliflower or juice.
Outside the radius of my arms in this grocery, you are a woman walking
bright eyes scanning
legs moving on hips turning under clothes stunning.
The oats scuttle into the bag I hold out for them.
I'm so glad I remembered them, so glad I see you right now as I do.

Road

2008-02-19T13:52:00.000-08:00

We just needed a change of scenery
from the way winter had ground down around our neighborhood.
Sure, it's the same anywhere
everywhere winter seems long this time of year,
the February hurrah of snow and cold.
We got outta town, steering wheel twitching with the rumpled road.
Look out the window at winter.
Here, there, where we were. Where we're going.
I'd had the flu already, the one that comes around
when people are cold and tired every year.
It was time to move out of the daily radius
of home to car to work to home.
Leave all that behind us for a weekend.
Put a smile on things, anyway.

February

2008-02-19T07:13:00.000-08:00

February is the longest month.
We realize we've been cold forever,
that we are spending our lives this way.

chicken

2008-02-05T12:00:00.001-08:00

A mouthful of wine,
I was sitting at the counter
at home
thinking of words that would make sense
that would convey this peppery, dark, rich liquid
to someone standing there
under florescent lights after work
wondering if it would go well with chicken.

bread I made

2008-01-24T10:19:00.000-08:00

This peanutbutter spreads on the bread I made
differently than any other bread.
Homemade bread, you know, it's different.
It holds together differently, moves under a knife differently.
I started making bread in another life
when I was someone else
not as patient as I am, today.
I started making bread when I had no right
to make my hands be the strong, calm hands
that is needed for bread. For good bread.
It is getting better,
each clump of dough,
each warm dome of rising.
If there is a lesson, I am learning it
slowly
sometimes not even knowing what I'm doing, really.
Just going along
using what I find.

In our cold little apartment

2008-01-21T08:51:00.001-08:00

The windows are heavy with frost,
translucent and gauzy in the daylight.
In our cold little apartment
the rooms glow like an igloo,
soft, white and still.
Heat seems intangible,
how the bill comes later
in the mail enveloped and bundled,
how turning the thermostat is a delayed reality.
We are bundled
in clothes and blankets and each other.
Our reality is now
is undelayed.
We keep warm in the light
of our soft white rooms.

poemasota

2008-01-20T19:57:00.001-08:00

Where I am from
winter is something hard, like a stone.
A frozen thing remains a frozen thing.
Lakes steadily become ice: miniature glaciers
tipped on their backs gouging sockets
in the northern Minnesota woodlands.
I know a poem should be universal,
but I am writing
about Aitkin County, and further north
where the dark trickle of the Mississippi
begins its cold slither.
Where in winter, a snow comes to stay—
to stay as long as it wishes,
clumped furtively in forested June shadows
cold and alone and bluish in the light.

guitar at breakfast

2008-01-20T19:52:00.000-08:00

It was only a few years ago
I couldnt do a blessed thing
with a guitar.
And this morning
I was singing and playing
in the kitchen,
the strings humming
filling breakfast with music.

I am at fault

2008-01-20T19:49:00.001-08:00

We are on this ocean together.
Have been for some time.
I have seen my reflection
wavy sometimes
as a flock of underwater penguins.
and you,
you seemed at times like a lithe and sun-faded beauty
pushed up from the sea.

I can feel the shadow of sails
brush my back
softening the rub of the sun.
We have burnt together in this vastness.
The water has held the sky
through its alterations,
while we have been burnt to degrees.

At high noon we were on the water
faded and cooking in the salt.
A few gulls meandered and laced the sky
I watched them lose themselves in blue open

looking back, the current had spread arms;

between us
the water winks
your boat seems now so small
so light and corklike on the curve of the earth.
It looks as if I am at fault:
a rope lays coiled unused on deck

Unfocusing back into the depths of the sky sea
I pick out the dark points high above
the gulls losing themselves in blue open

she's here, late for work

2008-01-20T19:41:00.001-08:00

She's here, late for work
heels clacking on the hardwood.
The radio is on.
Garbage truck is dieseling outside.
I am here, writing in the noise.
The tempest of this morning
is full and complete,
is the identity of today.

An envelope tucked full of my poetry waits
on the small table by the door.
I am sending them off—a tearing away from me
into the mangled claw of an editor.
Maybe a nice person. Maybe not.
Oh, sweet, chirping notes of my soul.

The garbage truck coughs away down the street
as she pulls out of the driveway.
I leave the radio on
to keep some essence of what just was.
The envelope looks too bulky for the postage I have put on it.
I'll take it to the post office,
see about getting it on its way.
Maybe put a FRAGILE sticker on it. Maybe not.

monday

2008-01-20T19:36:00.001-08:00

This Monday morning she is home sick from work.
Everything seems different.
I don't know this house this way.
Monday.
Monday is me and these rooms,
my eyes on these windows
the dishes from the weekend
quietly waiting for me
huddled.

office chair

2008-01-20T19:34:00.001-08:00

You would be beautiful
If you threw an office chair
out of a window

Your fierce silhouette
With raised arms

Just thinking about it,
I have seen what it means
for anger to be love

If I saw that office chair
with its legs overturned, wheels injuredly spinning
I think it would change my life.

Certainly it would be a moment
Where life feels like more than the way I've lived it.

After some time you would come down from the window
And I think we would probably do whatever we wanted

we would be beautiful people who are 'right'
and beautiful people who are 'wrong'
the way most people don't know they are.

we would seduce each other
with all of our potential
(everything can be sexy)

And the world would
be someplace we had never seen.

poemfast

2008-01-20T19:28:00.000-08:00

*first night home after being gone for three seasons about six months ago

Last night there was some rain,
and I felt the first twang of loss,
already,
since moving.
The mountain rain is gone, for me.
The pattering, slow, heavy, dirty-cotton-sky-days.
I saw a fox in its den just weeks ago
during a rain like this
ornamentally folded behind the full tuft of its tail
spooky and quiet.
Romantic streetlamps are in tonight's mist
below me, three stories.
This balcony is dark and urban, seems so richly
and so perfectly set—
the kind with bricks and wood and a hammock.
A small table here in the corner
breezy and spattered wet in the amorous city-light-rain.
City life. City rain.
I like to see the tops of umbrellas
the wet shoes that swing out from under them
in the falling night.

poempourri

2008-01-20T19:24:00.001-08:00

The newness of you is becoming
more
something like a prairie, now.
The bright open ocean of grass
new and ever reaching
becoming
more
the place for home
the place for roots.
I feel like we can remember, you and I, the shoulder high fields
of brushing stalks
tall grass shushing the world,
even though it has all been long gone
before we were delivered to earth.
Maybe someone held us and said:
This is the world.
It is tired and mean and worked-over,
but you are here to love
to be in love
to remember things you have never seen
to mingle and sway and be tall and open to the sky.

poemy

2008-01-20T19:20:00.001-08:00

There is a small and beautiful fold in the world,
on a summer day under the Lyndale bridge
across Minnehaha Creek—
the sun globbing through the juicy maples.
We got cinnamon rolls and sunscreen
roped canoes to two best selling middle class 1990's Ford cars
and torpedoed into the lake at Hidden Beach.
Of course we got too much sun,
lost our phones in the water
peed our pants laughing. She was even late to work.
But I'm sure I have permanent lines around my smile
from just that one day.
And we got to gulp summer shandy from brown bottles
under the Lyndale bridge
with the sun globbing through juicy maples.