Wednesday, November 13, 2013




i leave my tea cup out all night
in the morning i drink moonlight




Sunday, November 3, 2013

Three Poems on the Solitude of Autumn Wind






a windstorm in autumn

can do the strangest things

with candle light



                ~



it is good when it is dark

and the wind is blowing

so that when you look to the stars

you mistake the few small passing clouds

for subtle darknesses in the universe

that slowly shift



                ~



not even the restless winds

can stir my granitic soul;

my only hope is for

a thoughtless autumn

in the golden crown-fire

of sunrise in the fir tops





Friday, October 25, 2013




if my mind is a meadow

i am at the half-illumined edge

i am walking into the forest

away from the sun into the forever of morning


let whoever may

enter that meadow freely

i'll come back someday



Tuesday, October 22, 2013

from A Private Fall




It's possible autumn is a tomb
out of which a child is born.
We feel a secret joy
and we tell no one!




R.B.  


Sunday, September 1, 2013

Breaking



Did I believe I had a clear mind?
It was like the water of a river
flowing shallow over the ice.  And now
that the rising water has broken
the ice, I see that what I thought
was the light is part of the dark





W.B.

Thursday, August 29, 2013

go




the sun is setting on the years

the highways we unraveled

are recoiling in the dusk



must i always weep

for the joys i have had?



go easy, wanderer

your outreaching

is noble, and beautiful at least



"the most sublime act is

to put another before you"



if the wind is the usher of time

then the wind is our friend



uncoil a path,

and go before me

i'll go laughing in the dark

and waving grasses

for when the dawn comes around









Saturday, August 10, 2013

let the good times roll





where are the glories of the years?



i caught it in the perfect of a day of rain

and the late light when it cleared

walking with you in the evening

like i've lived it and can finally

die smiling



what hides in the years?

this glorious unending





Thursday, August 1, 2013

oaf god






o Artemis
go put her in a cloud

but she rains my water
and i cannot help myself

send her under ground
i will sink below the salt of the sea



o Artemis of mud 
and feather fletches

can you explain to me
the magnetism of rivers?

i will rest if you let me
where the cool waters come together




Sunday, July 28, 2013

"be one be weak keep moving"




men i once admired
are courting ladies
i knew as children

it is said that tobacco
will kill a demon
incapable of reconcile

i'll send my fears downriver,
and hide their scent
with the southern winds

i want to keep my hands
out of your bad times
but keep them rough and ready

i want to trust again
in the ability of
being trustworthy

it is better sometimes
to smoke the demon
and smile with a toast

to the unknown dawn




Saturday, July 20, 2013

the measure of open space



Here and there
you build a
fitting structure

to rhyme
with what's around it

             the
             rocks
                    the meadow grass
                                     the trees
                                          the water

and learn to
leave intact
the wet roots
of the swamp oak
                    and the alder

& the trails
of the deer
                    up the ridgeway
used these
30,000 years



ed sanders



Wednesday, July 17, 2013



joanne kyger


Tuesday, July 9, 2013

indigo flower wellspring anti-blues



“Hold on to your divine blush,
 your innate rosy magic, or end up brown. 
Once you're brown, you'll find out you're blue. 
As blue as indigo.
 And you know what that means. 
Indigo. Indigoing. Indigone.”- TR




there is a wellspring
somewhere the cats
won't even climb

its lineaments
are not shared with
the characteristics of space

indigo flowers
are always stooping
their heads to drink there

                 ~

sometimes i forget about it
and i take my hammock down
and just cocoon there on the ground

where the chickens are in a pile
in the sun, taking turns
to watch for hawks

but hey! i got bone flutes
i've got to find a way
to play to raise the moon

i got secret cats to track;
reel 'em in with finger magic
and string 'em in the hammocks

i got fox-gloves
to stick my fingers in
or my penis when i'm frisky

i got whole peninsulas to map;
of forests, dunes and grasses
and a millions yellow flowers on top

ah, but i've also got space-time
that jabs my mind
with its endlessness;
with what little of it is left

but o! its nothing; mostly
i got the shape of the sun
to stare at through the fog
and spring water to drink where
the indigo sighs



Sunday, July 7, 2013





the eerie way the hawks are screaming
the ghostly shining of webs in the rosemary
the queer shivering of the shadows in the apple-leaves
the thunder on my mind
o how i used to run to mother in the storms;
a shame i've grown
i am as frightened as the day i was born



Friday, July 5, 2013

aphelion




the farthest away



it is dark, as though 
i'm shooting arrows into black water
on the new moon at midnight




it is distant

it is dark


i am far





Thursday, June 27, 2013







Sunday, June 23, 2013

against all odds




love is possibly the only anti-entropic force;
the yearning of molecules in a void of disorder

the sheer odds of which are
incomprehensible to the scholars of chance
those who've guessed the scale of things

love; the only resistor
to the pull of black holes

against all astronomical odds
i love you



Friday, June 21, 2013

diphthong



i fell asleep
to the
diphthong of the wind

woke yawning woe,
found light took hours leaving,
destroyed our rooms sounds           and
flew your coop sweetly



Thursday, June 20, 2013

tropos




i should have known my crumbs
would be the old words
is it divination
if its only useful
after the fact?


i've hardly got a shadow at noon
the sun has reached its limit
of how high its willing to go
it knows to turn around
and head back where it came from


my fingers are wearing down
and i get tiny bits of steel in my blood
it takes three days for them to heal
but in the mean time
i feel closer to everything i touch





Tuesday, June 11, 2013

florida headlines found poem



PLANET LIKELY TO BE TOO HOT BY THE END OF THE CENTURY

HUNGER/CURIOSITY LED DEER TO PUT HEAD IN DORRITOS BAG

NAZI LEADERS LONG-LOST DAIRY OFFERS NEW INSIGHTS

FIGHTING TERRORISM WILL BE A NEVER-ENDING BATTLE

STUDIES SUGGEST WOLVES MIGHT BE SMARTER THAN DOGS

10 ELDERY WOMEN ESCAPE LIMO FIRE

MANY JOBS STILL REQUIRE SKILLS

GENEROSITY BEGINS AT HOME


Saturday, June 1, 2013

rooms




i must make it home
i left the first fireflies
streaming in the tall grass
of the warming evenings


i've got to map those rains
and the raspy noises that
i hear in the minutes just
before the early birds


i knew i forgot to thank
that bull frog for showing
me the worth of the ability
to whoop your lover home


i'm shooing spiders
from my inner room
failing to realize
they attract the birds from yours


somehow the great distances
i will go are tiny when i hold
them to the sidereal of time
in my orbit of your soul


still i've got to catch
that late light through the leaves
or i won't know how
to smile when i die


i like the spiders but
why do i insist they go?
i'm leaving shrugs and moans
where my pen should be


the fact of the matter is
i am guided by the rooms
that i will build, made of windows
made of letting in the light



Monday, May 13, 2013



thought i'd wake up in the night
when the cold sky opened
with some sort of knowing

thought this morning
my soul would finally cleave

thought the poppies would 
come up this year
and bloom today

but they didn't

and so       just now

i thought about your hands
and realized they are exactly 
the size of the rain's



Wednesday, May 8, 2013

phenology




yesterday the crab-apple by the house
today the lilac by the garden
i calculate star geometry
and anticipate the dogwood

me, i'm looking for the perfect stone
in the dark of rain at noon
and to measure my fortunes
by the roughness of my hands




Sunday, May 5, 2013



princess light




Thursday, May 2, 2013

only one answer



I stood in the flowery dawn
(the summer triangle rising
just before the light)
and asked my question plainly

"Just how many poems
can one man compose
on the subject of spring?"

I heard the hyacinths blooming

Black Sun



To awaken is to return to being
to be re-lit in a dark cubicle;
the first steps that I take
in this re-being are tentative.

To again be in such darkness
is a sailing without compass.
I have my compass by my side,
the dark expanse of a black sun

which is your hair,
inverse lighthouse, lightless,
that gives me direction
with the gypsy light it beams.


                   

                                                -- J.C.M.N.




Friday, April 26, 2013

Swamp Spring





slow crawl home by the semaphores of spring
the swamp inhales all my old woes
and i sigh smiling quietly into the polyp clouds





the cherry blossoms buzzing!
all day, single petals tumbling in troves
even into full flower-moonlight
with that hush-murmer of midnight;
dark geese that pass north
and an owls sounding
as if to measure
the forest night





i'll go sleep out in the creeping myrtle at noon
dream of stars that decay on mountainsides
(star-mountains i cannot forget)
and the ones we cannot see in daylight

wake to the pastel body of spring beside me
and whisper my demands;





make my mind a spiral of blooms!
the dogwoods umbrals,
the forsythias yellow-fire, 
the magnolias lotus loomings

o make me the tiny petals
that i may know the orgasm of abscission!
i want to tongue the anthers!
i want to dust the stigmas!





she only stared my blue eyes teary,
stood and walked away,
her colors blending in the bright wet blur








Monday, April 8, 2013

How to die in the Mountains




When lost in the mountains

consider yourself lucky

and make friends with the stones



When lost in the mountains

don't be so quick to find doom

plenty of ancient chinese men

died with smiles on their faces

under some wind broken pine




When lost in the mountains

don't forget to blush before the birds

as cute as you think you are

they could still show you the proper way to die

and help you avoid any unpleasant experiences



When lost in the mountains

find the highest peak

from there you can listen

to the strange sounds from the city

from there you can see

just what you left behind

from there the wind will speak

in cool tongues if its chosen you

and if it has it will carry your shattered soul

to the place inside the mountain

where old hearts go to die

where dirt is a language

where the uplift of mountains

is the only way to get to heaven

where the slow murmur of the continents

sliding on molten earth is all you will ever hear

for the rest of those thousand lives you know you'll live

if you've managed to get

lost in the mountains







Thursday, March 28, 2013

Last Years Worm Moon Mother-Son Poem Exchange



Son:


hugely orange worm moon rising
set the earth again to moving
--the writhing of her worms

flourish! dirt-movers
take to dancing your
thawed ground ways!

incite the songs of spring!






Mother:


Crocuses fully bloomed
Daffodils bursting
Pansies firmly planted on the porch
Rebirth renew relief
Rejoice! in the constancy of her cycles






Son:


the Yellow Trumpets have sounded!
surely they know this rounding best
--those pioneers of spring

the clouds play games of light
on the waking webs of green
robins swirl their hunger-dances
my soul too, thawing
in the sun we share.






love you mom.

Tuesday, March 26, 2013



Death, Thou comest
when I had Thee least in mind.
-Everyman







Friday, March 22, 2013

Nicotiana



o take me death-leaf
take and press me
with your thumbs of smoke
into the earth
that I may lay with an open head
and become the hillside;
indistinguishable as dirt,
as black clouds
that pass the moon
at midnight






but the birds are singing!
it is spring!







still,
I've died this time,
relinquished my breath
with the equal night
and only with spring
was born all over





o that
deaths head hawk moth
that came and tongued the anthers
when my mind became
the comet flower

whispered something as it flew

something only heard
by the gone beyond







thus
I know
I have not gone






Saturday, March 2, 2013

the curving earth



the curving earth
turns
i smoke
and lower down
a
tobacco death
at noon

the days question:
do the birds each morning
make agreements with
the wind?

hey!
mountain!
you're a sun swallower


Friday, March 1, 2013

O Stars



o stars
what can be done?

o stars
late i face the cold wind
to pee and end up staring
at your shimmering far
past the time my skin starts
cooing for the bed-warmth again

o stars
you rarely speak
in fact you're mute
the way i wish i was sometimes;
never have to try to tell a lover
where your love went
never have to hear your own
voice on the toilet in the dark
"fuck, what have i done?"
or
"i should write that letter
to my grandmother"


o stars
you always send
the same dull light
and fade just when i need you most;
at the flowering of dawn
when i can no longer hide
in the shadows of moonlight
and hope i remain
unseen before the human world
counting the silences of stars


Dried-up Sea Bottom Blues




i'm the big fool
who's laughing now?
no one i know

its like i wove
this net as if i didn't know
i'd be the one drowning in it

and not without tangling
a few beautiful creatures
in it before i sink

but oh that deep
silence at the bottom
beckons still

and the darkest blue
i've never seen
is waiting for me there

the only incongruity?
the ocean left
this lonesome place
a million years ago




Monday, February 25, 2013

Already Too Late



... Not content with extinguishing birds,
man takes arm against his own kind--
"-- he who cannot bring one green leaf into being,"
an offended goddess said.  "Somehow or other
mankind must be got rid of.
Since he has destroyed all other predators
I can do no more than let him
prey on himself till the last bone is stripped clean.
The weapons he has invented must destroy him.
Out of each violated atom he himself shall let loose
the fire of his own annihilation:

"After the fire, the darkness:
aeons of cold darkness.

"Perhaps then," said the goddess,
"I will once more smile upon the blind earth
and draw with the touch of my own skilled finger
a green cell out of the sea.
The green cell will start spinning the world again
from sunlight and long-unwakened water.
"In time there will be music
from the throats of birds and of angelic creatures
I have not yet begun to dream."


~ Peggy Pond Church


Friday, February 22, 2013

Wanderin' Stranger



Monday, February 18, 2013

This Great Unknowing



ah
now don't i feel just like
those bare trees bending
in the windy winter
rains

what a tangle i have gathered!

like the half-moon after midnight
i've gone beyond the horizon

toward a darkness that subsumes all senses;
unpierceable perfect dark

but in darknesses are mysteries
that i go wandering for

that i go seeking nets
to ravel in, in hopes
that from this tower

when i cry toward the stars
the sound 
will stir that Woman at her loom

and she will weave for me a blanket,
with the patience of the earth,
the color of my questioning

the stitching of which
i'll read in dream
and wake in light
not fit for eyes
that haven't known
the awe of action
acted in unknowing.



Saturday, February 16, 2013

The Murmuring Desert




the azure berry
suddenly in morning
falls from clumped up needles
"find a bed, wait for water"

the house finch's
dip and rise, flutter
dip and rise
"my home too!"

snowfall in the distance
a ladder from the sky
obscuring unfamiliar sun
"guess your future"

dunes of sand will never stay still
the wind never chooses a direction
snow here is an exhale from the rainforest
"we move in hinging spirals, not circles"

song of the desert:
a dry patience whispering





Tuesday, February 12, 2013

One Glory Without Significance



The sun was gone under the wine-colored ocean,
      then the deep west fountained
unanticipated magnificences of soaring rose and heavy purple,
      atmospheres of flame-shot
color played like a mountain surf, over the abrupt coast,
      up the austere hills,
on the women talking, on the men's bent forms filling the grave,
      on the oak, on the eagle's prison, one glory
without significance pervaded the world.


Cawdor, Robinson Jeffers

Saturday, February 9, 2013

The Veil



what sun do I dream of?
it blazes here, but it is brighter
or clearer always where I think
it will shine next

each day I give the wind my breath
but time is its lone rider

again this year, I will miss
the anchored blossom of flowers;
unable to map the rain
my magic is homeless
and I fear I'll never stop
until a voice indistinguishable
beckons me to rest

wild or blind?
at least I've found a peace
in the sound of my footsteps alone

yet, my hands are getting soft
so that at night, when I am lost in loves strange colors
and I feel the gaze of unknown eyes
I worry whether I am recognizable





Saturday, February 2, 2013

PiƱon Wind



/
days of cold + light
hunched, withdrawn land

on the new moon
a woman 
let it down

what wonder is this?
a brimming urgency of being

a call to lightfoot ways
just how could i refrain?
two voices singing
and i to return the song
i am always returning
/








































Thursday, January 31, 2013

Family Matters



when the deer don't come to die
the women send their husbands
to copulate with deer-wives
in hopes to generate a family
the worth of which is death;

consumption into and toward
the spirit-family.





Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Cloud Hidden




Alone now,
I imagine they smile:

the mountains
lost in snow



Monday, January 28, 2013

Blood Mysteries



what is man without wonder
for the blood mysteries?
blood-flow, blood-form, blood-milk

expert blood
vessel overflowing

he goes lives without knowing
his own life-form and dies how many times
under assumptions of power

i know, i listen and i've heard
its pulsing below my own heart

the darkening of the falling mind
tastes just like blood in snow

Mater






... The Great Mother, the Great Round, the Great Container, tends to hold fast to everything that springs from it and to surround it like an eternal substance. Everything born of it belongs to it and remains subject to it; and even if the individual becomes independent, the Great Mother relativizes this independence into a nonessential variant of her own perpetual being.




Monday, January 14, 2013

Enchantments Prism'd Dew



/
o waves of enchantment!
caught upon horizons
with the strangest light

just how do i become
a winter-sleeper?

o what a
wide way 
home
/



















Skyline to the Sea