Leaf and hinge

"I am the stone step,

the latch, and the working hinge. . . ."


From "Briefly It Enters, and Briefly Speaks" by Jane Kenyon

Checkered, past

"Each evening, the sins of the whole world collect here like a dew.
In the morning, little galaxies, they flash out
And flame..."

From "THERE IS NO SHELTER" by Charles Wright

Semi-visible

"The day spools up its turbines of light..."

From the self-titled poem by Kevin Goodan

False nostalgias

Thinking back

The dried-blood smell of
cold iron rusting, the gray-green
dust of frost-broken thorns—
I see your shadow rolling as
you show me how to set a
hand-brake on a freight car
for that long midnight tour.

*****

Missing my friend made me think about other times past.
Thanks to all y'all who sent me comforting thoughts in response to my "A friend moved away" post.

Lone star

"...if I mattered, well then all things did.
O miracles and molecules, dust, rust. ..."

From "Matter" by Sarah Arvio

A friend moved away

You and I, talking
before you left: clouds caught in
a ragged stick fence.

Better images from "The New Book of Hours" project

I finally have some better-quality images of the prototype page spreads for my last course. Not great, but much better lighting and thus better visibility on the detail.

You can see them here.

No rungs

"...a stairway without landings, a stairway to the sky..."

From "With Mescaline" by Henri Michaux

Frank Stella meets Donald Judd (aka heavy metal)

What Frank had to say.
What Donald had to say.
What Heavy Metal said.

Occasional yaupon

"...I want to know about the occasional
Yaupon and everything..."

From "The Vicarious Experience" by Pattiann Rogers

Nailed it

"How will we get used to joy
if we won't hold onto it? ..."

From "The Rapture of Dry Ice Burning Off Skin as the Moment of the Soul's Apotheosis" by Thylias Moss

Can't sleep, oh well

The Poem

I.
The poem has nothing
to say right now. The poem
wishes it were somewhere
else—stuffed alongside warm
socks in a drawer, or fishing
with a stick, some thread and
a comically cheerful bobber.

II.
The poem and I once spoke when
it was in a chatty mood. It whispered
and winked like some heiress from
a 1930s screwball flick, it nuzzled
my shoulder and whinnied like a pony.
The poem said, “I wasn’t always like this.
You knew me when I was soot, or a
jonquil, or the chalky cracked grout
in your grandmother’s bathroom, you
watched when I painted your name
with crushed abalone deep inside a
cloud, but it couldn’t last, and I
don’t know why it couldn’t.”

III.
We both smiled, the poem and I,
as it folded up into a tight ball,
became an origami of stillness.

Nuts

Busy work-day ahead, and no poems fit...

Let me know if you find one that might.

Sky in the mud

"...coated
with dust and mud,

―oh, the breathing mouth of the sky..."

From "We, coated with dust and mud..." by Kiwao Nomura

Note: the first link will open a PDF.

What's left

"...A perfect circle falls

Onto white imperfections. ..."


From "My Mojave" by Donald Revell

Effaced

"...I can find nothing
to give myself to..."

From "Still" by A. R. Ammons

Small mountain

"...I looked it right in the eyes, and I caught it--
I put it, like a small mountain range,
into a knapsack, and I took it out
of the city..."

From "Turtle" by Mary Oliver

Heartfelt

"...It could
be my way of telling you that I too
burned and froze by turns and the face I
came to was more dirt than flame, it
could be the face I put on everything,
or it could be my way of saying
nothing and saying it perfectly."

From "Picture Postcard from the Other World" by Philip Levine

*****

Happy Valentine's Day, all y'all!

Intake

"...I would like to describe a light
which is being born in me
but I know it does not resemble
any star..."

From "I Would Like to Describe" by Zbigniew Herbert

Sun spots

"...the yellow grass.

The water
flashes..."

From "Laying the Dust" by Denise Levertov

Ferrous

"...in the transparent and energetic fortress

of forgetting..."

From "Before Saying Any of The Great Words" by David Huerta
Translated by Mark Schafer

After burners

Cold kiln.
No poems fit; maybe some will later.

Dichotomies

"...Such is the way of wonders: no longer seen
because, being there, remembered merely;

and, no longer there, remembered because
no longer seen. Did they have to be beautiful? ..."

From "Fallacies of Wonder" by Richard Howard

Caught

"...the tinware,
the gun-gray curlings of salt-tongue.
Not rainbowed at all..."

From "The Fish" by Linda Bierds

Mercurial, again

"...between Mercury

and Indian Springs

the light

begins to change..."


From "driving to Vegas" by Kirk Robertson

*****

A new haiku and donation made to send books to those hungry for them...thanks, Dana!

Parting

"...this new aperture
*
Not just a hole to see through but blasted man-sized to step through..."

From "Composition (Template)" by Kara Kelsey

Warm winter

"Within the year
Spring has come again;
The one year:
What should I say: that it's last year,
Or that it's the year to come?"

A waka by Ariwara no Motokata
Graciously made accessible by Dr. Thomas McAuley

Blue crackle

"...What we are given in dreams we write as blue paint.
Or messages to the clouds. ..."

From "Homage to Paul Cezanne" by Charles Wright
(Note: the poem title link opens a PDF.)

Demarcations

"Let us begin with a simple line,
Drawn as a child would draw it..."

From "Art Class" by James Galvin

-ikes

"...it's history, that ceiling
comprised of recessed squares..."

From "Catastrophe Theory III" by Mary Jo Bang

Highlight

"...though high in the dry leaves something does fall,

Nothing comes down to us here. ..."

From "The Forest" by Susan Stewart