While He's Here

three hours of Yes, Darling, & Tell me, Dear

when I speak too softly, Ma’am? I’m alarmed

soon enough mellow & charmed, he takes

out posts, I pull vines, gently rake

broken sticks & leaves from damp earth

he smokes, calls himself fat man, his girth

affirms it, three hours is long enough

to learn how his wife died, a rough

end, breast cancer metastasized

how the Navy recommended he retire

three years of that, boring — yes

retirement's worse than working, I can attest

to that — we are not averse to hard labor

we keep our distance, we’re neighbors

Drain

into the earth I dig

not quite a foot deep

eighteen inches wide

save the sods to hide

bare spots where once

lay uprooted flags

my trench starts at

the east/west fence line

that separated front

from back yard (took

the fence down last

week), runs twenty feet

toward the salt pond

strew red lava rock

found in rotting planters

onto soft black earth

if it works — collects

rain, acts as a drain —

I’ll dig it longer, all

the way to the pond

Sitting Outside at the End of Autumn

by Charles Wright

Three years ago, in the afternoons,

                                      I used to sit back here and try

To answer the simple arithmetic of my life,

But could never figure it —

This object and that object

Never contained the landscape

                                                 nor all of its implications,

This tree and that shrub

Never completely satisfied the sum or quotient

I took from or carried to,

                                     nor do they do so now,

Though I’m back here again, looking to calculate,

Looking to see what adds up.

Everything comes from something,

                                     only something comes from nothing,

Lao Tzu says, more or less,

Eminently sensible, I say,

Rubbing this tiny snail shell between my thumb and two fingers.

Delicate as an earring,

                                   it carries its emptiness like a child

It would be rid of.

I rub it clockwise and counterclockwise, hoping for anything

resplendent in its vocabulary or disguise —

But one and one make nothing, he adds,

                                                                endless and everywhere.

The shadow that everything casts.

I've Entered Hospice

at home, without caregivers

healthy yet genuinely dying

by deciding no more treatments

aimed at prolonging life

exceptions are repairs — hips replaced

thumb rebuilt, cataracts removed

yes to in & out, carry on as if

equipment were original

oh, & monitoring the optic nerve

for I've no wish to live blind

otherwise I'm content

to sail along until I die

or forget what it means to be alive

doubtless I've insufficient knowledge

of possible ills, am girded

merely against what's common
cancer, heart, lungs

I'm not opposed to pain relief

only to resisting what's meant to be

when the ink runs out

I'll go quietly

Discipline

My friend every day writes a poem

sends it to two dozen people who read

& judge — we can’t not judge, it’s our nature

some respond, broadcast or private

everyone, I imagine, mostly deletes

I save the special few — one that notes

the comfort of scotch, one where a toddler

finds a dead fox — who else does this?

daily discipline, what else to call it?

more sensible than flagellation or peregrination

with begging bowl — who’s to say?

half as many readers for my latest blog

as email recipients of my friend’s poems

ample evidence that she works the arts

subtle & not so subtle rhyme, syllabics

& meter — the heron raises bent legs

like a native brave in a dance pretending

to stalk her prey — we stake our claim

the tribe survives because of female braves

Afoot in England [excerpt]
by W. H. Hudson

And if I have a purpose in this book, which is without a purpose, a message to deliver and a lesson to teach, it is only this — the charm of the unknown, and the infinitely greater pleasure in discovering the interesting things for ourselves than informing ourselves of them by reading. It is like the difference in flavour in wild fruits and all wild meats found and gathered by our own hands in wild places and that of the same prepared and put on the table for us. The ever-varying aspects of nature, of earth and sea and cloud, are a perpetual joy to the artist, who waits and watches for their appearance, who knows that sun and atmosphere have for him revelations without end. They come and go and mock his best efforts; he knows that his striving is in vain — that his weak hands and earthy pigments cannot reproduce these effects or express his feeling — that, as Leighton said, “every picture is a subject thrown away.” But he has his joy none the less; it is in the pursuit and in the dream of capturing something illusive, mysterious, and inexpressibly beautiful.

December Rain

raindrops craze & soften lintels

mullions grade horizons & uprights

older houses volunteer spandrels

the cat sleeps beside me overnight

thru heavy rain, high tide — gentle

waves rock the cormorants, not white

but silver caps — boat-tailed grackles

wobble tree to tree, hold tight

to top branches, trust the muted rustle

wet leaves make — the goose shite

smearing the dock is gone, rain swilled

no evidence left behind to indict

the squatters, nothing but gray & white tendrils

sloughed raiment, muddied quills

Trilce 1

by Cesar Vallejo

    Who’s making all that racket, and not even letting

the islands that linger make a will.

    A little more consideration

as it will be late, early,

and easier to assay

the guano, the simple fecapital ponk

a brackish gannet

toasts unintentionally

in the insular heart, to each hyaloid

         squall.

    A little more consideration,

and liquid muck, six in the evening

         OF THE MOST GRANDIOSE B-FLATS

    And the peninsula raises up

from behind, muzziled, imperturbable
on the fatal balance line.

December Harvest

the small white cat, nervous, crawls

toward two much larger Canada geese

standing fouling the sun-weathered dock

wood streaked white, extruded heaps

oozing dark or dry & crumbly, a squawk

as high collars shuffle leathery feet

ruffle feathers, the pair breasts off

planks to water, slow float on gleam

behind low branches, a great blue coughs

cormorant hoodlums gather steam

beat their wings — panicked fish are slaughtered

herons, egrets, pelicans gulp the leavings

down in the mud the cat, of all, the smallest

dabs at shells, stones, salt water

En Train

by Marie Ponsot

“Paris in 20 minutes.” The old excitement

arrives on time as suburbs flash by,

ugly only to look at, lit, densely well meant.

Non-human nature behind us in the dark, I am shy

with longing. We switch to the rings of human intent.

I prepare myself with caution like a quick reply.

City twin to my scarred city on my continent,

Paris gleams, catacombed with greed. Its stained sky

rosy as with deity at midnight is my light tent.

Live sounds, ground small, pulse from it to electrify

roads that join cities into circuits of consent.

Geography is personal, a map whereby

every journey maps home ground. Confident

we’re earth-borne, we can’t get lost. I enter the event.

night sky with dumplingslit by a waning moon

five am the cat wakes

urges me — gurgles

pats, cries — to rise

follow her downstairs

she pees, eats kibble

waits while I make tea

dives into my hoodie

naps until six fifteen

dawn is cloud clear

yellow orange pink

shifting farther south

geese vee honking

ducks swirl the docks

I fry bacon, one egg

spoon her canned food

the fed cat washes

licks my bacon lips

weasels back inside

the soft gray zippered

fleece stretches

round her shape

Two Pewits

by Edward Thomas

Under the after-sunset sky

Two pewits sport and cry,

More white than is the moon on high

Riding the dark surge silently;

More black than earth. Their cry

Is the one sound under the sky.

They alone move, now low, now high,

And merrily they cry

To the mischievous Spring sky,

Plunging earthward, tossing high,

Over the ghost who wonders why

So merrily they cry and fly,

Nor choose ’twixt earth and sky,

While the moon’s quarter silently

Rides, and earth rests as silently.