darkness descends, light abates
breath quickens, pulse skips
not clear—do we close our eyes or flee,
inhale, inhale, inhale, gasp, grasp, break the spell
rush of air, icy, thought commences,
but edges, shapes—the outline of what must be done,
or what we leave undone
Tag: contemporary poetry
Sans Tempo
A note—
E, D, C♯—
held, not going anywhere.
The rose at the window—
petal and spiral,
not in stages.
The notes fall like sand—
broken,
and whole.
Ecstatic Murmuring
Westbound on Detroit Road,
Thursday afternoon—
the sun at last undoing
what the week of hard cold had locked,
wind finding purchase
in limbs long held numb.
At the light, I was made still
beneath the oaks that rise above the church,
their upper branches clearing the roofline,
where dozens—perhaps hundreds—
of narrow arms were lifted,
bending back, then forward again,
not in time,
not together,
yet not alone—
each answering the wind
along its own brief arc.
I searched for the word:
rhythmic—too orderly;
swaying—too mild;
dancing—too deliberate.
No.
This was something else.
An ecstatic murmuring—
as of congregants when a current passes through them,
not taught, not rehearsed,
each moved according to its measure,
yet taken up into one trembling praise
of what simply is.
The light changed.
The branches did not stop.
Night Reading
The poem finally opened itself:
after readings enough, I saw
how the line broke, why
that word and not another.
The pleasure—self forgotten
in attending, briefly lodged
in someone else’s precision,
language doing its work.
Book to shelf. Poem to page.
The body turns to its ablutions:
water, soap, the day undone.
I glance up at the mirror—
it will not hold image.
Water still running. My hands, still wet, suspended.
The book already distant on its shelf,
the lines loosening, unheld.
Genesis: The Creation of Adam
He formed him
from the ground—
clay still wet,
clinging.
He bent close.
spent breath passed—
spittle,
the damp of earth
at the mouth.
And the man lived:
warm,
hungry,
leaking already
what he would lose.
This was not corruption.
This was the gift.
Northcoast Antiquarian 