A new poem by me and some atomic bomb photos including the clown cloud and califlower

DINNER TIME

No one has used this road since

The end of World War II when

Rain came down for eight days

Drowning the wood, abandoning

Even the golden voices of the animals

That once lived here.

It wasn’t that it was dark,

Thoughts could easily become more dense

Than the crippled light that insisted

On being there despite having been foreclosed

And locked with thorns that seemed

Sharper than memory when unfolded.

But we came here anyway, if only

To be troubled by the fact that the road

Refused to go away or stop leading

To anywhere; a cut where, looking ahead

One could see the trees break and an open

Meadow lean ahead all the way to the lake

Shore. In the summer there were fireflies

That received the place like a memory.

Summer is gone, the war is gone

And we, for want of learning something special,

Something to place at the service of trying

To understand all the histories all over again,

Cause us to falter a bit and look

Cautiously about us to see if we can

Explain anything about this loss or the place

Itself that might leave us feeling

Intrusive about our need to be here.

The placid shadows, the mothers calling

Their sons home to dinner across the fields.

a poem for d.a. levy and three reblogs

FOR d.a. levy

Oh little duck squat in your beer.

Such raggedy mornings lope up the hill

and empty their pockets into my room.

I remember April on the coast of France

Wind coming in over the tops of waves

and pushing against the shore.

And now this soft light moves

in and out the door wearing the sun

like it was a gunbelt, aiming the mind

of the child at the stars and firing.

some more reposts and a poem from the series Tom Kryss and I are creating just by sending them back and forth

ANIOLY KARTY DO GRY

(Angels Playing Cards)

There is too much light

In the room for anything irreconcilable

To happen. It will be recorded

Inside the caves, on the battlefields,

Across the purple moors and darker prairies.

The cards are flipped down upon

The table, voiceless like generations

Forced to speak to each other

Through the dark

Doors of time.

For each card is unforgiven, unforeseen

With traces in its skin of the stillness

Before birth, The Ascent of Mount Carmel,

The Olympian crucifix with its living

Christus smelling like wars and collapse

Through fire of great empires.

There is no betting at all. All blows away,

Just the open-mouthed angels constantly

Surprised at how the cards fall

As if by chance.

Some poems published in Medusa's Kitchen back in April. hope you like them

TOMALES

Came out last night.

It was snowing on the moon.

Pretty hard too.

Gusting about

like a room full of laundry

looks when you’ve lost something

in it.

Down here, I’m drinking splits,

looking at the road map.

Everything here is relative.

The moonlight on the beer foam,

bubbles rising like the stars.

The storms ease on the moon.

I ease out the back door

to look at the night again. Huge

drifts of snow slide through

the sky. I am amazed by

the intensity of the storm.

The moon moves across the back

of a fog bank.

Fingers of wind make noises,

almost music, across the tops

of the beer bottles.

__________________

I WOULD MAKE NOISES DEEP

in my throat that sounded

so unlike anything I knew

that I would scare myself.

I became ceremony in sound.

A whirl of phlegm, crackling

and sputtering up from the

rooms I guard against time

and her dancing princesses.

A quaking, as if a bear suddenly

came into the room on hind

legs and performed the crushing

of an arm as if it were a

dance and she the music.

Now, autumn pushes clouds

ahead of itself with a yard

full of leaves, I hear these

same sounds again issue

from their scraping across

the drive and think them

a familiar music, something

treasured, like a Nocturne by

Chopin remembered by the fingers

long after the mind has forgotten

the specificity of the notes and rests.

It is a rustling of lace

in a room draped with silences.

___________________

LA NOCHE

It bothers me

that the night

is outside minding its own

business while I am

in my room half

expecting you to appear

in the bed next to me.

You, with your brow arched,

surprised to have been

shipped across the night

like so much luggage;

the white roses of sleep

still in your skin.

I would be as surprised.

Hello? It would be like

saying hello to

myself on this late August

night, where the voices

of dogs are so small

in the distance, that my breath

seems huge. no, hellos

would never do.

The dark just outside the

window waits for me to put

the lights out. It has ways

of getting to me, of opening

the dreams like oranges

and spilling these thoughts

of you all around me,

before I can catch a glimpse

of you shuttling across the

night air, not alarmed

at all by this thinking

it is just the changing

of the season that causes

these things. not alarmed

by the love of it. not at all.

Knowing you will wake up

far away from this room,

the night being busy

with so much else. with

traffic and dogs and things

of its fabric as to

make such journeys a

matter of reaching to the end

of the bed and pulling

another blanket up above

your shoulders.

__________________

the photos and poems are mine. Hope you like them. Medusa's Kitchen published them in early April

SPRING BROKEN

Really now, it had nowhere to go

Except toward Summer. Wasn’t

that a given? Wasn’t Spring given

Specific instructions about the dawn,

The new leaves, those choruses of frogs?

Still there it is sulking in the first

Week of April like a schoolgirl

Upset over something she can’t have

But doesn’t really want anyway.

High in the Sierra a late season

Snowstorm has turned the world white

Again. There are no flowers, no buds,

No rivulets babbling and gurgling.

There is so much snow the dawn seems

Late, There is a smile on the lips

Of Spring, if only for a day or too.

Perhaps that will be enough.

We will go to the market and buy

Vegetable seeds , try to recall the

Heat after Easter creeping back, getting stronger.

PRESERVING WORDS

We’ve had some of them stored for years in that wooden pantry just below the cellar stair, where mom kept the plums and tomatoes and pickles. They were the words. The special ones we didn’t use everyday. When guests came we would open some and they would spark conversation. After dinner with a slice of pie and slice of cheese those deeper ones that stuck to the sides of the jars would be scraped carefully and served up. The ones that mattered, like blood and its engines, famine and tumult. They are gone now. So much time has passed since childhood that even the pantry is difficult to remember, let alone those words. Still they pulse through our bodies. Unlike cells they are not replaced every seven years by a new one. We hold them in our hearts and mouths and call to one another across time as if it were a fence between yards.

Here's one from this morning and some photos I liked, none of them mine.

IT’S ALWAYS THE WONDER

It’s always the wonder, the mist

Above to morning river, the shimmering

Horses seen through Summer heat on the desert,

The changing of the seasons with their gifts,

The way dreams crowd themselves in our waking.

Waiting along the sides of the road we see

Butterflies of a most remarkable color rise

From a single bush full of the jewels wisdom

Creates when it walks among us with a human

Voice and there, such a lovely woman waves

Toward our rag tag bunch of wanderers and

Calls to us to come for lunch, right about now.

Brooms that stand straight up, almost a forest,

They nod their corn straw heads. A waterfall

Grows from the heart of the forest planting

Rainbows on your skin. We turn colors,

Surprising one another constantly.

I guess I must have looked surprised when

I got here. I didn’t expect it would be like this. It’s

Always wonder that carries the meanings in its

Coat pockets, talks across the whole country,

Allows us to return time and time again to continue

Through tears and heartbreak, murder and confusion.

I’m all for it, will get up and walk right up to it.

I’ll take all you’ve got, angels in the windows laughing.

Quinton Duval - We lost him this week. One of the great ones.

Quinton Duval died this week of a quick cancer that stole him from us within three weeks. He was one of the best American poets writing today. An insightful, eloquent, elegant poet who was always perfect with his words. The above photo is Quinton with his wife Nancy. I cribbed two of the poems from Medusa's Kitchen. Thank you Kathy. Please take the time to read Quinton's work. Joe's Rain is the title poem from his last book. Cedar House Books, 610 East Delano Street, Suite 104, Tucson, Arizona 85705; ISBN# 0-9635727-9-2, $12.00

Joe’s Rain

This late rain drives
into the dry soil
silent through the windows
that look out back.
One big robin bathes
in a saucer left out,
but that doesn’t mean much.
Two weeks ago a man stood
where the rain is falling,
frail, stooped, but standing,
forming words and making sense
about plants and birds and
what a garden does for your soul.
All the daylight is nearly burned,
smoke and ash of evening.
Lights from the house shine
back from wet concrete
this late rain has darkened.
The moon, we learn, reflects
the sun, so that’s what’s real.
I swear I hear a mockingbird
sound just like an alarm clock
mornings when I don’t have to
get up. So that is real too.
And today, wet streets
under the overpass, trucks above
barreling somewhere hurried,
a shower of cherries, shaken
from their crates around a curve
rained down in front of me
and adorned the roadway.
Farmers don’t like rain
when their crop is on the tree.
But I like rain almost always.
Bury us all near water,
scatter us all on water.
If it can rain cherries, it can rain
anything. Does this help?
Have a glass of rain on me.

DOGWOOD

How can you stay so beautiful?

At once so pale and broken

into blossoming scraps, then

the dark, smooth branches,

I mean black, that give up

an odd petal to the spring wind.

How do you seem to know

where to set yourself down?

You have all kinds of wild ideas.

I know redbud sees your play

of dark and light, and starts,

brushy, stubborn, with impossible seed.

All the right and fine things

derive from you, or something like you.

All the veined white blossoms

hold against the black branch, the alarm,

the thug of winter light, the whip

that arrives with such beauty.

LONELY VISTAS

Sometimes the longing begins early,

mornings steering the tractor through

uniform lines of grapes. The mist

settles between the rows, down where

the sulphur grabs hold of the leaves

and workers get that little cough

and surprising yellow in the kerchief.

But you are riding higher, inside the cab

no outer noise can seep into.

Bored, you decide the noise of the motor

is the noise it takes to make the whole

dark engine run, what it costs to play.

And all you see are unchanging rows,

occasional returns, like a ship

on a stage, afloat by simple optical

illusion. What others would see

as lucky, you write off as lonely

vistas, the same old same old thing.

Today you had bologna in your sandwich.

Today is Thursday. You can't remember

if that's what Thursdays always bring.

You long for a highway, a free-for-all

white line of constant change. The hands

that fold the lunch meat, lubricate the bread,

are hands you have watched for years.

Are they yours or hers? Does she wonder

where those lonely vistas will lead you?

Does she know how separate we are?

___________________