Thursday, November 19, 2015

Green land

How much would it be better if they knew
Their lines? If such emotion can be drawn
From minds that unremember what has gone
Before, then how much might they come to do
If all could be remembered through and through?
It would be like the rising of the dawn
Upon an arctic land, a frozen lawn
Awaiting melting. Oh, if it were true!
For then the show, like Anchorage in spring
Should see itself and pleasure in the sight;
Letting the months of summer warmly cling
Knowing the winter and the endless night
Are coming, but enjoying for the time
The pleasantest environ of the clime.

Sunday, November 8, 2015

Parallel

The games you play
Upon your phone
Won't go away;
We're not alone.
But even so
I do not care
As long as you 
And I are there.
I play as well
We watch TV
And I can tell
That you love me
Because we're us
And happy thus.

By a sleep to say

I cannot help but think that day's not done
That ends with us apart. It cannot be.
What would be the point of it? You see,
It can't have ended, or even begun,
If it is so. I am not in denial,
Or totally incapable of sense;
Nor am I in the state of innocence,
But rather well prepared to make a trial.
I prove it cannot be by logic, thus:
I would not voluntarily submit
To such a state, and, if forced into it,
I'd work myself into a royal fuss
And could not sleep. Therefore the day would still
Be paralyzed for me by my own will.

Friday, August 7, 2015

Content

There is no place I would rather be
Than in your sight--ideally by your side.
And if there's one thing I could never hide
It was the fact you meant something to me.
And now I have you matrimonially:
My one, my only, and my loving bride.
So now, content, I usually abide
Except in cases where, as presently,
You are away. And then I find again
The yearning opens and a different sense
Invades my soul--I feel my former yen
No longer sated, but regrown immense
Reminds me what it was to lack you--so
I want you back, to never let you go.

Friday, July 24, 2015

Styrt

Come let us become our newfound selves
Not ceasing still to be that which we are
As when the crystal rock a miner delves
Is chipped and cut into a shining star
Persisting elementally unchanged.
So shall we two, formally rearranged
Retain our pasts and still go forth as one;
Staying the same and yet transforming too
As vapor settles into morning dew
And rises with the heat of noontime sun
Remaining water as all this is done
Even in crystals when it freezes through.
So shall we be, becoming something new
Always ourselves. A lifetime has begun.

Let it Go

The clouds are frozen like a painted scrim
Against which we should play some hopeful scene
Full of delightful power in the dim
Yet oozing sunlight. Octarine
Shadows pulse from who knows where and touch
The flowers--also frozen in the sun--
Which at first glance seemed to be nothing much
But are transformed. And all of this is done
But in an instant. Soon the clouds will roll
The light will blaze again in summer heat
The shadows, banished, melt, the flowers wilt.
Yet here and now, before the time is spilt,
The moment generates a crystal soul
Like music on a staff presents a beat.

Monday, June 8, 2015

Sweat

Even on the days I drip with sweat
Pooling above my brows in salty lakes
Fogging my glasses, I cannot forget
How much more effort what you're doing takes.
I can't pretend my little exercise
No matter how I push myself, can be
As strenuous as that which daily lies
Upon your shoulders taking care of me.
So thank you for your every single day;
Your constant presence and your constant care;
Your love and your affection on the way;
And all the ways that you are always there
For me. I'm happy to be blessed with you
And hope that I can make you happy too.

Monday, April 27, 2015

Montana

As all ours do, my patience has an end
And yet it has not come, somehow, with you;
It has with everyone I call my friend,
So that, by now, I must expect it to.
And yet I find that nothing that you do
(No matter how annoying it might seem)
Rubs me awry sufficiently to screw
My patience from its sticking place. I scream
Internally sometimes, or in a dream,
But do not find myself inclined to say
I'm done--my patience rises as a cream
Over my frustration. Though I fray,
I have not yet unraveled. Nor shall I;
My patient love's unbounded as the sky.

Sunday, April 5, 2015

Vancouver Sunset

The ocean boils out into the west
Framed by peninsulas that almost seem
Islands themselves, trapped by the mainland lest
Its ornaments be fleeting as a dream.
The mountains rear above the darkened slopes
Whose trees are shielded from the falling sun
From whom the final tendril slowly gropes
To make the sea and sky appear as one
Melted together in an orange embrace.
The ships that shadow as they cross the sky
Appear to dawdle. But their well-worn trace
Is faster than it seems. So by and by
The sunlight fades. And yet beyond False Creek
An orangeness still illuminates a peak.

Wednesday, April 1, 2015

Ansible

Imagine not that I am far from you
Although the memory of leaving me
Is fresher than the yet untarnished dew
That sits incipient upon the grass;
For I am always with you, inwardly.
My presence is the weight, but I the mass
Unchangeable by fickle gravity:
A constant, giving my own context to
The readings of the scale. This too shall pass.
I am of you, as you of me, and we
Are one to eyes like ours that see things true.
Be resolute and strong--think no alas
Knowing the truth: that we are not apart
As long as we are matched inside the heart.

Baggins

The hours pass into the mist and I have lost the way.
The day grows dark and threatening, and night begins to creep
Upon the edges of my eyes, and I see shadows deep
Flicker against what was the brightness of the day.
And yet as all begins to tend towards black through mottled gray--
While all kind sounds are silenced, and the mind prepares to leap
Towards danger and towards worry, and will start at every cheep--
I cannot help but think of you, and what I think you'd say
And even in my mind alone, without a hint of sound
Without the blessing of your face, or of the slightest clue
That you are anywhere near me, or know where I have strayed
Your conjured voice convinces me that somehow I am found:
That everything will be all right, and I will stumble through
Without the path, and yet with you, and therefore unafraid.

Do

Neither could alone
Do what we do together
Seeds that we have sown
Through (truly) filthy weather
Await the thaw to reap
And two hands to the scythe;
Together we must leap
And bind, and stack, and tithe.
But though the task is great
And cannot sole be done
We need not contemplate
The burden upon one
We are and will be two
To do what two should do.

Sunday, February 8, 2015

Without

No day goes by
No night can end
But weary I
Think of my friend
My peer my heart
My dear my life
My other part
My love my wife.
And where is she?
Do not ask that
She is not here
So let it be
All else is flat
And gray, and drear.

Plane

We scud across the white eternal plain
Whose rolling hills soon flatten into sheets;
Or skid along a bleached and endless main
Whose edgeless quality subtly defeats
My thoughts of measurement; or slip beyond
The world of men entirely, and slide
Through space and pure imagination fond.
Wherever we may be, the joyful ride
Turns terrible as soon as we descend
For that which seemed earth, sea, or perfect blank
Will always turn upon us in the end
Swallowing us who, coating each flank
Wherever we may look, with white and white
Refusing any hope of end-or sight.

Ache

I seek her absent in the evening air
As if the fall of night should conjure her
I know beyond a doubt she is not there
And yet I find I still must wish she were
Hoping against my inner certainty,
Pretending what I wish for might be true
Despite the fact I know it cannot be.
The couch bears only one that should bear two
The meals uneaten fill the bulging fridge
The hours lengthen when no voices speak.
And still it flits about me like a midge
I cannot see nor squash: the little squeak
Of unwarranted hope that will not die
Giving my longing soul the constant lie.

Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Missing

Some pains cannot be simply thought away
They linger in the soul, ready to strike
At little triggers that were once OK,
Especially the things you used to like--
A certain song, played at a certain time;
Something you used to stumble on, but can't;
A sound of feet; a high pitched ringing chime--
And all of them now feel a little scant,
Unfinished, like a frame without a door
Begging to be closed in winter. Now
These little moments shake you to the core
And there's no easy fix. If I knew how,
Be sure I'd share, but I can do no more
For you than for myself, which makes it less
Because I cannot offer you redress.

Thursday, January 29, 2015

New York, Night, 1928-29

The tower tilts, although the street is straight.
In Pisa? No, it has to be New York,
Even though it shares a certain trait-
A little rounding on the top, a cork
To keep what's in the tilt from tipping out-
The lights are wrong for Pisa. It's too bright,
Part of the city circling roundabout
Illuminated in the dead of night
By neon and by taxis and so on:
Life spilling out of doors. And yet the tilt:
The feeling it will fall when you are gone,
And crush the city so the light is spilt.
I dare not walk away, and yet I must
Leaving the city to its tilting trust.

PH-794, 1945

The plainsman draws the peaks he does not know,
Giving them halos, like the far off heads
Of ever distant angels, in whose glow
The sun that beats upon the old homesteads
Is candlelight. Up on the peaks they gleam
Refracting little fires, maybe but
A dim reflection of the reds that stream
Hidden behind, where nobody knows what
May live. The dark surrounding all is thick
Yet in that thickness lies a kind of light
Caught from the distance by a painter's trick
That bends beyond the likelihood of sight
And makes the sky, broken by peaks unknown
A part of him: the world he paints, his own.

Headlands, Monhegan, 1909

The grass that clings in patches to the rock
Creates the very cracks that threaten it
Not with a cataclysmic blasting shock
But year by year, iotic bit by bit.
The act of feeding splinters what it's fed
And growth is death. Below, the water waits
Watching the cliff decay and droop its head,
Whitening the brown and crumbling slates
With constant battering. Between the two
The ancient land cannot but fall someday,
Becoming one with all that distant blue.
But though it will, it has not yet, and may
For years remain so poised between these threats
Alive though bowed, still living in not-yets.

Sunday, January 4, 2015

Voltaire

Can you imagine how it would have been
Had we known what we could have done before?
If somehow we beforehand knew the score
And acted with those thoughts already in
Our minds, and maybe hearts? We could begin
From wherever we chose, and, what is more,
Move onward as we wished, since an encore
Is always easier. What could we win
If our path were thus smoothed before our feet?
What joys could we enjoy, what woes forsake?
What pains could that foreknowledging delete
And what pure pleasures could we seize and take?
Nothing but what we have; for, candidly,
I cannot think a better joy could be.