Fugue State
Oct 27 2009


A change of scenery
they concurred.
A warm dry climate.
Salt-water pools
that hold you up
like form-fitting mats
of body temperature fluid.
A sudden move,
to exotic tastes
foreign tongues
sultry women,
who flash their eyes at you.

I seek the geographical cure
for this gnawing ennui
these frayed attachments.
From the familiar landmarks
that remind me of flawed starts
false hope
things that end badly,
or not at all.

I travel in a bubble of glass,
the illusion of stillness
as the world moves past.
I travel in any direction
a fugitive, defecting,
not speaking out loud
for days.

I make distance,
but only the scenery has changed.
Far enough
on a spherical planet
and you find yourself home, again.

Fat Pink Bottom
Oct 25 2009


A half inch of snow
transforms the world,
a soft democracy of white.

Which reminds me
how susceptible we are to surface,
struggling to unearth
the thin and tenuous
from what is deep, authentic.
We take-in the world through our eyes —
the selective aperture of gaze;
the narrow spectrum of wavelength;
the beguiling deception
of glitter, paint, and blinds.

I watch a mother
with her infant son,
holding, stroking
burying her nose
in the newborn baby smell;
looking through trusting up-turned eyes
directly into his soul.
She coos nonsensically,
dandles on her knee
his fat pink bottom,
feels constantly astonished
at the one-off beauty
of his boneless body.

She utterly absorbs him
through all 5 senses;
fell in love long before
he ever emerged
into a world ruled by sight.

Lost
Oct 22 2009


You ease into an all-day pace,
the walking, unconscious
your mind
free to wander.

Time unravels, dissipates,
so only distance remains
— how far from nightfall,
how badly you’re lost,
the world you left well behind.

Grateful this body
which demands so much of you
— needing to be filled,
soft with pain,
the light and sound
entering incessantly —
can disappear
in automaticity,
in the soothing rhythm
of stroke and gait.

You try hard to walk
on uneven ground
every day,
pushing through underbrush
stumbling on roots
black mud, sucking at your heels.
You step away from your body
and look back in wonder
at this steadily breathing shape
warmed by blood,
its ineffable complexity
carrying on by itself.

While you roam far away,
effortlessly ascending
beyond the pull of earth.

One More Winter
Oct 15 2009


The scent of wood-smoke.
Crisp leaves
crunching underfoot,
whipped into tiny whirlwinds.
The relentless descent
into darkness.

Who isn’t melancholy
in the fall?
Literally “black bile”;
which sounds envious, mean,
instead of that bittersweet feeling
of loss
and repose
and time’s indifferent speed.
As bodies grow older,
the cold penetrates deep,
and you find you’ve lost a step
bucking wood
raking leaves
bringing-in the sunshade and deck chairs
you hauled out last spring —
too flimsy
for winter.

The woodstove eases
your aching joints,
you can’t look away from the flame.
The forecast is calling for snow.
You imagine drifts against the door
half-way up the windows.
You can’t wait to be storm-stayed,
certain you’ll make
one more winter
at least.

Enclosed
Oct 13 2009


I take comfort
after dark,
the warm lights in the windows
waiting to welcome me home;
the world shrouded in darkness
except for the silvered circle
close-by
that moves with me as I walk,
looking down
taking notice
of a small circumscribed world
that seems transformed.

There is so little time
as I move through fall;
the days getting shorter
so it feels like peering-out at daylight
through a quickly narrowing slot.
Night encroaches
from both ends at once,
making us all nocturnal creatures
— the early risers,
those who prefer the dark.

So we hustle through daytime
getting things done,
then eat and sleep
and watch;
close observers
unintentional poets,
conjuring a whole universe
from the microcosm,
enclosed by night.

The Perpetual Now
Oct 12 2009


There was snow
the first week of October;
fall, hardly over,
its sepia-toned carpet of leaves
frozen
‘til the reprieve of dawn,
when the thin white cover
imperceptibly lifts.

In her first 8 weeks of life
this puppy has seen brief high summer
a rain-soaked autumn
now her very first snow,
snapping at fat wet flakes
her nose, white frosting
bounding with unrestrained delight.
One more great mystery
to explore.

She is pure, uncorrupted.
She has only known love
has no malice or judgement
implicitly trusts.
She lives
in the perpetual now.

A wild carnivorous beast
shares this space with me;
a plush brown toy
when she sleeps.
In this ambivalent season
of endings, and beginnings
I watch her grow strong;
hardly a puppy for long.