Dream Stars

Those lines, say, on stars:
the hell with the stars.
They were about the perception of the stars.
—Franz Wright, Another Working Dawn—

Are the stars
still blazing away,
all those happy little dream stars
in their empty blue somewhere?

Once I knew about stars,
those endless blue holes in the cold night sky,
how they burned God’s fingertips
when he tried
to move them
from one little dream
to another.

O! stars of silent sapphire dreams
please gleam and glitter and scream
now and then:

warn me

before you decide to

return to

my dreams.

At the Beach

The breeze is blue off the lake,
the shadow of the willow the green of forever
and the goldfinch in the blueberry bush
a yellow sun-bright song.

Maybe gray is incurable
but when yellow and green dance out and vanish
over deep blue blindness
let me lean into fog,
sink into gray,
summon color for my poem.

Forever Song

Have you ever heard
forever songs—
songs of rain and whirling wind,
duet of chickadee and yowling cat,
the chorus of angry crows in the whistling old willow?

Across the cold gray city
traffic rumbles,
jackhammers preach their special sermons,
hawkers hawk,
beggars beg
and city streets and countryside are everlasting song.

I sing to rain and wind and whispering sunrise,
black crows on black willow limbs,
jackhammer men,
somber sellers of street food and unwelcome news,
and all the sad, stunned beggars.

I pipe my modest tune.
I sing what I must.
I sing for my life.

Angel Wings

All told: We drilled and hit demons.
—Jill Alexander Essbaum, What Isn’t Mine—

and I set off a rocket
and clobbered angels

though I wanted to cuddle them
ask them to speak on my behalf

I didn’t want to shoot them down
just let them know I’m here

down below playing with explosives
all day long, preparing my fate

inch by inch, minute by minute
not expecting the fuse to light

the rocket to burst from its silo
in splendor and catch cherubs

with their harps and lovely angel wings
totally by surprise so please pardon me

tell me, I pray, tell me I have another chance
that one little mistake and 10 ruined angels

singed angel wings and busted halos won’t
consign me to some netherworld

some immeasurable place of dark imaginings
tell me, angel heart, that you still pity this

fallible creature unable to shoot straight
unable to whistle and walk without stumbling

straight down into hell’s own dark gorge

Paths

with thanks to Kim Vanvoorhees

In the ancient northern woods
all the paths are unmarked

and the streets of my city have
familiar names; I know where they lead

and which cross and which branch off,
and under the usual tall glass towers

I’m utterly lost

dreaming of aimless unmarked paths
on my unremembered way and I know

I could die of
my dreaming.

There are no certain paths,
straight or winding, named or nameless:

dreaming or eyes wide open
in sun or shade
I can only urge myself forward
one puzzled step
one unreadable dream
at a time.

At the Beach

The breeze is blue off the lake,
the shadow of the willow the green of forever
and the goldfinch in the blueberry bush
a yellow sun-bright song.

Maybe gray is incurable
but when yellow and green
dance out over vast blue sea-dreams
and vanish
let me lean into fog,
sink into gray,
summon color for my poem.

Reverie

I walk into day.
I walk into night.
Is there a difference?

In the back corner of my dream sun fades
away, the moon is hazy and uncertain
and stars sizzle and hiss like sparklers in the rain.

Night is day and day is night
and the sun rains ice on silence;
I drag my modest past behind,
my immodest dreams.

I walk down the winding
byway of my once-upon-a-time
and there flicker and buzz
the sights and sounds of
a small child alone
under a summer canopy
of looming black-walnut trees
and a strange whispering across
a continent of time to
that small thin child
alone in summer shadows
dreaming the elderly
white-haired poet dreaming
his former self alone dreaming,
dreaming, dreaming.

Night

I cannot master the beauty of the night
—Maurice Leseman, A Man Walks in the Wind—

I enter night
not knowing night,
the welcoming night,
the steep, unscalable night.

The wind is high tonight
and the dying maple groans
or laughs (maybe at my fragility).
I wonder what it sees of night.

Will I ever be one with night?
Will I blunder off course,
my path unseen
beyond the next blind turn?

I persist into shadow and wind
and wonder why I can’t turn back
though lost on this sightless path
to the steep starless night.

Unsung Songs, Unwritten Poems

it’s an unshiny gray day
not the day I proposed
for lounging in the shade
of my sugarberry tree

then she dashes by
her black ponytail
bouncing
bouncing
and I cannot run with her or after her
I’ll never catch up
after all I can’t even catch up
with myself

time passes
time always passes
even when I’m sitting down
with my legs crossed
contemplating
a beautiful black-ponytailed young woman
running by

where are my unsung songs
my unwritten poems?
maybe they’re chasing after
a black-haired beauty
who just turned the corner of my life
and vanished

Halloween 2009

Leaves are falling
and soon the maples, oaks and elms
will all be gray and bare

and the wind is gray
at my feet, swirling
debris to the gutter

of the street,
soon to be
crystalline white,

and the day grows empty,
clouds dissolve, and the wind,
resolving highs and lows,

pushes here, then there,
formless and aimless,
and I meander to

whatever it is I yearn for
but soon forget,
and now it’s dusk,

and the wind
dissolves whatever
remains of resolve,

and I turn back to the house,
somewhere in my past,
there in the valley

of the sheltering hill
where once there blossomed
so many flowers and other living things.

Twilight Song

sing
a twilight song
of radiance ending in magic
the beginning and end
of something

all things end
the sun is not imperishable
and gods come and go
some walk on earth awhile
and linger in our dreams
but all must die

tonight the setting sun
is pandemonium in
yellow and red and orange
sliding off the edge of
the far horizon

it will surely fall
maybe to rise again
or maybe not
and as it falls it sings:

remember me in my descent
in all my falling splendor
just in case
I’m never seen
again

In the Rising and Setting Sun

I too was a child
dancing to
lonely dawn and twilight song
and the music was shadow music
singing
in my song-wild childhood
and even now it sings
and it will sing
and sing again
till time runs out of song

At the Core

In the
moonless
starless
darkness
something is glowing:

though somewhere the moon is hiding
and stars despair their dimming
something is glowing.

Let me hide behind
silent brick walls
where I can wait
and wonder if
I’ll ever see
the radiance
at the core of darkness.

Bright Lights

from what we cannot hold the stars are made
—W.S. Merwin, Youth—

The stars are wilted and wan
and the Milky Way nostalgia,
unable to compete
with city razzle-dazzle.

I wonder
where radiance hides.
Is it still pulsing away
at the rim of our whirling blue world,
at the edge of sanity,
perhaps afraid to
signal us
that the gods cannot get through,
that we’re alone,
all alone
in our fine and brutal incandescence?

I Walk in the Neighborhood

through gates of moonbeam and shadow
trampling unseen graveyards.

Is that the wailing of ghosts
I almost hear,
the bonedry cries of
vanquished nations
at the edge of
everything unholy?

I can’t see through moondim reverie
into yesterday’s unholiness,
but somehow I know
I’m not alone in the shadow
of this almost silent boneyard village.

My Summer Vacation

Is today the day I rise above
the wind to a windless forever?

They say the shadow of forever
is long and dark and incurable.

Maybe I’ll wise up before I float above
autumn blaze maple and honey locust

and the tattered gray clouds
that decline to come when I call.

Maybe I’ll learn to stay put, anchored
to the mossy red brick of my familiar

patio, consort with chipmunk and
chickadee, thrive in the shade of
my sugarberry tree.

Twilight Song

In the soft amber shadow
katydids and crickets sing
farewell to light.

Or maybe they mean to summon
ancient gods to save
them from night.

Or is it insect love—
time to woo the ladies,
a final dance,
a tryst in the grass?

Now the night’s opaque,
and there’s a hum, certain and calm
as the hard silent sleep of granite and iron,
and I think it’s time to honor creatures
kind enough
to sing for me.

I applaud their nameless song,
its veiled composer.
Let their song be forever
the song of wind and grass,
iron and granite and falling light.

No Escape

Light rises
into windsong and laughter
and across the street
children swat a ball
and laugh and run.

Once I was a child
of laughter and light,
unfraught days
and nights of lilac and honeysuckle.

Trees reach up and out
perhaps in thankfulness.
Do they remember their
saplinghood,
their struggle for light?

A slim blond child skips by,
ponytail bouncing.
I want her to celebrate.
I want her to understand:

Life is incurable.

Warning

step down

pretty angel

from the autumn sky

winter is coming

and you will freeze

in your gossamer gown

dress for snow and ice

death rides

in gray days

and heavy clouds

though you are

beautiful in

pink and rose

and always

fetching

you will die

in the cold

it will be ugly

no matter

how lovely

your smile

Angels and Other Considerations

...If angels lodge inside
us, they feed on details, then retreat into hiding.
— Lance Larsen, Santiago, Pluperfect—

Angels aren’t picky.
Content to live in fat and bone
muscle and viscera,
they ward off dragon and slave and bully.
They hide in my indifference.

I don’t know why
this leafy green village is
greener than ever this summer,
so many dollars away from sprouting potatoes and moldy cabbages,
rats and lice and other perils of the poor.

I sing to the angels behind my breastbone
in my gut
lurking in my loneliness
or wherever they chance to land
and I sing to the angels in my leafy green village
in exile from indecent slums.

Somewhere angels screech hosannas to misery.
Somewhere angels pray loudly to money and joy.
Somewhere angels are silent and dangerous.

Why, the child asks, is the sky blue? Why do things die?
And talk about wave lengths and cycles of birth and death
leaves her cold
and leaves me cold
Why?
Why?
she asks.

And the angels are silent and dangerous.