When Fates Are Decided

When Fates Are Decided

It is during the last days of fall,
during evening light,
walking the wind-swept beaches of the Atlantic,
that they come upon a pavilion empty for the season.
Deserted, a cold wind roams through it
catching and lifting bits of sand
that hide it's brick floor
(it's wooden pillars are bleached by sea-salt).

O,the quiet secrets love stumbles upon.
And her heart goes far out to the coastline
that recedes like a tentative hand--
a geasture somewhere between friendship and longing.
He finds the wholeness of her,
urging her away from desire towards love
as they walk side-by-side with silent purpose
unconcerned where it takes them.
A small boy's faith, developing in a sun-lit cathedral
with doors open to a warm breeze
travels with the same medatitive stillness.
These moments of discovery, such as now,
such as finding loneliness in an unsuspected place,
a seasonal place out of season,
only lasts for now.
But during the reverie,
the twilight when fates are decided,
the past is diminished
and she raises him and he raises her.

Under an orange evening sky
over the failing of fall,
they recreate one another like a stranger,
omniscient like the poet,
looking from a boat out at sea
onto their separate loves
intersecting and finding one another.

Three Haikus

The Beginning of Something

The last autumn leaf,
Singular among bareness,
Hangs onto a branch.



Evening Light

Our hearts remain still
In brief moments of twilight
When our fates are decided.


Generations

The wisdom passed down
From ancient philosophers
Like a son's father.

All the Better For It

sitting beside a hearth, cage open,
a fire up and coming
and myself content to just drift
in and out of sleep
listening to the distant wind blow
through the curtains.

the objects inside this house
remain silent, yet tell a story
that over time has shifted with my own.
My breath comes slow and easy,
my thoughts run one into the next,
and I'm all the better for it.

Lesson for Poetry Class

Black Springs


Between grey boulders, hidden, are black springs--
so black they appear blue.

Higher up the mountain,
sometimes covered in sunlight,
sometimes darkened in shade,
are the black springs--
so black they appear blue.

At night, within starry skies,
clouds slowly travel through over enormous mountains,
and so, under moonlight, appear the black springs--
so black they appear blue

where small bacteria sizzle away,
dyng like a dying fire
while a woodsman slips into sleep.

At the summit, a car's chain-incased tires
clutch the snow-white- town's winding roads.

Life continues on, life inside life,
and we'll meet in town to go to the black springs--
so black they appear blue--
where a white moon is reflected in,
and with talk of our dreams.

Young Lovers

Out To Sea

My mind swims with thoughts of a past love,
warm like a sun-filled afternoon
while walking the pier of a green sea.
Remembered moments slip by
as easily as the sky changes color--
from swept orange, cool red, to dark violet.
Various shades of emotion.
I watch these changes like one watches
the slow travel of clouds.

Past arguments both won and lost.
Small reminders, really,
like a white sailboat in the rolling sea.
With it's cloth sails set against a west wind,
and like the quiet past,
our voices carry away out to sea.

A Family's Grave

It's autumn in the country
and the leaves are changing from green
to yellow and orange and brown.
They fall dead off trees
and cripple after days.

Under bridges,
creeks run thin and cold.

Wild horses saunter next to
fields of corn--dry, brown
emptied husks.
These fields of empty husks
sway in the breeze,

and across an old red home,
with tiny paper ghosts
nailed to it's columns,
a small grave lot lies
telling the season's story.

Shadows

it's as if the sky opens up
to the circle of the sun
and it's rays knife through the atmosphere
and settle down inside silent forests.

this light lies down
alongside rivers
that run into other rivers

and the dark outlines of fresh-water fish
move within and without
the changing light.

Driving Dark Roads, From Town to Town

In the half-light of early morning
I drive these dark roads
without a thought in my head.

My heart if covered in mist and silence
as I pass an airport's landing strip.
Blue and white lights flash
in this darkness.

Wheat fields spread out to infinity.
They go on and on
as I come to terms with my limitations.

After It All

For days, my sad heart
has prolonged happiness.
Waiting through the prologue
for the epilogue--
hoping for help to come.

Like a deserted station
waiting for the next wave of transients.

The full heart waits for a joke,
and this season's leaves rot.

For days, my sad heart
has prolonged happiness.
Waiting through the prologue
for the epilogue.

In the autumn the nights are long.
The new mornings dark and still
and not yet ready.

After it all,
after all the mornings and all the nights,
after all the seasons and all the years,
my sad heart has waited patiently.

Once frozen, once sprung to life,
once inflamed, and once fallen.

After it all, after prolonging happiness,
it has settled
where it cannot be touched--
deep in a woods
where snow blows off the trees
and covers every footprint.

Down an Alley

The season behind
is like a stranger
following me down a street.

We do a dance under street lamps
unaware of the future--
once forgetting one another,
once remembering,

and reminding me
that I cannot escape it
unless I were to turn a corner
and disappear down an alley-way.

Finding myself alone in Time,
he walks by
looking left and right,
forgetting the present.

Leaving

But don't you see,
most of the time
we're leaving
hoping to look back
and see ourselves
in a history

In the City

the man was a hoarder
though I never knew him
but only by the things he left behind

old records, typewriters,
dozens of shirts all the same

oh the garbage!

it took an industrial size dumpster
to carry all the weight

and the Italian neighbor,
having had it up to here
with her parking space being taken,
coming out, time and again,
only saying "move,"
then throwing back her hair

the lull of the block
in mid afternoon

a broken mirror
sunlight coming through the window
and catching each piece of glass

before we knew it
the man had come back to life
if only to find his home empty
and neighbors disgruntled

The Garden

Under dark skies I kneel
where vines sprawl
and choke plants.
Climb up stone walls.

Thorned weeds, having spread,
are unearthed.

The lilacs are dead.
Their bulbs
hollowed out and shrivelled brown,

The green Earth is moving on
and soon it's hidden face
will be revealed.

Ignite

Hanging around town
for the rest of your life.

It's in the small things--
the echoing of Sunday morning church bells.

The thoughts of the city--
leaning old brick cathedrals;

Morning light coming through
staind glass windows;

The muted shuffling of feet.

Sins relieved. The soul ignited.

Then, out again,
wherever I may be.

A Past

Up North

On this cool morning
bright sunlight lays down
on the green leaves of trees.

An ancient morning
like old friends reuniting
only to find change.

A Season

September

An autumn night comes on.
Wind comes in
and rattles the curtains.
Somehow a moth has made it inside.
Over and over,
she collides with the bright bulb
from the ceiling fan.

The Student

The Student

The young man left school to see the world,
but found sunken cheeks
and sore, sleepy mornings

found soul-less afternoons
operating machines
alongside workers in half-sleep

heard the drone of giant fans
all around
and saw bright sparks,
from welders hidden behind iron masks,
that scurried along the floor
and burnt the naked neck.

Through wide industrial doors,
with cheeks discolored from heat,
he left that place
into drizzling autumn rain.

In that moment, the dream forgotten
returned to memory.

New, the young man returned to school.

Being fall, he walked the sidewalks
under trees full of color
holding a book under his arm.

The past, he thought, will soon be forgotten.

The Reader

The Reader

Wind runs through trees.
The reader lies asleep underneath.

Death changes faces
in the novel opened in on his heart.

Time

These days are long days.
Full of grey skies and warm, summer rain.
Striped barn-cats roam around the empty house.
The stone bird bath overflows.
Dogs plop down and sigh,
methodically licking themselves.
Pools of sunlight fall
into gardens surrounded in stone.
All this life lazily slips by
from one second
into the next.

Trying something new--Tell me what you think

Longing for her



spring;

sun and wind blowing through trees,

equally in union,

outside the dusted city apartment;

He didn't remember why he came

(but he was here!)

and she could ascertain he was lost, again,

and beginning to lose something else

and something else, and something else,

etc.

It was April-Spring with clearly a forcast;

Fragments of light arched

around cotton-white clouds up in the air.

He remembered something as he looked at her

looking out the apartment window:

the jury was not yet out on them.


For six years, they were young friends

aware of each others' strange-ness.


Who thought-up one another

more often than kissed.


She could tell he was lost

and that there was nothing to be done about it.


Although, she conceded,

she was the one looking out the window.

However, "that's neither here nor there," he thought

because, he decided, he loved her more than she loved him.


And he knew he was lost because he knew,

in having that look,

she could not tell what he was thinking:

he loved her.


Rain came down, and with that,

the sound of a million pins dropping silently,

and she continued to look out at the passing cars,

warm in the hope-thought that, at the moment,

he was simply thinking about her-- nothing more.

First poem in awhile

Years of Trails


After years of snow and years of rain
spring came
alight, in the afternoon,
with a soft sun.

The rivers high
turned bronze with mud and light,
and running swiftly.

Trees bloomed with leaves.

All the blank spaces filled
with light and color.

Wind-jackets were dusted off.

Cold air was warm,
and, in a breeze,
swam around sunday morning walkers.

A new freedom arrived and opened up.




Each old trail among the years of trails
is paved with mulch,
sun-dried browns and whites,
and we don't know which path to take,
(and this is a good thing)
and looking into the distance

we're unable to see where they disappear

Poem

The River

The river spilled
over it's grassy banks
and flooded an empty woods.

In a new freedom,
fish swam around sunken rooots.

Two poems

On Feburary days,
winter wants itself back
having been outgrown.

Cold rain falls
into empty woods
where trees stand
leaf-less.

From snow,
stones and trails
reveal themselves.

Tiny creeks come back to life.

A happy memory, once forgotten, returns to thought.

All things dead
hollow logs
lie in their form
peacefully.

__________________


As if a story has been left behind,
in a deserted field,
a scene is created: deserted,
but where people were once
walking and talking

colored tents stood
littered about.
in a sunny breeze,
flags shook on poles.

fortunes were read
through palms.

night came over the bizarre.
stars lit an unlimited sky.

morning came.
fires still burned
burning out and smoking.

Wheat Fields

Wind-shield wipers
going back and forth
parting water
that falls in intervals of seconds.

onto cars driving past drowning
fields of wheat.

On the surface, all is well.

Peace
like silent lightning
touching down
a deserted field;

Quietness inside the cars;

A darkness along the road
as dark as the bottom of a stone well;

An innocence proven;

Slowly, water reaches
throats of the wheat.

Old Friends

With morning, still night,
early traffic
on dark roads
miles and miles long.

The banality of morning reporters;
an orange, plastic wrapped newspaper
still cold from winter's touch.

Old coffee grounds
dumped out.

The pouring of coffee;
The filling up of a cup.

A car running
warming up
in a driveway
almost ready.

Gears shifting, to a pause,
of a garbage truck
continuing on.

The emergence of a bright orange sun.

Hundreds of mornings
still dark
take light
and then people run
into one another, old friends.

His Other Self

Fear came that morning, with a winter's snow,
awake and aware.

Never did the sun peak and burst through the pale sky.
It snowed on and on all day.
It turned night.

He lost himself-- his Ego left him,
and he was forced to decide,
(he, forgetful of the origin of his fear)
whether to rejected himself,
(a self fickle to silemce)
or stay.

Now, as the separate, Third Person,
unreal and spoken toward
so continually invented,
sought an individual happiness.

But it had been snowing on and on.
The blue and orange fire
in the hearth was dead.
The remaining logs burnt black.
Under the grate,
piles of ash.

Incomplete Poem

Before her isolation became a sickness,
like the weather, a Thing
seen and talked-out-loud about,
she survived on not taking,
and her existence became
a silence filled with a crowds' voice,
or a deep carving filled with light.

Her feelings shifted with her location,
and, by taking nothing, she travelled
like a river through grassy hills,
as an Emotion
handed off from one current
to the next.

Nothing, Revisited

He wanted to see himself reflected in,
see what mystery was there,
but, after beginning, it was like forgetting
an important point he wished to say.

He found nothing, and became angry.

Then, he left himself
to find peace in his anger.
Peace, then existed not within himself,
but from the world's quick first impression.

This in return, allowed him to reassemble himself,
return to himself, without boundaries,
to a silence he couldn't reinvent.

There, he fought tirelessly,
and tried to take back himself,
but, again, only found silence,
and the occasional sound of a passing car.

Reflected into himself, he looked for happiness,
for a union to grasp onto--
something to revise or revisit.

But, in unknown territory,
he didn't trust his perception,
and silence became a companion.

There, he made coffee, smoked cigarettes,
and didn't bother much with his surroundings.
He found his expectations great, so then lowered them.
There was no sound, and he was content with that.
Each thought came, and went,
like an empty gesture whose meaning isn't reflected upon.

Like this, the silence passed,
and he stuck to what he knew best: nothing.

In nothing, he revisited his anger,
and found in it a revised sadness:

like a philosopher's Great Point,
a Nothingness that repeated itself.

Before and After the Ice Storm

After the ice storm,
water drips from everything that is Nature,
and from everything that isn't.

Before, under a translucent and blue sky,
my dying car
was being worked on
by a dozen calloused hands.

Raised high on beams,
detached steel pipes
sagged underneath the car.

In the lobby, coffee percolated into a clear pot.
One repairman looked blankly out into the distance,
as the coffee raised a finger's height.

Blue sparks flew,
in a dark room,
from a drill being operated
by a thick-bearded fat man.

A tall and thin man
sauntered inside,
putting several thick stacks of paper bills
onto the counter.

Now, icicles fall
and shatter onto the ground,
over and over,
making pretty sounds.

Day at the Park

Three-Dimensional Sadness


He stayed the same during the changing seasons
but, among times of sadness, he left himself
and attempted to express, as an outsider looking in,
what he must be experiencing:

Sadness, then, was made whole.

In this three-dimensional wholeness
he saw himself honestly: an outsider.

The landscape of this Truth
was cold and barren.
Wind sent ripples through ponds.

All was silent except the wind
and the sound of tiny leaves moving
on the branches of enormous trees.

But in this climate there was peace.
Birds called sweetly and singular in the cold air.

He saw himself for who he really was: afraid.

Winter, in its simplicity, repeated itself
in endless, snow-capped fields,
and everywhere he looked he saw himself,
and the Nature of his emotion
which was diminished by an endless horizon.

A Poem about Love and Nostalgia

How All Love Ends

Every so often, she revisits past lovers.
Having out-grown them,
she observes the whole homo sapien:
a Thing that exists alone, solitary,
touched by nothing
as if held erect by a steel bar.

She cuts and pastes from the figure.
This happenes in her imagination,
which is an attic with antiques
covered in years of dust.

But the manikin can only last so long
as to when she stops thinking,
and then the Beloved ends how all love ends-- unfinished.

When over-filled, she spends orange evenings in this attic
sorting through the years of dusty humanity.

The nostalgic Things are kept, but the rest thrown out.

And, like that, her love is kept unfinished
and in the past.

Rilke

Here's a new poem, highly influenced by Rilke's novel The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

Rebirth

She wanted to be baptized
in the warm, green water of a pond.
She wanted to wear a flowing, oriental robe,
and walk forth onto the shore
letting her bare feet sink
into the mushy mire of this water source:
this would be her renewel.
It would be faking a death,
and telling only a childhood friend she was alive.

Like this, like with the baptizing priest,
she'll let men touch her with thoughtful hands:
gestures created out of made-up aquaintances.

She'll sacrifice the worldly,
and navagate her way among spirits.
Like sicknesses,
they only break their fever,
break the confines of their bodies
with an anti-thesis: disease.

Being dead, unknown,
her rebirth will be supplicated
in the light of others dead and unknown

Poem

The House-Wives and I

Snow sits blanketing Nature,calmly,
like the slow vaporization
of lingering smoke.

Every person in the wide world is working.

But, the house-wives and I,
we are looking out windows
onto this blank landscape.

Icicles, in a muted sunlight, hang off bending branches.

There was a storm last night.
The emergency sirens went off.
On the roads,
cars were crashing into one another,
crippling upon impact.
And the locks to the cathedral were frozen
so no one could get in,
but someone left the lights on,
and although the cathedral was empty,
every window was illuminated.

And, outside, God travelled from light to light,
while holding his breath past the cemataries.

The sky was dead black.

That night a man in our home had a heart-attack.
I heard his heart tighten lie a rope stretching.

The emergency lines were jammed
because strong winds broke
the wooden telephone poles in half.

This afternoon,
one by one,
branches are snapping from the weight of ice.

The landscape is all white.
Smoke, rising from the rooftops,
slowly evaporates, calmly,
like the look of a deserted cathedral
or the sigh of a dying man,
who is the house-wive, and who is me.

Another fragment of a poem

The 'ol 98 Pontiac is on its last leg.
The clutch is being reassembled
although the wrong parts
were sent to the automobile garage.
So they're over-nighting the correct ones
but now the car won't be fixed
until noon tomorrow
while I've just started on as a security guard
and need to be in by early morning.
I'll have to take a cab there and back.

Fragment

Mid day the fire is dead.
The logs are black.
Commitments in the house have not been honored.
Time is the enemy,
while the wall clock turns to a dreadful hour.

Larry has a slipped disk.
The ambulance medics joke with one another,
but no one knows where to go from here.

The speech is on a running tape.