Tag Archives: poetry

We slept on black rubber body bags
in the mountain hut
high on the north side
of Mount St. Helens
under the diamond hard sky
the bags squeaked all night
when we rolled over
and the mountain waited
for us to climb
its scabrous slopes
into the brilliant orange white morning
a few years later
that side of the mountain
erupted and slid
into the lake below
at least nobody had to sleep
on those body bags
again

Around my block
crows berate,
busses bray
lawn mowers growl
neighbors kvetch
bumble bees perambulate
incognizants plod along in a line
sunk beneath dreaming.

My banjo helps to seine the day’s
news from between the noises
a hardened heart
a wandering wife
a sunken fishing boat
a new car
a lost job.

Slowly it starts to ring
first plinking along in sorrow’s key
then brightly tin-hammered
then ringing like sunshine on cotton fields
ringing like John Henry
banging away at the pit face
of that coal mine
where by God no steam drill
can stop him can beat him
baby it rings like silver
all the way to Canaan
glory hallelujah damn.

I stand facing
the conquered armies of Carthage
the rotting nobility of Rome
the seesaw twinkling of cities
blooming and dying
all along the fertile crescent
slave ships rising slowly at anchor
amphorae of wine and olive oil
piled on sun bright docks
awaiting passage
beggar children asking for coins
feral packs of dogs
defending their territories
kings and drunkards
fat whores with crooked teeth
and all the fishes of the sea
undulating in their fishy homes
beneath the mirrored stars
sprinkling the sea
with the breath of Gods.

And that is only the first three shelves.

Some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt: ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.

I will listen to what you say.
You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
the current is there, hidden; and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say.

White gloved soldiers
Escorting the remains of fellow warriors
On the long flight home from Afghanistan,
Follow strict and
Seamless protocol:
Eyes straight ahead,
Voices low,
The rough places made smooth now.

Spotless flags pulled taut over
Shiny steel coffins
Buffed so that no reflection escapes,
Except the one
That reminds us:
Remember to forget.

Everything.

From the deep pool behind Bonneville dam
Where the vestigal sturgeon
Throng in a writhing mass
Comes a radio frequency that wakes
The slumping mental patients
As they circle my neighborhood block smoking,
Followed by their handlers.

One patient rants about the signal from the fish but he they humor him until he takes his nightly pills and the shift changes and the handlers go home.

Inside the river is where the message is strongest and strangest.
Onshore you have to be as wild as a feral cat to hear it.

I heard it once in a river canyon when my boat flipped and I nearly drowned in a foam sea of bright water, but i didn’t believe it.

I do now.

I am the God of small things
The dog whistle and the rake
The light by your bedside
The inhaler you left in the car.

I am the accountant for the dreams of shoes
For the wild ravings of discarded pots and pans
For the hopes of selenium in worn out circuit boards.

Where were you when the oil
Sediments were laid
When the shale was sunlit uplands
When the furnace of morning
Smelted the ore of stars
Forged the tired molecules that now
Hold the towers
Now surround the wires that carry the
Radios sad voices back out amongst the stars.

Where were you when the tantalum
In your networks
Keeping your data moving
Was set in the rock to vibrate in pitch
With the rinsed light of mercury
To listen for the suns particles
Scattering across the sky vault
To set it’s countenance
On the small pond behind your office parking lot.

Where were you when the wind
Deposited the Gobi desert sands that sit
Behind the hydro electric dams
That collect in the current
That fuse in the glass that sits in the
Small frame over your cars speedometer.

I am the God of small things
Of the things that wait
Of the things that carry
Of the things that abide
Of the things that speak with the tongues of rock
More slowly than you
Have ears to hear.

Fevered shouting
at unseen leering giants

legions of armored demons
pushing shopping carts

towering over the homeless guy
waiting for the light to turn.

90 years old with a lifetime full of paintings in his Portland basement.
Only family and a few friends knew.
He was a protean painter bridging eras and worlds.
The twentieth century flowed across his canvases,
each one a shimmering stipple in Seurat’s Afternoon on the Island.
They gave him a show before he died.
He seemed happy about it.
He left a bit early.
He was tired.
He had an idea for a painting.

First they take your bike,
maybe shove you in the dirt
because you look too smart
or skinny or dark or whatever.
Then one day they take your job because they don’t need you anymore.
Sometime later, days or decades,
you see a garden–tall wild grasses, oak trees, mist rising gold in the sunlight around it.
The skin on your hands vibrates
and the trees listen closely
for your next breath.
There is a stone wall in the garden and a violin that someone left leaning against it.
You are the only one it sings for.

Sad was Abraham and dramatical,

When God planned Isaac’s long sabbatical.

Laid him upon the blood alter limp and terrified,

God said, OK, maybe I lied.

The xerox copy
stapled to the telephone pole
said a cat was missing.
Ben “Boopers” they called him.
He weighs 25 pounds;
and a minute later
farther up the block,
a woman stands on
her porch
calling “Ben”
like she was looking for
a child,–
maybe
she was.

The Merry Giant Suck-A-Thon
Is a strange ship with a stranger crew.
Her decks are manned by the unemployed,
From us no hooting hullabaloo.

Daily round the capstan stamp we,
Through the doldrums daily tramp we.
No storm, no towering seas or spray
Can steer us wide of our fiery mission,
To deliver the fearsome resume.