If I am not grateful in the knowledge that I will die, and possibly suffer untold, nigh unbearable pain between now and that time, then of what worth is my gratitude for my relative good health, and for an abundance of fluffy clouds, fresh air, and sunshine? Can such conditional gratitude really be gratitude at all? And yet even that is a start, I suppose. If I am alive in […]
What I know is not what I think I know. What I know is a secret I am told. That the secret is in a language I do not understand is not as sad as it might seem. For if the language was one I understood, there would be no need for words like these. And poems would not fall from trees. The End of Me cherry blossoms will […]
Twenty-six-degrees, and a walk through the frozen neighborhood before sunrise — an exhilarating way to start the day. I was careful, of course, to pick up my feet, ice being what it is, and bones being what they are. On the snowy parts, where cars had not been, the crunch of my footsteps was loud enough to wake the dead, if they were not awake already. Day of the […]
Tracks made by a bird. The kind was hard to tell. And then it snowed. Soft and white it fell. He died that day. They say he never wrote so well.
Old poems, buried here, and here, and here. I wonder at their names and birth dates, and the lives they must have led. And I wonder if they will live again, and if what they say was ever really said. Obituary I was by there yesterday Someone left a light on in the house Does the neighbor have a key Or was it someone else Mercy me Her poor […]
I thought I had better call my old friend to see how he was doing,
forgetting for the moment he is dead, yet knowing it too,
and knowing I was forgetting, and knowing I knew.
Dream Fragment — January 28, 2019
I shot a rabbit once, and have been bleeding ever since. I shot a bird, and now my wings are bent. I shot an arrow at the heavens, and my heart is where it went. I shot my childhood, and this strange long life it sent. I shot my life, and death told me what it meant. I shot my death, and now I sing, and now I dance.
Fifty years ago, when my father went to visit a farm neighbor dying of cancer, he heard him howling with pain the moment he entered our little hometown hospital. I was born in that hospital. When we were in high school, a close friend of mine died in that hospital. Three of our four children were born in that hospital. In that hospital, my appendix was removed. My wife worked […]
If I were planning to be away from home for a long time, I would close the doors and windows, make sure the lights and stove were off, and stop delivery of the mail. I would not plant anything that needed water or attention to survive. It strikes me, though, that with this journal and writing space and place for drawings, I’m doing just the opposite. Expecting to be called […]
There is still the funny little matter of what to save and what to throw out. This question comes up every few weeks or years, when the urge arises to gut entire closets with their stacks of storage tubs half-buried in all manner of curious debris — papers, crayons, lamps, fried or obsolete electronics — even old decorative pillows long past their presentable lifetimes. Some decisions are easy. For instance, […]
