Winter Evening
–Charles Simic
Photo by Ariel Alemandi on Unsplash
winter evening
Month: December 2019
epistemology
Epistemology
–Catherine BarnettMostly I’d like to feel a little less, know a little more.Knots are on the top of my list of what I want to know.Who was it who taught me to burn the end of the cordto keep it from fraying?Not the man who called my life a debacle,a word whose sound I love.In a debacle things are unleashed.Roots of words are like knots I think when I read the dictionary.I read other books, sure. Recently I learned how trees communicate,the way they send sugar through their roots to the trees that are ailing.They don’t use words, but they can be said to love.They might lean in one direction to leave a little extra light for another tree.And I admire the way they grow right through fences, nothingstops them, it’s called inosculation: to unite by openings, to connector join so as to become or make continuous, from osculare,to provide with a mouth, from osculum, little mouth.Sometimes when I’m alone I go outside with my big little mouthand speak to the trees as if I were a birch among birches.
Photo by Waldemar Brandt on Unsplash
god wills it
Yeah, that’s pretty intense/crazy stuff…
God Wills It
–Gabriela Mistral
Original
Dios lo quiere
Photo by Kristina Flour on Unsplash
splitting an order
Splitting an Order
–Ted Kooser
I like to watch an old man cutting a sandwich in half,
maybe an ordinary cold roast beef on whole wheat bread,
no pickles or onion, keeping his shaky hands steady
by placing his forearms firm on the edge of the table
and using both hands, the left to hold the sandwich in place,
and the right to cut it surely, corner to corner,
observing his progress through glasses that moments before
he wiped with his napkin, and then to see him lift half
onto the extra plate that he had asked the server to bring,
and then to wait, offering the plate to his wife
while she slowly unrolls her napkin and places her spoon,
her knife and her fork in their proper places,
then smoothes the starched white napkin over her knees
and meets his eyes and holds out both old hands to him.
Photo by Patrick Kalkman on Unsplash
audience
Audience
–Carl Dennis
Photo by Alexey Ruban on Unsplash
home in the woods
Home in the Woods
–Linda HoganOh home in the woods,
I am here as one hungry to eat,
one with no bread
in the garden of trees
in a place where the stone wishes to blossom.
Bullets have gone to sleep
and with effort the water
flows the way it once did.
Here, in winter, there is enough
dry wood for heat
and I enter smiling, forgetting our history.
Can you bring me to the place
where pollen is now the light
and we remember the original song?
Can you keep me
here? Can you unharm me?
Photo by Dan Meyers on Unsplash
administration
Administration
–Paige Ackerson-Kiely
The hay gathered itself into neat rectangles.
The road longed for a spine and so came the passing lane.I sat in my office, alone, at last, without exclamation.
There was the book I kept meaning to read.
There was the plant I kept meaning to water.And so I learned my touch could not be heard.
Nothing called to me except for myself.I peered into the hallway, for where else do the inconsolable roam?
I comforted the window, its view of the other window.The glass bore prints of the quiet janitor.
Way up high I could see where the moths get out.
body
Untitled?
–Olivia Gatwood
Photo by Konstantin Hopp on Unsplash
mannequins: 13 days til xmas
Thank you to Tony, who sent this to me an entire year ago.
The Season
–John McKernanOh it’s Christmas time in Omaha Nebraska!
“Almost alive” red lips say through the panes.His blue eye, his brown eye, his chipped ear.
Wearing a gray wig, missing two fingers,My father is easily the handsomest mannequin
In the display window at Brandeis and Sons.At me? His son: JohnJ ? Unassembled I lie
In a crate near the electric train.See the workers dressed like priests screw on
My head. Lock on my arms. Twist on my legs.1 am seated in an easy chair. I am wearing
My new schoolboy costume. I hold a new LatinBook in my hand. A Chicago Bears satchel over
One arm. Yellow pencils in my pocket.I paste a scowl all over my face.
The “Dumpy Doll” envies my frown.Father smiles at me. He does not understand
Why the electric train and track he bought for meAre only a mountain of dark plaster, a flurry
Of dry snow, the thin noise of wheels.Nor does he understand why the ice skates I wanted
So badly are razor blades across the cold backOf the duck pond. Nor do I. Fixed
In plaster, I stare. I scowl.Oh see my hands. Oh see my feet.
Thirteen more days till Christmas.I stare ahead. I do not blink.
After the new year, they will take us apart.
Photo by Buzz Andersen on Unsplash
cities like ash
When the Vacation is Over for Good
–Mark Strand
It will be strange
Knowing at last it couldn’t go on forever,
The certain voice telling us over and over
That nothing would change,And remembering too,
Because by then it will all be done with, the way
Things were, and how we had wasted time as though
There was nothing to do,When, in a flash
The weather turned, and the lofty air became
Unbearably heavy, the wind strikingly dumb
And our cities like ash,And knowing also,
What we never suspected, that it was something like summer
At its most august except that the nights were warmer
And the clouds seemed to glow,And even then,
Because we will not have changed much, wondering what
Will become of things, and who will be left to do it
All over again,And somehow trying,
But still unable, to know just what it was
That went so completely wrong, or why it is
We are dying.
Photo by Steve Halama on Unsplash