Who Lives And Writes

So liquescent, so deliver his heart. So long North, your ghost is my turtle. A lawyer and solicitous father who lives and writes in her book.

The children had to memorize poetry and the aforementioned family dog. As I would think of someone with whom I would. The thing with feathers that perches in the soul.

I think everybody's got different, uh, urges. Broadcasting ominous threats was big business in those days. He wrote, a gendered engagement with the world.

Trombone, unicycle, burrito. The poem was evocative of two birthdays at once. School books sold off now and computerized.

Telling to live the tale. To the chicken it was merely a road of two. Possibly recalling her poem at the last moment she was.

In convincing fashion with four songs it began. Gracing our state quarter today, thank God. It must be fought for, protected, and then handed on for - I mean to - them.

Will you be home soon I wonder? You rickety exponent of breath?

Her At Her Looms

Music without warning at the door of a neighbor. The grotesque proceeding, which took place at night, precluded lavender. Her shift and hairlace and no other clothing, her eyes ablaze like a red hot poker.

In February of course, made by the blacksmith out of worn-out scythe blades. "My Gramp had got a little beyond that," he said, and it took years to form an objection. Whittled out of staghorn shoemake how 'bout.

A foaming dish of eggnog. A fillip of the divided finger. The old habit of wetting apple seeds, sticking them to the cheek or forehead or cheek after assigning them a lover's name, and seeing which one fell of last while we chanted and sang and filled the room with song.

With his cheese under his arm, the wandering preacher took the floor. In time, all men grow mad and exert himself. In the guise of a tinker, against the devil.

Lest she cause a murrain to come upon cattle! Her back door was a tree full of red apples not a one of which ever rotted. And woe to anyone who hurried her at her looms.

Dreamed of ghost fishes slatted into empty barrels knocking in the hold. Rather than keep her at a dead loss they found an unsuspecting buyer. On board was a box belonging to a handhorn which nobody could open.

You with the lead, do you hear me crying? Following a trail, growing old in the dirt?

A Promise, Kind Of

The wind always sounds as if from a distance it's gaining. What is falling to the ground in a stream so constant or else. And: a long way is a promise, kind of.

But I am in this process, you are in that one. Time lies so shut it the hell up. The question is how much information will any sentence hold before passing off to the next one its burden, load.

One by one the toy blocks looked at themselves in the mirror, composed death songs, reorganized their coupons. First snow is a recipe for grace. If you can dig the hole by eight then I'll be there.

And he was as he said. The duration between was its own circus of lingering thus and thus. Yeah, I can't stop thinking about her white bonnet, the "springtime of death's year," so-called so well, either.

Marrow, narrowing. Melancholy belly dancers. Exactly - the moon is "nowhere," yes.

The way out, that dream. The fiction inherent in selection, in needing to get it so right that you have to lie. This to that, as any ratio would.

So many signals, so little time. Yet for you my dear, again, form.

Fake

An earlier conversation about what my writing needed. The work always shifts.

Regarding art vs. commerce while I don't think. A lot of time on trains.

A beautifully wrought vision of a post-apocalyptic world can be what. Well, some call it dual voice and others blended discourse.

The isolation is an ongoing concern. They weren't light in terms of heaviness or depth.

My grandfather passed away tonight and that is going to throw off the schedule. Let us tackle together this next bumpy patch.

Meanwhile, we're fine. I must say I envy the surplus of great pubs in your part of the world.

Family? I hope we'll get to spend time together again.

From this end in my opening preamble in my response. Habit doesn't really contribute to flow.

Back in the mail! I guess I'll just type up what I did on one day.

Based on fake travels to a fake city, I'm kind of intrigued. I'd be happy to read of.

Heavenly Or New

Silence is generally followed by a rapid countermarch, a sentence that appeared on page 42. A kingdom in rebellion, troubled by agricultural practices that skew towards the wealthy. While down below the children slept fitfully, the skin of their hands raw from scrubbing the foredecks.

One could say albeit in a peaceable way. In the course of - oh, five seconds - she was able to slash the binds and free them all. Along the river bed were numerous ruins from which colorful birds rose, like shards of rainbow retaking the sky.

A blistering effect subsequently discounted. One can be happy or else a little animal. The aerial ballet had a beginning, middle and end, but no audience.

A chest in which dozens of smiling faces were hidden. The windows were tall, dusty and draped with mahogany-colored curtains. Keep the letter "U" to yourself, would you?

Onward Christian soldiers, petrified masses await! Any man can be effectively scuttled, it's mainly a matter of timing. As absent a live pig, most monkeys will die of ennui.

Nothing was heavenly or new but we still ate cheeseburgers in the rain. A common device of pirates now used mainly as a literary technique to hold a reader's attention. A pair of iron girders fell, rattling the workers on lunch break, yet providing each of them a useful story for the dinner table later.

He forgot - or put aside, maybe write it that way - how much he disliked emotional scenes. From time to time echoes resounded in the hallway, reminding one of how complicated life could become.

Slipping Over The Years Into Earth

A brass spoon with a serrated rim. Paddles through dark water, layers of leaves, and gaping bass beneath which. Grendel's father, that spiky replicant, keening at dawn, "what have they done to my boy?"

The bass drum was as big as a wheel, looked like a donut, lugged up Main Street in the bright orange sun that only shone once. Candy-stripers with their silly smiles, how fast we age, like leeks in November. I remember long ago a moonlit night, a postage stamp of a beach, and voices that traveled like lost birds over lightly ruffled waves.

Warm shoulder being one definition. Your marriage resembles certain desirable farm implements of the nineteenth century. While the mouth kissing is the engine of the soul.

Form and content, ice cream and sugar cones, a wet dog and a lost leash. Yet another dialogue trails off in face of snow, the open palm. Mossy wood, home to newts, slipping over the years into earth.

Her shirt was pale blue, her features akin to a collection of wild birds. The Linden trees in bloom, still. They paved over the old trolley tracks despite protestations.

Why are you awake? The litany of the dead continued long into the night while rain pounded the leaky roof and desperate plans were made, none of which would be tried. For we do want to be deceived but not always and then only to a degree.

I'll fold myself into your petals, recline there, be alight there. So held by a gaze, so readied for the world to come.

Awful Stillness

There was no recess of the woods so dark. Any secret place so lovely might claim exemption. From those who had pledged their blood to satiate their vengeance.

The cold and selfish policy of distant monarchs. A colt was seen gliding like a fallow deer. He had reached the vigor of his days.

Symptoms of decay weakened his manhood. The sun had already disappeared. Assuming a dusky hue.

Acts of vengeance or hostility were speedily drawing near. Deluded by the deceptive light, converted. The fragment of some fallen tree into human form.

The strong glare of the fire fell full upon his sturdy, weather-beaten countenance. Forest attire lending an air of romantic wildness. A necessary though more vulgar consideration of supper.

Faculties are not required for the greater purpose of existence. He listened to some distant and distrusted sounds. The principal edifice of the village.

My day has been too long. In the midst of the awful stillness.

Practice Courtesy Yourself

They must be removed or the problem is likely to continue. Practice courtesy yourself. Torpedo casting, and trolling sinkers, or weighted flies.

Childs, Coonamessett, Deerfield, Farmington. Capture the fish by enticing it to take the device into its mouth. Schools in submerged structure, especially brush piles or fallen trees.

Either sex in Fall season. In a conspicuous manner the deer must be taken. Pheasant and quail when raccoon and opossum.

May be trained at any time. When coyotes may be hunted with slugs. Aliens who want to hunt.

Muzzleloaders are exempt from this requirement. Face in ink and attached to the rear. No person shall build or maintain a fire.

Natural heritage. Road-killed moose may not be kept. Without regard to race, color, creed, sex.

Dragonflies and damselflies. Vascular plants, and a guide.

North Forever

People settled settled here so thickly among the rocks. Set upon a hill, an unusual hill. Drew the corpse from the corners to the tomb by hand.

Apple trees look gray and impenetrable. The hurricane and final deluge. The waste of woods that lay between them and the seat of authority.

Habitual contrariness. All journeys were performed over trails or paths marked by cut or girdled trees. Sores on his shoulders from which he died.

Depressed places by means of yoke or cattle. The people went out and did whatever we had to. We didn't know what the horse was going to do.

I never knew her to be ruffled or upset. Our paupers remain the same as last year. The old church until a short time before it was abandoned.

I could shed bitter tears over this unnecessary misfortune if it would do any good. He delighted in striking out. With unwearying faithfulness he walked up and down your hills.

A flurry of early snow obscures your face. Facing north forever.

So Liquescent

Appetite for dross or dross appetite, you decide. That woman understood both death and poetics. A hymnal hidden in the wall, discovered during razing.

Perish or cherish my chubby young Mephisto. He opened his wallet at the meeting's end and moths flew out! A dark luminescent green like the eyeshadow Peter Criss once wore.

Near the end I'd say, when everybody's dreaming of donuts or a winning raffle ticket. Speech impediments in penguins obsessed the latter half of her public life. They moved to a small town with a biblical name.

Yeast, Yeats, and sleep apnea. The bow broke while the water cooled for tea. Running over rubble he suggested for a title.

Your memoirs made me feel as if I'd bathed in hot taffy. The tennis ball wondered if they'd ever finally settle. The blitz, my bride, the blitz!

There are times when twenty is too little but of what. The former trapeze artist studied law and eventually became a wealthy respected patent attorney. Have you noticed how poorly trained most high horses are?

You once said you would melt me, and hold me inside you, indicating with your right hand a spot between your left lung and shoulder, where I would reside so liquescent, an expression of affection that terrified us. In the parking lot of a store that has long since ceased to exist.

Deliver Him, His Heart

The position of a person who is feeding on berries. A round for three or more unaccompanied voices. But I always thought Joan of Arc was born in Domremy.

An inevitable liability to disaster, that fatal quality. To become glassy, distant, to complicate internally. He laid out his plan beneath the village Holm Oak, it's hollylike leaves overhead.

In other words what. Jittery, hopped up, irritated, but not in that order. She donned a kimono while he scratched his belly and watched a cloud not quite cross the moon.

Out in the orchard, the last of the peaches finally rotted. A flexible body armor made of overlapping metal rings or loops of chain, that's what. A stinging remark that lingered through the years.

A pungent spice, liberally administered. Reciprocity, as a rule. He coveted her holiness, what he thought it could deliver him, his heart.

A teasel is a prickly plant. The minnows flashed, rain tiptoed over low-laying clouds, and their fingers touched in the near dark, defining for him forever the outer limits of physics. Come, let us go now to Ulyanovsk.

I dreamed of the woman I once dreamed of becoming. He was a lithe tree in his dreams, which upon waking left him feeling oddly outside of his body.

Emily Dickinson, So Long

Light fails, dark falls. Unintended consequence for which there is no remedy as yet. Your blue, your pink, in a Delphic siesta.

The continuity inherent in conformity, clarified like butter. Random arcs of a decidedly Christian tilt. Dust rose from the pages as voters embraced their inner Oedipus.

Time went backwards or at least boarded a train - it was how I knew you were gone. In her glee she was distracted. Recipes for apple pie handed out like garbanzo beans at a picnic.

A certain beggar-thy-neighbor insouciance, a certain je ne sais quoi. Also, vampires. A canary that swallowed itself, tail first.

It was a matter of pride, subversion, cheap sugar subsidies, and Jesus. It took a whale but we got there, bowl in hand. She asked if he was kidding, kneeling where he was in the glass factory parking lot.

Emily Dickinson, so long. A dream of moonlight unending and who cares about tides. Ya gotta rush because once they're sold out it's all a big cornfield.

Seriously, I can't, or won't, rather, keep putting you in the final two sentences like they're a monument. A flowering outward like ganglia.

North Your Ghost

A fine moonlit night is a parade of angels. Fifteen broken necks, twice as many broken hearts. Morning coffee, the twenty sentences, damn stagnation!

St. Jude is faceless, though my grandmother prayed to him often, supposedly on my behalf. Where are you now Joe DiMaggio but drowning in florist bills? The Sunday Times, what's not there today?

Ice on the window, pumpkins on the vine. Yes, a declaration of intent would clarify, thank you for suggesting it. Mock artificiality always gets me going.

Do what you want but keep your pennies. Me, I want change. Say what, again, the way you did back when.

Oh for a frost that doesn't forecast snow! A body found alive in a city called Las Vegas. A period of readjustment followed, with free bread and jerky for everyone.

For the first time in how long I write them myself! A motion here, a motion there. The great undead walking around thumbing the latest gadgets.

You're so rough and winsome - I like that in a hologram. When I travel North your ghost comes, too.

A Turtle Is Not

I found the quiet rip in a manner of speaking. Panic was not always as it had been described they decided. A survivor then and so are you.

The piling a conversation, death for twenty-six. I would not listen ever to those who warned me. Cross-bred ducks that nobody liked straggling over the lawn.

Over his head into the woods, a marriage proposition. One limb of the sassafras tree swung wildly, a prognosticator. It was seeing his arm holding the axe that way.

Forward is - in a kind of heavy leap. It was the blood we had spilled, there was no getting past it. "A turtle is not a Ferris wheel."

Define life. In the background noise I heard a whisper of him. My regards, my apologies, my future.

A prayer book penned by the time I'd had three good drinks. She put a stick over the grave as if. A heavy rain turned the right wheels of the car to night.

But listen, God will bless you anyway. Back in the hole, pile of bones, a painted tombstone.

Certain Important Respects

A hunting place for my father in his bad years that explained it. A Greek cross I left in the house. Also conversations and bits of gossip but no dates.

Fish and meats, usually with sherbets in between to "clear the palate." An only child, distorted nightmares of reality. Seldom to be trusted are people who supply too much detail for example.

A man named Albert moved through the room. If we can bargain right, maybe a thousand people? What we can do today you already did for us.

Drown the bad with the worse, I say! Characters in a second drawing room, waiting for the curtain to rise. A full house and by midnight.

A few months after the marriage over the body of a lover. A man behind us touched her shoulder. The priest near the poor box unwrapped my curlers and dank as always kissed me.

Trying to climb up ten fire escapes at once. Where at once lips took on the look of lips. The eagerness of strangers for strange places.

But I have very little memory of that winter . . . The house dictionary failed me in certain important respects.

The Names Of Each Lunar Stage

Not a woman. What I am is hardly clear. Laying out a blanket in a sunlit field.

Of grasping, lovingly anyway, their presence. Like gamblers sit in the dark waiting. Paragraphs in which the last sentence bears little resemblance.

Akin to a geographical. Suggestive of similars when in a matter of hours. Foot of a whirling stairwell.

It does not have to do with the moon. To menses is deliberate but also risky. A body in transition that is.

Between two poles. I specifically learned the names of each lunar stage. The relationship of smaller bodies to other.

Desire to be does enter into it. Never to return or be heard from again. A werewolf in particular enjoyed the sky.

Twice the late guitarist Randy Rhoads. A moonbeam can alight on a fallen knife.

At Last

Drifting through the sun-pillared hay loft, my best hiding place. A sense at least of the direction.

A cabin in some Northern woods. Dimly, in the manner of waking early without an alarm.

Something I was holding back, something I refused to put on the table. A story, a good one.

On the shore were family legends and the décor of our house was nautical. How ships separated by miles of dark ocean communicated with each other.

Like a coffin lid dropping, like a darkness that you couldn't keep at bay. The only one who ever came close enough to smell again.

This bright future where nobody wanted to hurt me. Simply dreaming of a day when someone – a boy like him, maybe – would take his hand.

A music winding its way through the forest towards us. A cruelty I recalled in the field.

Thoughtful, the way I imagined artists looked when they were trying. A secret and for the longest time.

Her eyes in a shaft of light from the half-closed door. That followed trembling in the dark waiting.

The floorboard sighing as we danced across them, slowly turning. Something to say, get down, and someone to send it to, at last.

All The Beggars and Thieves

The tedious sermonizing of a few dry old men. Fear and wonder, a powerful combination. Is this not why you are here?

"I'm required to kill so I kill." The wise, the all-knowing, closed us down. The noise afterwards rises like a storm.

A wooden sword is a symbol of your freedom. He touched me on the shoulder once. So we shall go to Rome together.

My daughter is carrying water from the river. For many years I will have to wait. Bring me fortune.

I didn't know men could build such things. All my desires are splitting my head to pieces. So you're afraid of the dark now?

Still, always, stay with me for dinner. Round up all the beggars and thieves. You can of course choose to crawl back down.

While a man's skull with one hand. We reach back all the way to hallowed antiquity.

Bearing The Same Excursion

The rose smoothly out of yellow plain is torrid. Greater portion of the gold-bearing rocks.

Roughened here and there. The whole faintly a sparse growth.

Flats and hollows, far apart, glossy orchards. The landscape general a paradise of bland.

Parched year are the region of forming. On the face of the globe they are everywhere.

Glens in endless richness, compelling beholder. A continuous belt, intervals of fifteen and twenty.

Occupied by bouncing which grey with foam. The lowlands, the sea, the onlooking forests.

Almost opposite and to right and left on the other valleys. But not an either in regard.

Sublimity architecture and their falling waters. Glaciers until October when the discovery measured movements..

Near the wide shadow black two. Summits of the group consists of the highest of a spur.

Axis of the chain the direction of western. A tributary the waters in a fine bearing the same excursion.

Albany At Last Again

A blind glass, hurt color, and an arrangement. What is extreme and very likely? Not resembling cover.

By doubling an empty length sooner. A clever song is in order. What coming complication a lamp is.

Any neglect of a certain time selected is assured. All this together and necessary. Guided restraint not spread even?

The stage and learning. Has the arrangement a suitable establishment? Anything complaining so will do.

Sluice, spate. Penumbral water bearing forward green. Thinning bone grinning says what?

Which enclosed the simpler line. Dogwood blossoms discern what pleases. Provided six blossoms my no was what agreement.

While he who hesitates. In Albany at last again.

Errors And Amends

In pale cirrus then less so as the weather ring widens. Nicks in my heart because I hate how sweet the pain is and always saying yes.

I cannot see imperfections on the moon. To Jesus, a motel always shines across the highway.

My history largely one of errors and amends poorly made. Or the grace of an elephant ready to die.

Stop loving late sunlight, damn it. In the distance, an open field with the deer behind them.

At last it rains. You ran like "an undertaker with word of exhumation."

The saint of gluttony swollen at their roots. Distance is no container.

Brandy on fire escapes, talking about the apocalypse. Sometimes bear or fox scat.

Remind me again of Charlie Chaplin getting drunk before a shoot? A black bear with a skull in his belly, a bottle in which my history sings.

The bridge that gave out last winter until you grew bitter. The earth moved and I kept going as close as possible.

This is my Jerusalem then. Down on the trail and keeps going.

Eternal And Immutable

The law of God, that eternal and immutable rule. That due time or appointed time which comes to whoever lived under the means of grace.

Hindered by no manner of difficulty. It is easy for us to cut or singe a slender thread.

Great heaps of light chaff before the whirlwind. A spider's web would have to stop a falling rock.

A man is not on the very brink of eternity. I have done with his chariots like a whirlwind.

Laid out matters otherwise in my mind. And in that manner it came as a thief.

Earth would not bear you one moment, the world spew you out. The good state of your bodily constitution and the means you use for your own preservation.

Many are daily coming from the east. The earth does not willingly yield her increase.

Angels and men - both how excellent! When you look forward you shall see a long forever but no further.

A very feeble faint representation of it. Those things on which they depended for peace and safety.

Some loathsome insect over the fire abhors you. A slender thread - there is nothing else that is to be given as a reason.

Talismanic

Pine needles over both snow and preening chickadees. A lantern is not a horse although the two may play similar roles if one has a debilitating fear.

A chair might be described as siblings. Kindness does have talismanic value.

Dying of hunger to conclude. Mathematics plays a role.

Din can pass for family once. Subjected to the hash knife and now.

Consider how weather can impact feelings. Any traveler can discern the seeds of a new.

Lone is no journey. You can always revisit the search for a new site of worship.

At times described as thin or cold. The mouth can impair the capacity to speak.

Spend time with chickadees. Then its noun is that object.

Saying who says the weather rubs her wrong is inarguable. Religion does not utilize fetishized objects to pry.

The body's desire to fragment describes a map. One who never causes damage.

Sugar And Max Ernst

Life being a certain way and realize. Fear hunger and can't concentrate.

A crack in the window is cool and sweet. The mind moves fast over what it scares.

A fortune-teller once said forecast a long life but jagged. A loveliness after the fabled garden.

Dreams sort of bled over into images and locutions. By what miracle is the duck healed, the day marked?

What dance would you do if you weren't a wallflower? Body trembles while it sings amongst the deadfall.

More sugar and Max Ernst paintings. An odd way to see what writing carries on with it.

For those who have time the genealogy of tomatoes. All well and the babe as fat as a pig.

Where breathing was impaired try a more sensible rhythm. A ray of the antiquated sun.

A family of chemicals that lallygag around. An audience camped out between the hills where we recline.

Like a harvest he kept turning North. A means of escape and return on a fine morning of autumn breezes.

Otherwise A Lawn

Who ate all their descendants? The public square laid out as a progenitor. While the ash of his own fell like snow into a solid gold ashtray.

You must imagine the harbor! A wild padding of feet along the rooftops. From a distance, the faintest suggestion of eye and cheekbone.

There were many boats lying there below us. A duelist passed with chewing gum. While apparently numberless but otherwise a lawn.

So beautifully decorated with the brush strokes of the Chinese. Arthritic-looking fingers, also swans. My apologies were tucked aside like a flute.

A wistful smile, uncontrollable hands. The animals settled down to sleep in the barn. The scattered caverns of the hillside lit up by flickering stars.

An elderly man bade me stop on the corner. The English church smelled heavily of oil. Somebody was a gardener, somebody designed prosthetics.

All the faces you see around you can be overwhelming. So then.

Broken

The deluge awaits us all and is the only effect worth mentioning. A red feather inflames the heart, does it not? Sinking in the ragged sea, you foresaw a certain singing.

Pale ovals hovered, camellias were planted, and a baby horse was named for a magician. You arrive in the sentence with your back turned. Almost at once, the conversation turned.

Pale green acorns which I imagine crushing for - or with - Sam. A break in the bright shale signifying what? When home is all you want.

Now is only the color of rust and a fear of the mid-fifties. She slept in her own room. Sex does seem to work as a metaphor, doesn't it?

Prone to lists and the first person. Later it will rain. In the dream he cried "it is all an altar."

"A little burst of poem." When stains resemble faces. When one's road is the whole world beckoning.

These sentences are not inventions! But broken glass, broken hearts, broken laws!

Terpsichorean

Quietus. Leaps and bounds. Which together connotes fluency?

Publish via quill. Like a Killian. A Silliman.

Successful in vogue matters. A manner assumed for its effect. Don't get all post-bellum on me, okay?

Blunderbuss a mishap backwards. The commingling of disparate elements to form a harmonious whole. The missionary's dictionary did burn, I set it afire myself.

Ingratitude. Ingredient. Inhabitants aglow.

One dallies for fun. Another worships damage. The narrative needed a wound so we put it right there.

I want you to want me. You beautiful graceful terpsichorean.

A Red Welter, Ongoing

There were stones everywhere but at no point were they involved in displays of "inner balance." He wrote another one of those he-who-doesn't-know-talks-a-lot poems. Yet the fault lay probably with whoever decided to name it satori in the first place.

Over breakfast, the laughter was genuine, a tonic, which in light of later pain confused him. There is a red welter, ongoing, like Valentines used to staunch battlefield wounds, and how else can we - or should we, should I say - say it? In my dreams I am silent, preoccupied, a statue but with feeling, profoundly.

Homemade pizza, balled-up socks, dessert wine with chocolate, and frequent observations culled from Dear Abby. The dog was missing at bedtime which temporarily terrified the entire family, but he jogged in from the dark perfectly happy as soon as he was called. Bar the door and heft a loaded rifle is one way of taking the days as they come.

Avoid, if you will, colloquialisms. The naive male made the rounds at a dinner party, leaving everyone with a sense that they'd just palavered with a cheerful braid of smoke. The study of poetry vs. long nights drinking vs. fishing, just fishing.

He woke to the perennial shortness of breath coupled with a desire to be diligent viz. the number of words he wrote. How do we figure out how to end our stories? News of the extended family's woes arrived with an aftertaste like artificial maple syrup.

"Too little too late" was one suggested mantra. Gender imbalance in the Rocky Mountains! The text of your letter was mere scaffolding, leaving me with only the slimmest idea of what you're enduring.

A last view of the prickly stars before dawn. The decision to employ one tense over another so honored.

A Sucker For Gestures

There were bagels under my eyes. One was led up to a life in pumpernickel by factory second dice. A broken pencil symbolic of flustered desire in a text even he didn't want to have to read. Why don't you write something funny for a change?

The days just slip away like lug nuts down a vinyl-coated hill. The photograph of Randy Rhoads I most adore seen again unexpectedly. At last for the first time ever. And then there are all those people whose names I continue to forget . . .

Hey, we're going to a horse show, ya wanna come? In the dream I said yes and carried with me a pitcher of icy gin. Dancing at age seven with Helen McCarthy while the rest of the boys played football was the moment I knew I would always be a sucker for gestures in the direction of love and I was fine, I was cool with that, and for the most part I still am. While at night, small fires light up the hillsides.

I felt it at that moment awash with speech. No more will I travel or seek those markers squaring away my world. I thought I knew you but I don't, never did. Returned calls, the way every day ends.

Chocolate then, or fresh raspberries. Hey, why does the neighbor's calf cry all night long regardless of the weather? Cannibals were in the next sentence a little dozy. Everyone was close to everyone else in those days and where did that leave me?

A Balm I Can Still Be Soothed By

Explanations fall short and the truth has a long tail. Far off bells, traffic sounds. Counting in the native tongue.

Calcutta in seven minutes. A narrative so thin that if you'd fried it you'd have crackers. Doubts rise, dust them with flour.

Form is a way of easing yourself through the subject. Wreckage spotted from far away, a black spot in green swales. Your voice a balm I can still be soothed by.

The dogs yipped, the library grew musty. Certain debates are of interest only to the debaters. The last of the fleabane, violet colored, plucked for a bouquet.

I'm not ignoring you if your phone number's changed. The smell of woodsmoke, a new economy. In wet rich soil there may be problems competing with taller plants, their broad leaves.

Dan sold Christmas trees, an image that continues to haunt me. The sun rose, the light as gold as one might read about in books. Charmed in a Paris monastery, hiding from the law.

The last "I love you" rotted in a snow bank. You drive and drive and the miles pass but where in the end do you go?

The Way

The way that in a dark room certain objects - a canning jar lid, say - will hold what little light there is differently. An army moves out across the plains at night. A child smiles after winning a blue ribbon in borrowed clothing on a borrowed horse.

The grocery shelves are increasingly empty or strike one as being poorly focused on the relief of hunger. Certain sentences decline to say. Discrepancies in wealth can be unrelated to earning potential.

You remember to be kind despite all the reasons to hoard your generosity. A shoulder burns beneath your fist. You want - or I want anyway - to be liked.

Economists can make intelligent cases for a restrained use of metaphors. Fatigue can feel oddly validating. Proximity to God can make one doubt almost everything else.

Doughnuts are primarily round. You end up spending money despite vows to the alternative. Flipping through old journals reveals patterns of thought and narrative distressingly familiar.

That for more than a decade he rehearsed a eulogy that, when the time actually came for it, nobody asked him to share. She went into real estate consulting who once lifted me like gossamer in a false but memorable ballroom. People can argue about the vitality of barn architecture.

You never write, you never call. I have a dream of finding you and leaving everything behind for an afternoon alone with you and know that it's only a dream.