The Shadow Is Shut

The news is an insufficient portal,
Even the most thorough, objective news.
Science is a bit better, but slower.
People—friends and family—even worse.

Serious journals, math, literature,
Beveled windows and stained glass, all of them.
Poetry is not only not the news
That stays the news—it was never the news.

Outside your windows, the world is a wall.
The night is a wall studded with weird clues
That math and science, accidentally,
Are on to something that keeps to itself,

Lurking, tempting those lovers of numbers
To mutter about darkness at the door.

The Movement at Evening

The cloud is cottony huge,
Like something Miyazaki
Would draw over windblown hills.

This is not the time to write
About grand ordinary
Actions in the local skies,

Not the era for verses
Observing clouds and grasses,
But what a handsome mountain

Of evening, en promenade
Over Navajo sandstone,
Arising and departing

As simultaneously
As any righteous movement.

To the Belligerents

It’s just the moral part
This one always leaves out,
Injustice large or small,

Crimes of the family,
Wickedness of the tribe,
A suspicious silence

About the character
Of specific others,
Of specific systems,

Collusion by silence,
Complicity as art.
There’s nothing quotable

About indifference
To the belligerents.

Memories Fished from the Snow

Drag away from; grow together.
It’s loneliness in the abstract,
Aloneness reduced to concrete.

Memories swirl, fish in barrels,
Looking easy enough to kill,
Simple enough to shoot. Water

Has been known to be deceptive,
Even clear. You hold still, peer in,
Try to ignore all distractions,

Carefully take aim. Did you live
Only so that you could extract
Images from your later brain?

Your family half encircling
The TV set that your father
Set up inside of the fireplace,

You waiting for the show to end,
And your siblings to go to bed,
And, finally, your father, too,

Your mother at work for the night,
Who might have it tough driving home
In the morning after this snow,

Which you watch by the window,
The snow in the oaks in the dark,
Concretely, happily alone.

The Appearance of a Hearth

It’s like you’ve gone camping,
And you’ve found a good site,
And you’ve pitched your pup-tent,
And you’ve started your hearth,
And just now you notice
There’s nothing good to burn.

So you wander about
In looping, useless lines,
Picking up punky bark,
Pine needles, spindly twigs,
Nothing more substantive
Than a three-minute flame.

You can keep feeding this,
Knowing it wastes your time,
Won’t cook or provide warmth,
Nothing but make it look
Like, since you’re camping, fire
Is required, when it’s not.

The Tyranny of the Concrete

One person watched the deer.
Tea cooled on the table.
Her dress clung to her legs.

The river had no boats.
The school was out of pens.
One picture, five pictures,

How many could thoughts hold?
The deer lifted its head.
She sipped her lukewarm tea.

You feel it, too, don’t you?
Silk static on her skin
When she recrossed her legs.

Why weren’t there any boats?
This was a schoolhouse. Why
Couldn’t she write something?

The whole scene bothered her.
It was like she never
Existed before words.

The House Haunter

There’s nowhere to go
But into the words
You happen to have
In reach in your head.

There’s dust on the floor
That glows in the sun
And ache in your guts,
Or what you have left.

Throw the cat’s toy mouse.
Listen to someone
Bow a violin
As if determined

To prove Leonora
Carrington correct,
Some things can’t be said,
And that’s why there’s art.

Do this long enough
And your well will fill,
Or you’ll choke in dust
On words you forgot.