Marathon

Trees in the full flame of fall

Cast shadows in blue on the ground 

where the first frost slowly melted back to dew 

faster on the grass in the golden morning sunlight.

We wished each other well at the starting line

and took our places in the pack.

The crack of the starting pistol sent us

running on open roads, and leaf strewn trails

away from, beneath, and along the highway,

just over twenty-six miles across the finish line

to celebratory high fives and back pats,

water that was never so cold and refreshing,

and fruit that tasted like candy.

Arms on shoulders, we posed for victory photos.

Muscles aching, bone shaking weariness,

while we drove to my friends’ home.

They won at straws for showers, 

so when the spectators went to basement couches 

to watch football on television, 

I alone went outside to the front lawn, 

to lie down in soft green grass,

basked in the warm afternoon sun,

and felt such sublime contentment,

a sleep of bliss overcame me.

Evergreen

star

blazing

atop

a tall

mighty fir

branches snowy

white and green

nature adorned

bent and bright in the

moonlit forest glade when 

we stumble forward

through the crisp snow toward 

our destination

pausing breathlessly to see

what our ancestors must have seen

when they named you evergreen

placing gifts not for their own 

but for you and yew providing endlessly

cupboards chests and longbows for the fight

boughs gleaming glittering holy beacon in the night

hemlock

spruce

and pine tree

Reflecting On The Young Poet

Tonight, my mind is blank as the page.

Through my window the ceaseless wind hushes me.

Our trash bins topple, my thoughts are so light.

Writing still calls to me here,

but as a vague and formless urge

accompanied by a dull numbness 

with no purpose.

You see, 

today I read a journal of poetry

I kept in high school.

The poetry was long and formless

and self-indulgent, even when 

it pretended not to be.

If he was to be believed,

the poet endured a thousand and one heartaches,

a hundred Poe-inspired nightmares,

and moments described as madness –

more likely self-imposed loneliness.

But when he ventured to the gray winter wilderness,

he marveled at the rooted giants of his forest cathedral,

consecrated the sight of a cardinal,

penned poetry seated in the shelter of a pine,

and drank from a frozen stream,

and though his fingers went numb from the cold,

he bemoaned leaving as darkness descended.

Beside myself, I thought, What more can be said?

That sulking boy was self-absorbed, but sensate and alive,

and this world-weary man is half dead.

Decline and Fall

Giving up a final green flare,

sol’s flaming imperial chariot founders,

dragging the bloody curtain down

across the sky as night bleeds

on the blades of an already 

rust reddened west.

The sun rises refreshed,

bloodthirst slaked,

unfurls its flaming wings,

phoenix, warbird,

through the heat shimmer 

shining over smoldering ruins

ready again to make meek

the savage pride.

A Poem Is A Glass of Wine

A poem is a glass of wine,

meant to go to your head.

Heavy or light, it’s good

for the heart.

You don’t need to be

a sommelier.

You will know what you want to chew

and what you would choose

to spit in the bucket.

A long-aged vintage,

or a bottle with a cartoon on the label.

Nothing wrong with that.

If you enjoy it

drink deep,

or sip it.

Maybe you only like it

from the lips of a lover.

Kiss them, lick them, 

or just listen.

There’s more than one way

to get drunk on

poetry.

What The Birds Know

After an absent minded side comment,

for a lark, I called my friend a bird-brain.

My friend passed along the knowledge from his

Algonquin grandfather that when birds build

their nests close to the river, it will be 

a dry season, and when they build their nests

far from the river, anticipate rain.

There are no rivers here, but the streets fill

sometimes when the clouds are unrelenting. 

In the spring, I consult no almanacs.

I listen for song and check boughs of trees 

along the street for flashes of feathers.

The Plagiarists

These words are not mine.

This language is a foreign tongue.

The day that I was born 

it wrapped me

in its soft netting

and spoke my name.

So, who orders 

these words?

Who receives them

against their

strange lexical body,

unraveling meanings,

translated almost

without thought?

Heirs to these codices 

from parents, relations,

books, television, movies, friends,

teachers, siblings,

crowds,

what determines the filter

through which words slip, 

or retain?

Through what agency

does it persist and change,

this bequest,

this legacy of tongues,

this borderless proliferating sea

of sound and perceived 

intent?

Nothing is outside language,

the territory

of humankind in common.

Breaking no laws,

we steal every day.

The Garden

A fertile patch of earth yields itself 

to gardeners’ hands tended 

first with joy, a joined sense of duty,

delving through the fecund and the grit,

sowing shared seeds, and mulch, and water.

Here grow the peas and there the pumpkins;

here grow the rows of sweet corn’s listening ears, 

there the tumid-hearted tomatoes on the vine.

The hope of each spring and summer alive

in what will be born of that care.

As seasons accumulate, we're instructed 

where to tread lightly, where not at all.

Fruit forbidden never grows,

untended seedlings wilt and die,

and sorrowful are these places where

silence falls in the garden.

Month Two

I’ve written a poem (sometimes more) a day for two months now.

In the last three weeks I also finished reading Mary Oliver’s book Upstream, which I can’t recommend enough for those of you who enjoy the nonfiction works and essays of poets and other writers. A book can be a compact course on life, and this was one such book. Oliver writes a lot about the natural world around where she was living at the time. There are also essays about other poets that inspired her like Walt Whitman and Ralph Waldo Emerson. 

When I started this project, I picked poetry as a medium because poems can be short, and word choice in poems is almost everything. Writing poetry has made me a more lyrical thinker, and rhymes and alliteration come to me faster now in my daily communication, but obviously there’s more to poetry than that.

Some questions I’m asking myself lately: 

1. How does one communicate one’s experience of existence through language alone?
   
   
2. How does one write poetry without being so literal that it may as well be a story instead of a poem?
   
   
3. Does that matter? What is it about the form of a poem that makes it unique, special, setting it apart from prose?
   
   

While reading Oliver’s book I also returned to Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, which I first read in tenth grade at the urging of a student mentor and friend. At times, Whitman’s prose poems might really just be considered prose, or short declarations, but I was so fascinated with his writing that it still informs my style to this day. For example, since first reading Whitman, I feel no particular pressure to rhyme my poetry or force it into any one of the innumerable poetic forms (except as a fun challenge, and sometimes because I favor Shakespearean and Italian sonnets).

The subjects of Whitman’s poetry are also incredibly freeing. What I first took to be haughtiness in his poetic voice I now recognize as a celebration of individuality at large, from the experience of carpenters, factory workers and dockside laborers, to housewives and mothers, to soldiers on the battlefields of the Civil War (whose grisly injuries he witnessed firsthand), "For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you."* To Whitman, each being's experience of this world is equal in value to every other.

So, having finished Upstream, and before getting back into the fantasy and science fiction I tend toward in my recreational reading, I think I am going to read Leaves of Grass again cover to cover to see what new gems leap out at me now that I am almost twenty years past my last full reading.

I’ve decided that this poem-a-day project will end after exactly one year. After that, I will maintain the blog, but slow my writing pace to maybe one poem a week, in addition to some other art and photography projects. 

I hope everyone is staying safe and well. Today’s poetry post will be up as usual before midnight. 

Thanks for reading. Be good to each other.

- MS

*Quote from Walt Whitman's poem "Song of Myself" in Leaves of Grass.

The Needful Pond

the pond is full of life

from the water lily flower

to its roots in the murk

from the silver scales of fish 

snatching the unwary fly

to the lowly bottom feeders

feasting on the scum

so many lives in the pond

vegetable and animal

working to keep their home

but needing rain and earth

the amphibious egg layers

the windblown pollen

the nectar loving bee

come to the water 

bring your own ecology

to share and watch

read its ripples

and accept the gifts of its

limitless boundary

Familiar Unfamiliar

stain this electronic floor 

with my word blood 

a thousand knives are air here

from within the spin and grin 

the extraordinary speed

makes me wonder where the time goes

where’s my will for change

the answer is to remain 

the same 

strange

outside extant standout 

pleasant but threateningly different 

from what happens day-to-day 

the xenophobic changelings mediate 

their deference by 

making medium their makeup

middling and mean

this is the meaning of media

socially isolate

strange

then that it should so dictate

the dictum of social 

change

Mundane

Like every other day,

I hear the grating grind and whir 

of lawn mowers, leaf blowers, 

a squeal of brakes at the stop sign, 

music blaring from car windows,

echoed incomprehensible human voices

from cell phone conversations.

These ordinary things 

should ground me, 

but I guiltily recoil. 

Give me the white noise 

of a breeze blown forest,

the small mammal’s squeal 

protecting a nest.

Grant me the music 

of bird song and the cicada, 

the whir of wings,

the grind of the woodpecker’s work,

hunting bark-burrowing bugs.

Set me on that leaf-strewn, 

mundane ground,

and release me.

The Fortune Teller

The ancient woman squinted at the fire,

one pale eye closed against the peated smoke.

One gnarled claw clasped tight a clouded crystal

raised up and shaking skyward as she spoke.

Her voice was cracked as rust, creaky as a door,

but echoed stentorian through the cave.

The cracked and fuming earth seemed to tremble

as did I hearing the prophecy she gave.

Prosperity and misery twin inked.

Long life, but not for you that much is plain.

Set to before the new moon blots the page

and thoughts become too clouded by the pain.

Perish then in agony, but to rest.

A meager work you leave, but twas your best.

Come now, I in panic begged the seer,

There must be some way to avoid this fate.

She breathed in fumes, and cocked her head to hear

the spirits, raised one crooked finger, Wait.

From her table she fetched a silver knife,

and cackling said, Yes. End now your life.

I paid her then and left and headed home,

the fortune given weighing on my soul.

I’ve just two weeks now to begin my tome.

My fate is truly out of my control.

My life is shortly destined for the loam.

So to my art I lend my spirit whole.

The Haunt

At least we

occupy this space,

but my feet gain no purchase 

upon these transient floors.

I pass between displays

in this museum of our things;

this warehouse for the weighty 

accumulations of our pasts.

We lose mass by the month,

surrendering resources.

What seems ours is largely mental.

Soon we will melt completely,

but that’s the cost 

haunting a house 

rental.

Joy/Despair

joy

bliss rapture ecstasy euphoria

jubilation elation enjoyment delight

happiness gladness levity pleasure gratification satisfaction

amusement diversion distraction

redirection deflection divergence deviation

interruption intrusion interference confusion

perturbation agitation derangement

unstable erratic volatile uneasy

restless apprehensive worried

anxious distressed troubled

upset vexation torment

grief sorrow misery anguish

despair

Ghosts

no exorcist’s course can force this ghost out

even though divorced shame remorse post doubt

indelible ink in my brain filling folds in

blocking out signals from the source again

all night fretting fending off nightmares

pleading to forgetting, getting white hairs

stress infesting anxiety investing

revisit regrets instead of resting

there’s nothing supernatural in it

a haunted house is just minds akin it

paranormal just a way to skin it

it’s your head no matter how you spin it

if Halloween frees ghosts bear witness

but really ghosts are your unfinished business

Phantom

Awakened in the night by a creaking

as of a door, though my own remained shut.

I swung my feet to the floor and listened.

A sudden sinking feeling in my gut,

trepidation for approaching the hall.

Something shifted, skittered past the window.

A shadow seemed to lean down from the wall.

I stood obstinately, arms akimbo,

willing my eyes to adjust to the dark.

Something stepped from the corner grey and white.

Through the shadow a pale face floated closer,

Its open mouth a black deeper than night.

I woke up in the morning on my floor

and blamed the bathrobe hanging on the door.

Politics

strategist’s terrain 

perch and lure allegiances aggressively 

dizzying opportunity derailing

channeling energy thresholds

designed power boundaries wave

battles of flux

courting suburban cash 

the unrelenting money glut

the avalanche racing

channeling operatives furiously pouring

bruising sums and narrow margins 

wealthy chambers funding markets 

under benefactors’

war chests

keeping a 

lone bullish flush 

Critical Lens

The dull monotonous, monochrome life

must smash against a prism’s wedge

and be sawn into a spectrum,

and then must ride upon the bleeding edge

to never again cohere.

To dash the hateful ego’s hedge

that imprisons minds in fear

is to sing aloud this joyful pledge,

to these strings apply your plectrum,

take all power to be alleged,

subject prejudice to light’s glassy knife.

If Trust/A Friend

If trust

seems hard to win,

just know my faith in man

became corrupted by misdeeds

and lies.

A friend

will never sell

another confidant

on half-truths, or betray them like

a fiend.

Invocation

Oh Dionysus!

I have always fought sleep, 

for consciousness does not discriminate

between sleep and death

but now unconsciousness is all

I have the strength to call for.

This careworn mind is fraying.

Unraveling also my desire

to ride the crests,

the restless, heaving tides 

of multitudinous meanings

and polyphonies 

the seas of language provides.

Guide me instead to the coolness

of your twilight vineyards,

beneath the penumbral leaves

and sugar-sweet and swollen droops

to compose and drowse at my will.

In the absence of sleep,

the waking dream will sustain me.

For many nights, after sipping your dark fruits

failed to send me to the inebriate’s rest,

I threw my restless body out into

the ocean of night and sacrificed caution

swimming with any strangers I could find.

Now, old and isolate, a dram still comforts,

and may loosen my tongue,

but these seeds find no fertile purchase,

and many ears remain ringing or deaf,

and the comfort of strangeness is gone,

while the familiar often stifles.

Guard your souls against the same.

Dionysus! Once again, I invoke your name.

Awaken in me!

Awaken!

Smoke Also Floats

there’s no light

to hide your light under

a bushel basket

if you’ve become the basket

filled with smoke from

when the light went out

a kind of soul

basket case is what

they called the soldiers

in the first world war

who lost all four limbs

and couldn’t get around

now it’s a useless

person or one

that can’t cope

and a cope is a cloak

like a cape or

what you try to do

when you’ve lost hope

but it comes

from the latin word for hood

or a cap for your head

like a hat or a cover

like a lid for a basket

for a bushel

of smoke

from a light

that went out

why did the light go out

no cope

Exultation

You were at the shoreline leaping waves

as they crashed forward at your feet

calling out in jubilation.

Your small hands darted into the receding water,

gathered shining shells, treasures glinting,

and raised your face in exultation.

You dug a hole in the cool umbrella-shaded sand

with a deep blue cockle shell that dwarfed your hand,

frantic with a curious elation,

and when you struck water beneath, splashing with your little feet,

there was pure wonder in your shining eyes

as your laughter sang your exultation.

In Answer To "Why Bother?": Some Further Statements Of Purpose

Through the messy, noisy, tedious, and oftentimes frustrating business of adulthood/parenthood, in the available hour(s) i have to write at the end of the day, the question that pops into my mind before i begin, and immediately after i finish a poem is this: Why bother?

i write to exist, but

i can’t do this for anyone else.

i can only write for me,

and as an open invitation to others

and that sometimes feels desperately lonely.

But seeking validation from anywhere other than the profound satisfaction in my soul from a piece well composed would rob me of my core purpose. It feels wrong.

But of course, i also write to be read.

"Do I contradict myself?

Very well then I contradict myself,

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)"

~Walt Whitman

"Song of Myself"

This project is about the practice and honing of my craft (in the sense of the skill as well as the vessel, i suppose, because i’m trying to get somewhere). 

i am learning to make choices with language that make poems like spells, that enchant and entice the reader or listener ...

(Who is it that said, words are magic, that’s why making them is called “spelling”?)
 

... so that, should this become my career – one in a series of “consummation[s] devoutly to be wished” – i can continue believing i am even a little worthy of the dream some part of me has guardedly nurtured since the age of ten.

Thank you for reading.

Be good to each other.

MS

Snakes

of course we once revered snakes

death-headed delvers

delivering mortal medicines 

caduceus style

while some only saw danger

fast flowing across the ground

looping like levitation

hibernal brumation then born

out of their own skin sloughing

again and again

Christ-like enshrouded unshrouded

i never saw one swallow its own tail

but cycles of change

are built in

Mom, Now

 

My mother, alone,

enduring my stepfather’s 

slow decline in 

a convalescent home,

for the first time,

speaks to me about 

her depression.

She sneaks it,

still ashamed,

couched in a list of other anxieties

and ailments – 

of which she now has many –

sometimes in a tone so matter-of-fact,

she waves it away;

sometimes 

through tears of resignation:

crying whither comes no sob or hitch,

just a huskiness of voice,

an occasional sniff

while the tears wend 

through deep wrinkles,

age-narrowed shoulders slumping.

She is so old now,

but her emotional strength

which sometimes in my youth appeared 

as callousness, even cruelty,

has new cracks.

The dam is brittle,

but it’s impossible to know if behind it

lies a vast, full, reservoir

of old pain,

or a desert plain 

with a last small stream

that now and then swells,

overflowing shallow banks.

Then,

with one wide, spotted hand 

she raises her heavy glasses.

With the other 

she wipes the tears away,

lets out a shuddering breath,

and tells me,

Don’t worry so much.

You always were a worrier.

The Day You Died

Something broke in me 

the day you died

and I thought

it was the relief of the shackle

you placed in me long ago

so rusted

finally uncoupling,

but it was only me.

It was the part that retained

the smell of your skin,

like pear and cucumber,

the night of our first date.

It was the part

that saw you sleeping,

black hair splayed on the pillow,

one breast bare, free of my sheet,

and the bursting of my heart

when you smiled as you woke

shameless and stretched.

And the part of my regret

at your inflexible betrayals,

because at the end 

there was no love,

no longing left alive,

to induce my sympathy,

only, i understood you were in pain,

and wished, somehow,

not for my sake,

there had been another way

to ease it.

The Blizzard of '93

There was no doubt that March Monday would be 

a snow day for me, but dad still had work,

so we spent a Sunday shoveling snow

packed three feet deep from a gravel driveway.

That cold, dark night, feeling pleasantly tired,

warmed by the woodstove, sipping hot cocoa,

scribbling furiously in my journal

by the soft gold light of my lone desk lamp,

I found a new rock radio station 

and felt a fresh excitement in my chest.

That music, they called it grunge, shook my bones.

It gusted in my ears and sped my heart.

In middle school a weirdness covered me,

I was liked for it, but smothered by it.

But in the quiet, under all that snow,

red checked flannel, shredded jeans, there was me.

How To Fall Asleep

When my toddler calls me after bedtime

because he is nervous for tomorrow,

or excited about games or playtime,

and his burgeoning mind won’t allow sleep,

I tell him to close his eyes and breath deep,

and to think of what makes him happiest

because happy thoughts will give him good dreams.

This seems to work, and he drifts off smiling.

I’m usually awake until two

reading, writing, or seeking distractions

until I can no longer stay conscious.

This is the only way I fall asleep.

The alternative is to lie awake

because I am nervous for tomorrow

and excitement is rare as dopamine

to a reluctant, stress-addled, adult mind.

a part of me is missing

a part of me is missing

cool damp evening air 

perfumed by vine ripened fruit

cycling past the vineyards

through late summer gloaming

on my way to the tavern

for too much wine and a meal 

alone with a pen and a blank page

the silence of solitude

dark-eyed waits patiently for her patrons

a small knowing smile playing

at the corners of her wanting mouth

whose present absence sucks my heart

a longing goodbye kiss 

at the end of a night

on a hazy lamp-lit lane 

but seasons pass

and many are the voices that crowd age

tolling bells phones ringing

the needs of the next now

and never now

so when a quiet moment falls

featherlight and fragile

our parting tongues entangle and

a single voice singing

saudade, saudade, saudade

the song of my soul