Tinker, Tailor, Poet

Some Other Day

2008-11-14T10:56:00.000-08:00

There is always some other day
when the dream resting at the apex of our thoughts
finally comes to pass,
when the crippled leg grows straight,
when the woman at our subway stop
scribbles her number on a napkin
and says “yes” to the imagined date.

There is always a thick blanket of snowfall
after hellish summer heat
has withered longstanding desires,
its white purity unfurled like a principality’s wing.
There is always a single leaf in spring,
frail and fresh and green,
after winter has torn flesh from bone
with fingers made of sleet.

There is always some other day,
a circadian square on the calendar page
where by inches or degrees
slim hope no longer evades our reach:
the blind man once again sees.
But even if these dreams recede
and a lottery ticket doesn’t pay,
do not drive my crippled mind
from the hope of some other day.

Painting of Job: Einar Hakonarson, Creative Commons 3.0

Illusion

2008-11-02T08:17:00.001-08:00

The world in its finery,
a kingdom of meadows
for the flowers of Solomon—

mere illusion for the wider field
where eternity tills the soil
and the soul wraps its roots around God.

It Is a Fearful Thing

2008-11-02T08:14:00.000-08:00

The evening sky is beautiful but bleak,
purple and red bruises, brutal,
blossoming on the horizon
in fatal, flayed moments of twilight.

There is nothing you or I can do
but wear heavy clothes of sackcloth and wool,
wrapping our palsied souls
in the penance of dry, broken leaves.

It is a fearful thing, I think,
to watch death painted wide
on a canvas stretched by faceless pagans
between bare branches of a failing year.

There is redemption, to be sure,
but its implausible story is written on the pages
of a calendar not yet printed.
In the spring, it will hang on a nail driven hard.

A Pebble of Bone

2008-10-30T09:33:00.000-07:00

There’s a man walking down the road
of gravel and regret.
Old and tired,
he’s bone-weary from miles
of hoping that his next footfall
will see a blue lake
or an early grave—
either would be okay
if he could just stop measuring time
with steps that began in Eden.

I look from my cabin window
and he is gone.
Until I look more carefully, that is,
and hear the gravel shuffled and ground
with a cadence of glaciers shaving creation down.
Like everyone before him,
he has become the road.
I go outside and pick up
a pebble of bone, a reminder
that we, too, carry the sins of the world.

Pic: Creative Commons 2.5

The Dead Are Forever Writing Letters

2008-10-30T09:32:00.001-07:00

The dead are forever writing letters,
their bodies mulching into leaves.

Maple parchment tells me a young bride
was killed by the undertaker’s son.

Snow and dirt and time
archive the words we choose in death.

Free verse or rhyme,
we are all published in the end.

Pic—public domain

Day and Night

2008-10-30T09:25:00.000-07:00

The silver rings pass through each other,

the magician pulling them east and west

with a double hitch of his hands

to show they are locked fast, like lovers.

And then they are divorced,

circles no longer sharing the quotidian mystery

of day and night sliding into each other

as they trace infinity along the equator.

The magician returns home

after the sun has fallen over the rim.

He says nothing to his wife as they eat

on opposite sides of the round kitchen table.

Pic: Public Domain