It

It is never finished.
I wake and walk barefoot
to the backyard,
past the spider universe
of the abandoned nook garden,
branches of everything-all-at-once
strangling or loving, who knows;
should I have said roses
in a poem, pedigree, pedigree
I have no use for.
Something wilder than roses
grows there and through me,
the birds getting excited
at my approach, summer
through us, they flee
in terror but will circle back
as soon as I’m gone,

as soon as I’m gone.

Moth

attention is nice
but maybe the quietest days
were the best
being slower
watching endless rain
through old windows
it empties my soul
hunting for my glasses
for an hour
gently cursing
these softest distractions
up and down the stairs
over and over
a moth in the night
invisible to myself
and everyone else

Twenty Bucks and a Stone Haiku

the cemetery
a bag blowing past
says THANK YOU

*

visiting Van Gogh
feeling all the people
we didn't

*

as many cracks
as days
a doll’s face

*
autumn morning
somewhere you change color
without me

*

chipped glasses
plates with hairline cracks
not a bad marriage

*

something in you the way
autumn trees
pretend to shiver

*

cool autumn morning
awakened by small feet
racing away

*

children share secrets
clear sap
from an unseen center

*

old porcelain dolls
in the nursing home
every crack speaks

*

autumn leaves
the colors a warning
a celebration

*

autumn leaves
fall on the railroad tracks…
is this a joke?

*
autumn market
different gourds
with the same problems

*

autumn morning
something running fast over
my head wakes me


*

hometown years later
even the creek’s
changed beds

*

groundhog hibernates
our clocks slow down
then reverse

*

the vacant house's
welcome mat
snowflake by snowflake

*

autumn morning
cold finds
a tooth’s crack

*
ANTIQUES store window
autumn leaves reflect
over old metal

*

winter morning
a tree that killed its children
waves at me

*
October schoolbus
autumn leaves board
in a hurry

*

asking what number
snowstorm this is
no one knows

*
autumn morning
the carp turn
slower circles

*

under canal leaves
disgust a century old
wedding ring smolders

*

waking in cold
to write of coldness
warms me

*

autumn crickets
a tempo
tells a story

*

autumn crickets:
imagine dying
without loneliness

*

funeral champagne
tiny bubbles stroke
forgotten places

*
reading obits
an unseen jet rumbles
towards no one’s home

*
in time

the pleasures of time
replace the pleasures
of place

*
my old school
my stomach rumbles
on its stone

*

the kid eating stones
on the playground
is a bird

*
the only thing
weirder than words
what they replace

*

a leaf falls
in the cemetery
a sort of Thank You

*

Van Gogh
freezes the cornfield
before winter

*

Van Gogh's cornfields
just before winter
forever

*

Van Gogh's paintings
lose color every year…
the snakeskins no one finds


*

missing each other
by mere eons
you and God

*

museum room
full of paintings the feeling
we just missed God

*
weather report
from behind icy fingers
on her nipples

*
snowstorm
all the infidelities
need rescheduling

*
Indian summer
an affair that promised to end
shops for skis

*

we visit you
in a cemetery
to talk about debt

*

dead winter
on my dad’s grave a twenty
under a rock

*

winter morning
you wake and your lover
is years away

*

winter morning
all the lovers on this bus
look like boxers

*

winter morning
lost coffees left on buses
tell us their names

*
winter to spring
a bus kiosk’s plexiglas
scratched like home

*
a real home
even the diamond
has scratches

*

autumn light
the clock turns backwards
when we do

*
autumn leaves
I can’t decide
on a collage

*
winter night ocean
still growing colors
in abalone

*
buried love
the night ocean
colors abalone

*

buried love
the night ocean
mothers pearl

*

visiting Van Gogh
feeling all the purple
we aren't

Sunday

Each person is a cup of ghosts.
Each person like a spoon in a warmth
you can stir and drink close to sleep.
A white square in the museum is useful.
A black square in the museum is useful.
You mostly stir the way birds do
around the museum. You listen to the grass
move through walls, without seeing.
You say the word Sunday to hear
the shape it takes. Someone blows glass
far away, thinking as of a child
who will be your first reflection?

Period

The night is crisp

if you listen.


The leaves finished

with competition

on the branch


drop,

one by one


into the water


to see what buoyancy is.

Transcribing a Notebook of Haiku

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