11/21
All sleep and no sound
Save a twittering bird
Too early on its call
For the cold air is shy
Not yet ripened by sun
Still that light will give
A day as fresh as the last
Without remorse for one lost
And this vast bosque will show
Sanctuary to budding life and
Shocking death in a natural
Order—of the prey and preyed
Light will dance on smooth waters
Of the steady and patient Colorado
With no place to go but downhill
On a course set by a balanced earth
Rambling time and unfolding days
Will keep undulating fish and grasses
Flexed and sure in its current
And the heartbeat of this place
Will remain steady like a Mohave gourd
11/22
Tossing through the night I land on a crust of land
Windswept, filled with songs of despair, remorse
Written from ancient dialogues heard anew in poets
One in particular who squeezed her anguish out
With dulcimer and piano and plaintive verse in blue
So you have invited more ghosts—or accept them uninvited
Since they enter without wiping feet and leave coats
Slung on chairs—haphazard children
This place where dreams are so real they burn midbrain
I am getting closer to it—trying like Castenada said
To enter the space by focusing on my hand or the background
Then I am an active participant controlling direction and cause
This is easier said than done for sleep mongers like me
For when diving into the night, I do not move or turn
Until the prostate knocks complaining of bladder pressure
Then, all bets are off—sleep might as well be over
Unless some chance or music pulls me back into that zone
Certainly it is not the melancholy strains of sad genius
Like an inconsolable Joni Mitchell—who’s only lover is song
11/28
Sleep is a drug that enacts dreams to taunt
You the captive witness to exhausting ploys
Having to accept them as audience or stooge
And so I wake stupefied this morning
Having witnessed a night of chicaneries
Flung down on the shore of this predawn
Cars grind and scrape the air out on 95
The only sound I can discern right now
A mouse waits in a live trap outside
Having interrupted my sleep as a victim
Waits for release far from this mesquite
Still a player in a light-wielding morning
11/29
The dawn is a muse stretching gangly mesquite with wind
Rocking bent arrow weed nodding in assent
My words have the innocence of sleep—as it drains slowly
I let the cacophony of this day be the profound one
I’ll observe its rich winter beauty without pretense or pedantry
Let the sun warm delicate quivering branches still leaf-clinging
And call me to a place of light and long shadow, where life begins
11/30/06
Bells of St. Genevieve flies across the room like birds with violins
And then Pachelbel’s canon enters the fabric of this morning
Simple, elegant and repetitious—why it is in popularity
My dreams were convoluted as dreams usually are
A bobcat had gotten into the Whitefish house—in the eaves
Of the kitchen and would not come down
Someone else tried and then it was my turn
So I opened that back door and said “Here kitty, kitty
It responded immediately jumping down beside me at
The door. I scratched its ruff and it yowled teeth toward me
In a warning. Then it went charging out into the field where
Kulak is buried. Sadness and exhilaration as I wandered through
The old house to the garage—then began thinking half-awake
Of how David had it moved. Finally waking up
12/1
20 degrees is a cold morning in southern Arizona
We wait longer for the sun’s work to bring 50 degrees
And my hands are Bob Cratchett’s as he does the books
Coffee steams and Pachelbel plays his Canon easily
My Airstream gathers steam on its windows as the boiling
Water releases condensation and heat into the cabin
And as I write this, reflecting on the journal
I realize these pages were pushed toward art at the
Expense of recording the day. I will change my ways
It was intended as an exercise after all—and will
Return as one. Certainly when the muses hit I shall
Lock on and ride them where they take me. In the meantime
It will be good to know what happened in my life without
Having to make it poetry always—searching for the word
Today is Friday as I anticipate going to my little place
In Wickenburg for the weekend. I will pack to prepare
For a trip to the Midwest with Pam—Chicago and Ann Arbor
It is much anticipated and this cold has prepared me
For the gray and snow of the Midwest—I will be prepared
12/14
Feeling sense is so subtle
The early cool of morning
Presses through my window
Lighting on skin of face
And hand; so sensory and
Vulnerable our touch, our
Living wrinkling cover
The rest of me is captured
In micro-fleece—pajamas made
For northern Canadians or
Citizens of the mukluk clan
So I feel only softness
Except now where I rest that
Protected arm on the couch
Near the window and the cool
Through cloth is translated
A reckoning of chill nights
And I Solstice approaching
As winter inevitably does
Though as long as I have
Touch; feel the cold, the
Breeze, however icy, against
Cheek and neck; warm from
A weakened sun however low;
Taste of morning coffee roll
Down my throat; warmth of
A shower rinse; it will be
Noted and exalted though
Quietly as my days convene
With night in this place
Of mystery and grace
12/18
How peaceful my song resides next to your letters saying goodbye. Measuring how it wasn’t right to still talk—even in doses. We couldn’t be trusted. And there is the song: “Was there really anything between us/I would like to know—“ and on about the swerving line between friendship love and loss. And I think you’d like this song—though you would be offended too. As I question the pretext of us thinking it had to be something more than the very fun thing it was. So who lost because you would not, could not talk and joke and flirt a little bit—in that innocence of youth. It was too, wasn’t it? It all felt like jr. high again. And why not. We are both so young and are feet so free. You didn’t discover me. I was here and continue to practice solipsism—though it is harder now. Well, you were discovered already in the larger world. But some friends are fated. I think we were.
So I have been contemplating that interesting line between love, living together—and the muse. You remain that muse—and I am thinking that relationships where you couple, wake up and have coffee, go to the concert and relatives for Thanksgiving—that is the realm of the yin yang. The muse is different it is farther off—yet powerful, magnified by some coaxing magnets we can’t see. I would say wasn’t it so fascinating? To share something like we did—and what threw it off was our needs—they were different. I was calm, you were not. I had a sit down go to sleep with her relationship. Your were pulling out of some angry jealous knotted-by-time-and difference thing. A guy unhappy with being relegated to dark corners—a quiet stage hand to the main attraction. Our needs were way different—as the movements of a sonata. So why not get poetic now that this has been rattled off to no particularly effective end. At least it is written—as Pachelbel’s canontomes to the darkened hour and sinking of a hungry night.
Just don’t think you’re off the hook. You’re not. I’ll talk to you again—and you’ll see something I’ve written all of a sudden. Like some blast of Michigan air. It will chill you and refresh too. Meanwhile, I’’ll bide my time—waiting for the next move—or song.
12/20/06-20 degrees in the Preserve
On the edge of morning and cold hard like steel
Even in this sanctuary of cabin the heater fights
To throw enough heat into the 60 degree air
Outside a single bird chirps by my empty feeder
As though asking “Why have you forsaken us?”
And then it is silent again, save my tapping fingers
This, the day before winter solstice is begrudging
In its willingness to show light—yet the east stirs
The past I have had festivities to honor the night
This year will probably see only me at the fire
For I have not called anyone else to the hearth
And my woman waits in swirling snow far north
It is just as well—contemplation suits this time
I will save the celebrating for my northern friends
On Friday in my other home—lift the cup then
Instead, I will get on with the day—watch the light
From my car’s window as it reveals another slow
And remarkable revelation of the earth’s rejoicing
12/26
Road trip through the undulating geography of Colorado
And the clipped banks of creeks
Steghorn and tufted sage are flung past the car by internet speeds
Juniper in small gatherings conspiring to call others and make a forest
Woman beside me taut from her physician responsibilities
And because the worry rests somewhere deep and unshakable
Perhaps the road will shake some of the cold dread from her
The angst that pulls and consumes a psyche turned sour in youth
Vibrating Subaru is soothing though alignment will cure it
And the parade of trailers recedes behind in this construction zone
We’ll see how these miles melt—slow and steady past our gaze
Pueblo—the first town insists on controlling interstate speeds as the vein moves throught the center of this body
Curls and curves find their way passed torn embankments and dried shrubs
Tall stark cottonwood and juniper shaped like giant banzai trees
And now the interstate flattens to a long plain that will take us toward
Albuquerque
Am
Christmas Blues
We are rewired to have family at Christmas
A collective past sitting on the edge of recall
And awakened with the souls who inhabited our past
With traditions, recipes, smells and music
The milieu of those pressed together
In the common house, the tree, lights, decorations, miniature carousel of angels powered by candles
The roast beast in the oven and cookies on end tables
Laughing from remembrances, follies, sledding and hot chocolate
Johnny Walker Red on Christmas morning
Red Velvet cake and leftover bourguignon
And that melancholy when it is finished—when the time has drained away and it is returning that takes over
The end of a season that has built up to time taken way from work, from strained roles and tension within the nuclear family—so that extending it makes those melt and the party lasts long and stretched
12/27
Long ago it must have been—before the madness of our age was imagined
A girl child was born in a northwestern town, nestled under a long cleft of rocks called the rims
She was the oldest of two girls, born in middle class and raised to increasing wealth by the hard work of their father
She was made kind through the gentility of her mother
Bookish, shy, a sharp, droll wit—Margaret must have been well-behaved with a rebellious nature waiting for her later childhood. After all—that’s what girls were supposed to be—well-behaved.
Mom always embraced my interest in the arts—making certain I got guitar lessons, encouraging my reading, explaining the death of her own mother when I was just 7 and Dad was telling me to drop the subject. No John, she would say. He just wants to understand. And she made me understand. The counterpoint to Dad, the information hound. The teacher who was never away from the podium. Some are like that. It comes from some deep need. I know because I have it to. Reminded by my son when he says “Dad, can you leave your teacher mode?”
My mother the anglophile—who offered me with the literature of the best English writers: Dr. Dolittle, et al. And words. She loved words and imparted their meanings to me—her gentle middle son.
Pm
The car is buffeted by winds across a high cienega
Driven from the south by careless cloud banks
North-bent grasses bowed as praying to a Mecca
This stretch of I-40 has the requisite tourist traps
Signs in a series advertise Chief Ortega’s trading post
Where jewelry, gems, trinkets and t-shirts wait
For the curious costumer to fall sway to the coterie
We move toward a storm front—gray clouds low hung
And dangling like soiled sheets frayed and dragging
The light takes on that yellowed color portending sleet driven and mad to escape the sun
We are encapsulated from this anger yet the wind claws
Working to separate the doors and windows from jams
Our climbing elevation now presents junipers—a windbreak
Though the tempest remains strong and merciless
Sleep tries to overtake me but duty to drive calls out
pm
A wind from the gulf eases a night
Of cool blue and shocked stars
Slivered moon paints a blanket
In gravel like edged seersucker
Jet, a guttural preaching in a
Sound line drawn razor dark
From this observation post
I hold a modeled sanctuary
And the wildness grows closer
Beating of footprint drums
To my door like hungry dogs
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