a moon i saw

not the human kind :)

i was walking out of the the JFSB on monday night, rather low, and i looked up to my left and saw the most stunning moon poised right above the V between the mountains. And there was a cloud that moved across it that crested at the top like a wave. I was immediately charged, in a very trancendentalist way, to go attack the rest of the evening, which i did, which was good. I just thought i'd share that little experience with Nature. Here is another very rough poem

Seeley lake montana

A woman held a huckleberry child
Close against her breast.
Lovers by the lakeshore
Threw themselves against the flame
A man in a pale blue western shirt
Saw the ochre token, and stopped

Our town sits beside a lake in a valley
There is a post office with green shingles and an ace hardware .
There is a fair every july,
and the little girls sit on floats and look like young mothers.

I saw the flame. It tasted like cinnamon.

When we asked the old men
They paused a long time and finally said
“the winter will put her out”

mood fits the template

Dear blog readers, i love you all. But i must confess that my mood has matched the black template of this blog for quite a while now. Between boot, gally gal (what were now calling my tricksy gall bladder) and other random and semi-crushing disapointments both personal and professional, its been a rough semester for the ol' blogster. But a good one too, as i can see light at the end of this tunnel. And oh, what a petri dish for poetic bacteria... so here is another poem, another dense and rather dark one I'm afraid. Enjoy.

Ode to the weeping birch outside my window, before the first snow.

It wasn’t mercy that blocked your veins with a wall of cells
And trapped the sugar in the small oval leaves,
Turning them sick in their sweetness.

it wasn’t your guilt then, either
that moved your split trunk in a gentle sway and
waltzed the leaves from their thin, dark partners.

Your split trunk killed its covering
And opened up it’s white chest
To show its scars, to sing like sirens to the snow.
Its whiteness, like a duck hunt decoy
brought the snow circling down.

It was your shame, and need, that submitted to cold, and gravity.
A shame that invited snow to build slowly upon your windward faces.
Or to grow like a moat and rampart around your base.
It was your need to incubate and sleep in your circular cocoon.

(Somewhere in the secret heart of trees
Even when they are young and green
There is always this shame and need, I think.)

You must know, in your hibernation
That when the snow melts you will have become:
Thicker.
More terrible.
One step closer to Bethlehem in your slouching creep.
One season closer to your birth.

The first snowflake always falls slow, always turns over and over itself in the air
And tonight, on your paper thin nakedness,
lands like a single locust.

I mean, c'mon, a freakin gall-bladder?

last night was my first experience with morphine. administered through iv at the provo hospital i was born in. all this because i ate some carrots and then felt i was dying and fought it for four hours and finally went to the hospital only to learn that my frikin gall bladder was on the fritz. a gall bladder, what the heck does a gall bladder do anyway? (believe me, i have since googled it)

back from surgery and new work

i tried to blog again through the widget but failed, so here is the second attempt. im back from surgery and working again. i also now have someone new in my life...my knee length cast...which we affectionately refer to as "Boot". sometimes i love boot, sometimes i hate it. sometimes he is a he, sometimes she is also poetically a she. but one thing is clear, boot is real and constant and a force to be reckoned with (and great at kicking old pumpkins i might add)

i will DEFINITELY post more about boot.

here is some new work for a class i am in

Prelude to an Elegy for a Homeless Man

For you, something bold and elegiac
Supreme,
Like the 1872 painting of a great wooden ship
Cresting a wave
While behind the ship a sun breaks
From out the storm--
Brilliant white paint.

Yes, something like that
Or choral music,
Or even tuxedos.

Or some general
In some noble war against tyranny
Issuing some order demanding sacrifice--
Artillery flares red behind him
In the predawn.

All this because you were
a small man,
With broken shoulders
Whom I saw everyday on the corner
Outside my ramshackle office
Until one day I did not see you
And asked the others who are still always on the corner
And they said you had died.
And they said it like a fact,
without grief.

So this for you,
For your broken teeth.
For your beard that came in patches.
For your junkie's crush.
Something great and sad
Because you were not a chorus,
Or a general
Or a sturdy wooden ship against a wave.