A Blessing for One Who is Exhausted


When the rhythm of the heart becomes hectic,
Time takes on the strain until it breaks;
Then all the unattended stress falls in
On the mind like an endless,...

A Surfeit of Swans

Floating on the river Rhine somewhere
between Amsterdam and Cologne
confronted by this surfeit of swans
do not have a clue what to do with them
as a group when one in a...

The Swan

Across the wide waters
something comes
floating--a slim
and delicate

ship, filled
with white flowers--
...

A Modest Love


The lowest trees have tops, the ant her gall,

The fly her spleen, the little sparks their heat;

The slender hairs cast shadows, though but small,

And bees have stings,...

Why I Urge You to Do What You’re Passionate About


When Rilke travelled through Russia
and studied Saint Francis
and fell in love with the married Salomé
and wrote poems for The Book of...

You Darkness


You Darkness, from which I come,
I love you more than all the fires that fence out the world.


Because the fires make a circle of light
so that no one can see you any more.

Metaphor To Action


Whether it is a speaker, taut on a platform,
who battles a crowd with the hammers of his words,
whether it is the crash of lips on lips
after absence and wanting : we must...

There Is A Road Always Beckoning



There is a road
always
beckoning.

When you see
the two sides

Poem to COVID<o:p></o:p>
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I´d turn right away from you<o:p></o:p>
wherever I crossed you in the street<o:p></o:p>
and as you came towards me<o:p></o:p>
I´d quickly go the other...

Hymn to Matter


Blessed be you harsh matter, barren rock; you who yield only
to violence, you who force us to work if we would eat. Blessed
be you, perilous matter, violent sea, untamable...

How to Climb a Mountain


Make no mistake. This will be an exercise in staying vertical.
Yes, there will be a view, later, a wide swath of open sky,
but in the meantime: tree and stone. If...

As You Have Done for Me




There is treasure in you.
Joi Sharp

What will the dead say . . .

to those who mourn the restless souls
who died alone and drowning
hands held by surrogates—

free us from these chains of neglect
and abuse by the many who...

The Facts of Life 


That you were born
and you will die.


That you will sometimes love enough
and sometimes not.

Winter’s Tale


Even from my study at the back
of the house I can hear an orange drop
upstairs, one of the last to grow


on the dwarf tree you bought me
thirty years ago. When it tried

Blessed Are You Who Bear the Light


Blessed are you
who bear the light
in unbearable times,
who testify
to its endurance
amid the unendurable,
who bear witness

I Greet You On This New Morning
Moment by moment,
like the resurrection of the gods!
New Sun, New day, new opportunity!

If we don't get it right,
there will be another,
and another,
but let...

Inaugural

We were told that it is dangerous to touch
And yet we journeyed here, where what we believe
Meets what must be done. You want to see, in spite
Of my mask, my face. We imagine, in time...

The Hill We Climb

When day comes, we ask ourselves, where can we find light in this never-ending shade?

The loss we carry. A sea we must wade.

We braved the belly of the beast.

We’ve...

On the Pulse of Morning




A Rock, A River, A Tree
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9nTt2F0Kdc
Hosts to species long since departed,
Marked the mastodon,
The dinosaur, who left dried tokens

In This Place
(An American Lyric)


There’s a poem in this place—

in the footfalls in the halls

in the quiet beat of the seats.

It is here, at the curtain of day,

where America writes a...

The New Horizon




There’s a storm coming
the air changes subtly
something inside
shifts
turns

"Why has there never been a coup in Washington D.C.? Because there is no U.S. Embassy in Washington D.C.”
- Ira Kurzban attorney, following the 2004 U.S. Coup deposing Jean-Bertrand Aristide of...

Quilts


for Sally Sellers

Like a fading piece of cloth
I am a failure


No longer do I cover tables filled with food and laughter

The Ear That Speaks

I have been a standing self in this world.
I have braved both pleasure and disgust.
I have lived my words.
The stranger appeared and I did not look away.
The crazy youth...

It’s Time


Stop the digging
There is no pony down here
Despite the stink


It’s time to look upward
At the narrow ribbon of sky

If any of you who read my poetry posts would like to receive them in your in-box after the demise of Wacco, you can send me a message at [email protected] and I will add you to the mailing list.
...

Too Many Names




Mondays are meshed with Tuesdays
and the week with the whole year.
Time cannot be cut
with your weary scissors,
and all the names of the day

My Wish For You




I wish you happiness
Each and every day
Mornings filled with pink golden clouds
Laden with unlimited possibilities

Deep bows to you, Barry, for your dedication and constancy in providing this gift to our world - weaving the fabric of community. I wish you all the best in whatever venture comes next. You are a...

Trying to Be Thoughtful in the First Brights of Dawn

I am thinking, or trying to think, about all the
imponderables for which we have
no answers, yet endless interest all the
range of our...

Waves, Oceans and Flip-flopping


think of a wave and then also, the ocean,
a young branch and the trunk of a tree,
a spent blossom and the stem of a rose,
a broken heart and an...

In God’s Time

A platitude meant to calm
But what can it mean?


God’s time is geologic,
Susan says. Frustrated wishes and demands tell her this.
She is right.

Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and...

26-1-1939




When Barcelona fell, the darkened glass
turned in the world and immense ruinous gaze,
mirror of prophecy in a series of mirrors.
I meet it in all the faces that I see.

Burning the Old Year




Letters swallow themselves in seconds.
Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.

Hozho


And you will see hozho all around you, inside of you.”
This morning she is teaching me the meaning of HOZHO.
It is dawn.
The sun is conquering the sky and my grandmother and I
are...

Cento Between the Ending and the End




Sometimes you don’t die


when you’re supposed to

I Think That When I Die


I think that when I die,
I can breathe back the breath that made me live.
I can give back to the world all that I didn't do.
All that I might have been and couldn't...

On Some Other Day



on some other day

i might sense the

drift of jasmine

A year of loss and chaos draws to a close.

Stories from a thousand cultures remind us that the cosmos is born - and reborn again and again - from chaos.

We have passed the darkest night of...

Full Moon on the Fourth Day


The days are tiring since we undertook the journey but because of that no less amazing. I often ask myself if my companions and I have not spent too much time in...

Try to Praise the Mutilated World


Remember June's long days,
and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew.
The nettles that methodically overgrow
the abandoned homesteads of exiles.
You...

The Grounding of Stone



Precious earth

I feel your pulse, solid under my feet

Voyage


I feel as if we opened a book about great ocean voyages
and found ourselves on a great ocean voyage:
sailing through December, around the horn of Christmas
and into the January Sea,...

In a Dark Time


In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood—
A lord of nature weeping to a tree.
I live between...

A Winter’s Alcove

There are sorrowful, chilled fogs these days that remind one of his mortality. We are in that season when the sun loses the eternal tug-of-war with the icy moon, as exhausted...

1914 Truce


Christmas Eve in the trenches of France, the guns were quiet.
The dead lay still in No Man’s Land –
Freddie, Franz, Friedrich, Frank . . .
The moon, like a medal, hung in the...

Elegy In Joy




We tell beginnings: for the flesh and the answer,
or the look, the lake in the eye that knows,
for the despair that flows down in widest rivers,
cloud of home; and also the...

The Winter Of Listenings

No one but me by the fire,
my hands burning
red in the palms while
the night wind carries
everything away outside.

All this petty worry
while the great cloak