Beach

Beach

“Stay here,” I tell her.

I say it a lot.

“Don’t go” (locking doors),

though I know she will not.

It isn’t the larger 

Don’t go that I mean,

not here in this port

with the sailings we’ve seen.

My moments inside

stretch with fears hard to tell,

a stamping of boots

in a world of thin shells.

Yet always she’s waiting

just as she was—

as if what maroons her

might also cocoon her—

Can it be that it does? 

The Grade

The Grade

Those who deprecate

routinely the labour

to raise inner and outer

(since no work’s ever

either)—these exasperate.

And they desecrate

with their small flippant flails

of simply and You just

the spirit-gym lather

reeking must

through perfumes of prescription,

the moment by moment

discipline grasped and grazed,

lost and retried

lost and retried,

to slog and lift conditions

up actual hills,

knowing the grade.  

Unroofing

Unroofing  

These beams I’ve had in place so long

(some I found, some I added and improved)

—I can’t hope for shelter from them now.

Nor can the shingles fitted so carefully

protect me from the rain or cold—

not when rain and cold have moved indoors,

when icestorms and monsoons, all weather

sweeps unchecked from beneath the rafters.

When outside moves inside, the only

feasible dwelling is without roof or walls.

Home after home can only be no home.

Bright pinheads of stars, thin sways

of clouds and moonlight—in these

I have a chance to drift, learning a new element.

Small Fruit

Small Fruit

People ask for so little.

That is half the trouble, there.

If they asked for great gobbets

of self, more than any could spare,

mansions of effort and patience and years—

you could turn and reject

with a righteous shudder: Title

to all I possess can’t be yours.

But they need, so often, such small

fruit—a phrase on the phone, a sunset

stroll, a coffee pot shared—

and, still, you’re not there. 

Outside Nature

Outside Nature

The shivering fit,

      the cracked lips,

          the shouting mind—

warm hands and a blanket, a moist swab, quiet words.

Such simple human remedies for what can’t be cured.

And really, will you be the one

who chooses not to provide them?

You will be the evening deer

that declines to browse, the blade of grass

that refuses to bow down before a storm,

the cloud that insists on sailing into the wind?

In obedience to what principle or whim

will you take your stand outside nature?

The Sum and the Lack

The Sum and the Lack

What you know, what you can do, who you are

—all of this you bring to each moment

that will be born, with you and without you.

And what you don’t know, can’t do, are not

and never have been—this, too,

a far larger plenty, is what you bring.

And both—the sum and the lack—

are necessary, both are absolutely vital.

The attention that focuses what exists,

the opening that enlarges what exists

by receiving news outside itself—

One carves a door, the best door

that can be shaped to present circumstances,

the other makes a space in which

the door can swing, inward and outward.

In this way the event may arrive.

Lost

Lost

I’m lost in a forest

and I’m scrambling like mad to get out—

I try this way, I try that—

but in every direction I look—the same trees! 

Around Moira's Pond

Around Moira’s Pond

Where did you go?

To grief and back.

A slog to and fro

But return the longer track.

Longer—yet more quickly past,

Or else less clearly seen:

Phantoms in the forest faced

Burnt in a woodpile’s sheen.  

Mourning Cloak

Mourning Cloak

Mine be the stillness

     that lets mourning perch awhile,

Mine the ventured budge

     that restores its fluttering style.  

Poetry Unit

Poetry Unit

The poem’s subject

is:  theft.

Its moral (or

theme) is:  Don’t.

It has no regular

rhyme or meter.

Its stanzas vary

in length.

It is free verse.

Tone is notoriously

tricky, but

wry and resigned

could work, or

if you have to name

just one, go with

comic or (for extra

points) dismayed.

Rhetorical devices

are thin,

but the next stanza

is handy for

alliteration, assonance,

irony, and pun.

Sticky fingers filch

and pilfer.  Pincers

merely pinch.

The poem’s intended

audience is:

your teacher.

Its purpose

is:  an

A.