stars in grass alongside bright sky fade

cool of evening
walks alongside silence:
this waving grass

a good year for fireflies, now late at night off in distance
howling, maybe coyotes, over the fields and far away
along the river shore lights pulse green-gold on darker emerald
trees and grasses along the verge a knot of possibility
high summer wet warm wearying while cicadas mourn
singing long desperate howls in midafternoon sunblaze
nightsong distant lonely voices of desert dogs wandering
up alingside verdant river green liffull beneath a purpling dusk

in small blue above tall forest tops a crescent moon licks silver
light from azure blue indigo to carve a sickle caul across black night

his long sleep in black wells of ink

(for my father)

particular performance
limbo of flowered time
purple and white wounded morning

long past the hour when all good ends pass into dusk
severed conduits of the fruit of life, blind passage
into cool, long nights, long since skipping required roads
this stack this smoke of knowledge kindled into gross
habitation stone solidity flesh and blurred sinew, a fact
of ravens, simple digression into horror's shame and brute surmise
where each stem thorns and blooms burst night-wild
and winsome into quilted garden rows bedecked with solace

you've long since ghosted past into perfected end
where shape means so much less than sorrow

night's wing and rustle, thunder perfect mind

Nandi bell and vajra
ring out lightning and hard rain—
first summer thunderstorm

hot humid sensual sticky-skinned green flash naked bolt across sky
bowling giants ninepin mountain trolls hall of the tetrahedron king wildeyed cattle
hustle redbird woodpecker beak under wing deep in pinesway creak and bough
thirteen eggs of the dragon's children awoken to fork tongues across heaven
burst and reburst and reburst multiple flashes paling naked skin eyes wide at window
in midnight humid heat sudden rough scrape of nerve across bone
turning chill run to root cellar to hide in cold damp soil under heaven
as the god's forked trident sketches night by day by night

long tongues of the moon twirl sinking into the fields
smokeblackened stump of the bloodwood tree

what endures

time in stone
time encircled by stone
time resting

here's a list of everything that doesn't die too quickly too soon
too slow too darkly faded here's a list of everything that lives
on or doesn't live but leaves a trace behind a trace of lightcone
decision bouncing forward enscribed on etched spacetime here's
a list of everything that lives longer than me you us all of us and
never comes to grief sorrow suffering pain those clichéd endurance
furnace forge tests checklists of pillaged burning memories
here's a list of everything that you can carry with you when you go

outside those trees are waking the light bowing dawn
so here's a list of just what you always wanted

memory, light, returning there

just a day ago a day
sunsplint in eye come shining
a wake along drive

a day winter day to afternoon under memory familiar poles
and spines of built brick places windows scatter light leaves
home to visit one day's visit just a day and then on the long road
time travel for pedestrians day of walking through brightshadowed
haunts revealed new to light new light in memory when walked
long before this pattern of steps by the courthouse at dusk in
resolution to meeting the dead there once then not now gone on
and I find myself carrying forward the entire village around me

long stalks of bicycle spokes spun catch light
stride forward a cluster of timeshadows in scarves

cloudlight

fall planting, mulching,
an endless row of new roots—
come spring, bleeding hearts

scattered day light false dim hollow bluesilver rind of early winter in
spatter rain on chimney tin chill echo wind in pipe mind crest towards release
buried under lantern tree and soil cold heart broken beat of hibernation
dim city of soil frozen now frozen long enough to sleep awaken sleep again
still timeheart in bright return still cloudlight weeks of dim desperate sage
in time this rain falling fades to earth running under rock granite mica mirrors
lamped in time in waterfall in river running up cataclysmic to ancient ocean
scattered now light fade to dim still cloud light fade to still timeheart in bright return

bluegold cloudedge briefly clearing above shaved fields
in frigid dusk ice etching into skin brokenhanded bare and stilling

flowerfall

lilies rise and bloom
as though untouched by summer
storm rains

spill of white gladiola chrysanthemum daisy lily turning towards light white spray of white flowers white the color of death with two roses in the midst of white cascade one red rose for him one yellow rose for her together twinned falling beside the resting place under wood under hot sky under eyeburning sky bright enough to darken then two stands of flowers beside feet yellow fall of lilies with one red rose beside head red fall of many strands with one yellow rose pressed together pressed inward up to sun to memory to recitation of the catalysts of joy what’s left is gold silver red yellow spilling cascade frozen water ice the color of dying frozen hands in calm caress repose prayer silence

hands to eyes marked with tight-lipped fire red
hands to sleep in sun combust to ashes gray yellow white

his falling

from choir's party
to this long sleep, this weeping—
red rose turned to white

one day whole, the next he falls into slack lethargy. no desire to eat, to move, to get out of bed. we give him a bath, and after his long nap, he's so weak, he soils the bed. last week he walked with me a mile through architectural wonders and long green lawns. tonight I drive him to the ER and leave him hours later as they take him to the room he'll probably die in. a liter of fluid drained through a catheter from the flexing sack around his heart. now his lungs fill with mermaid tears: salt waters of sleep. no resurfacing, no matter how they scan or attack his failing. it's all coming apart; I am too. I clench myself against fears that erode resolve into ambiguity. what can I do but hold his hands, large surgeon's hands, now bony and spotted, and wait. it's day to day, now. everything's microscoped into each moment's crisis, need, resolution. so few days ago, we made plans for another long road trip, a cross-country voyage, dad telling stories, son driving and recording it all. he had been so interested in living; so healthy; so ready to believe in redemption, in the will to overcome.

my father's long leaving, suddenly confronted
after his twilight had been so recently brightened

Inventing New Forms

two iced black coffins
sit by blue dusk roadside ice—
strewn silver petals

sweep of taillights swerving across reflective wet asphalt smearing red and gold across eyespace blurred evening that brief deep-sea-blue time between sun's set and full night opposite the blur of morning spread pre-dawn the silent space between night birds ceasing their calls and dawn birds beginning theirs while dusk loud with singing tires flees across wet roads into distance marked by retreating red lights black silences under the pines deep blue memories of guardrails twisting their callligraphy over the shouting abyss don't be so hard on your silences those unshed waters running are for other reasons perhaps something that falls or rises in the space between twisting rain-soaked ocean-cliff road and the offshore monuments of black gull-sleeping wave-licked crags flashlighthouse beam sweeping the blue drenched skies dropped with rain the space between filled with light cracking open the space between no place between worlds

in darklight lowering actinic arclight flares
indigo silver red metal streak blur passage

•

No one ever said i wasn't a visual poet. Consider this a reverse ekphrasis: a poem coupled to a visual artwork not yet made. Maybe later I can make the artwork. In my mind, the images, the elements, the movements, and effects, are clear and specific: a movie to be shot, perhaps. I'm reminded of the film director who once said: really, writing the script is the important part, and I imagine the movie in my mind as I write; putting it on actual film is like shooting it to put it out of its misery. The finished film is never as good as the film in my mind, as I was writing it.

In fact, I envisioned this form before I wrote the poem. (While driving home after grocery shopping this afternoon.) That's unusual for me. (The poem form aspect, not the other stuff.) Usually the reverse happens: I discover the form as the poem reveals itself to me, as I write through it. In this case, the image of the typeset poem appeared fully formed, but not the words inside the form. But when a demanding vision appears in my mind's eye, like a daydream, I've learned to pay attention: such things are usually important gifts from Somewhere.

When I invent a form, or when is (shall we say) Given to me, I tend to stick with it, and use it for more than one poem, and keep returning to it, to see if the form applies to images and emotionscapes that rise from within, or come into my mind's eye from within, or without. This is what I went through with some of my haibun, but even more what I went through with my five-line fractal form I developed some years ago. Sometimes new poems appear to me in that new form, and my task is to write them down. They do, in fact, appear as typeset lines appearing across my visual field.

In homage, perhaps, to my increasingly intense engagement with haibun, haiku, and prose-poem, this new form combines a haiku with a prose-poem of a specific visual length, followed by a longer two-line strophe. The central prose-poem should be arranged in eight lines of equal length, depending on the typeface. The prose-poem section is of course the most flexible part, because except for basic visual size it has no rules, so far, for style, structure, composition, punctuation, or other syntactical elements. Could be very open; might be self-contained. I don't know yet. The film is only half-written at this point.

Let's see what we can do with this, shall we?