Author: poetryfest

a wooden sail-ship floats / anchored by the shore of a verdant cove
a descendant of the forest / where it was born from human hands
heaving a firm set of planks / polished to gleam reflections of blue
above and below the wide spotted sky / alive with pearls of moisture
over the great green / studded canvas of light
by the falling sun that hangs / instantly sitting behind shadows
over the same range of hills / glowing
radiant with a supernatural emerald sheen
and from the lowlands / shrunken groves of early summer
whispers the lost Anatolian tiger
from footsteps that wander / from ship to shore and back
gathering at dusk to breathe / drink and eat
horizon peaked with bald stone-crested hills
raised up from the coastline / raw stone
crumbling shades surfacing / plates of the planet
all earth growing tangled / prehistoric trunks up
ancient, medieval, modern / Aegean eyes
who lived and died / for a sight of the inlet
where rocks sharpen / spiked urchins give way
to paths of leaves / turquoise rippled water darkens
a liquid siege, mirror-like as the face of vanity, Narcissus in the flesh
smooth enough to welcome the bow of the wooden child of the forest
as makers, gods and humans / delight over the earth
we glide between sea and air / we are fugitives of the world
passing through the scope of history: a picture cut exactly to frame
our shape is a sail, the hull of a ship / rocking in a cove silent but for wind
almost out of earshot of the faint seagull cries / the draining motors
passersby laugh drunkenly onboard through into the listening silence

…native tribes had named the river long before Hudson’s arrival….
Mahicantuck… “river that flows two ways.” –New York State Department of
Environmental Conservation

I wish I could keep the arithmetic of loss to myself.
Somewhere below Independence Avenue in the Bronx
The Hudson mumbles into its own mouth
A passage of its two-faced history
And the sky reflects the water’s rumors in no particular order,
Cloudy syllables wheeling in an orrery
Of displaced peoples and disappearing frogs.
Remember when our masked breath flickered in the candles of evening.
The 7 p.m. huzzahs contained a hospital, critical inquiry, useless anodyne,
Simple equations left unsolved in impossible proofs.
I never sought a single paradise and now look.
As in primitive paintings, my mouth may one day open
To an asterisk of lost joys, my tongue over the lip of departure
From New York’s second-highest hill,
Droplets raining both up and down like helpless furors
Into the hum of home’s river flowing both ways at once.

1

Laconic clouds stalled
all August long.

Still optimistic,
on her knees in the soil,
she dismisses a wariness
among the weeds.

Windless, soundless sparrows
hide in drooping pear boughs,
sensing…

Her sweat
leaches into her work.

2

A woman walking brown woods
breaks the backs of maple twigs:

puffs of dust
feather her bare ankles —

tawny tufts
of a molting owl.

Her fingers stroke
an oak leaf — parchment

where this season wrote
its too-early conclusion. So

she reads the trail she hikes,
and brook and pond

gape empty-eyed when she scans
the unwell land.

3

In the sere pasture,
Monarch eggs fry on milkweed.
Bees faint on bolting mint.
Root fires smolder.

With the absence of waters

and their ancient airs—
the silence of sediment:

tracks zig-zag in riverbeds
stamped by Sauroposeidon,
Wind lifts silt, erases…

4

Predicted rains come
to nothing. Patchy drizzle
sizzles on crisp grass.

Closing open hands, people
pack into sparse shade
while the sun drums

on and on in the chest
of the sky

Surrounded by bone, surrounded by cells,
surrounded by blood, the pulsing of the heart,
the beat of the body convulsing.
It pumps its rhythmic pattern
a cycle forever recycling, rendering
the brain’s valleys and chasms,
electrifying energy—
of an unseen power.

. . . ice sheets,
dark, deep cracks
vomiting streaks of tears,
oceans swallowing
the shores of memory.
. . . behold footprints
of forgotten futures
weeping their waste.
hollow hopes,
looming loss palling
and palling the
air as fun-flying smokes
of industrial farts evangelise
suffocation on the
[sur]face of Earth.
a world. wordly. look.
a world colouring its
cutis like the decayed
dermis of dead leaves.
enough. enough of
toxic torture. we either
live here or leave here—
one should teach us how to
be environmentally born-again.

Tell your people we are hungry
Tell your army we are harmless
Stop eating our land
Cease fire
And let us be

Dying fish in our rivers
Rotten trees
We are kind and innocent
Vulnerable creatures
And mean no harm

Why would you steal our home?
Hurt our skin
Hunt our sanctuaries
We were here before you were
Learned to live
Free from smoke and war

Tell your people we are hungry
Tell your army we are harmless

I kneel to feel
kinship with the
sixteen or so sow bugs
shriveled on the floor.

Moths struggle to free
wings stuck to dusty spoons
leaving their bodies to act as
second scented candle wicks.

Spiders keep company,
spindly legs and sticky strands
weave six inches of webs to
serve sow bugs on a silver
sliver of bathroom
tile.

when i was thirteen
i used to pull rocks from creeks
opened them up – watched
as they remembered how to breathe
surgery for an old body
as a payment the creek would let me drink
a part of you for my work – in me
cause a riot after
vomiting all of our operation
like a parasite i’d go back for more
i was so young
i wanted to perform surgery to save anything

Driving in a trance, I see the owl
trembling feathers, unmoving body
lying within human margins of twisted highway.

I drive past it, take the exit
push the hazard button on my dash
step out onto asphalt as cars and trucks blast

air strong enough to whisper oceans
into my ears-make me reconsider walking
interstate 95 for a forlorn owl.

But she is alone up ahead
so I walk to her stillness
see the cold grip of her talons as I wrap her in my coat.

Heavier than expected
I imagine her full of gasoline
from the tank of the car that she collided with

blink back the thought
and force myself to imagine a circle of feathers
protecting me from cars.

Even in this sleep she commands
the wind. I place her in my empty trunk
and hope she is merely stunned.

I turn the radio off. Ride in silence
for the last twenty minutes
to my lover’s house. I walk inside

ask for a box, some gloves and
say, follow me:
There’s an owl in my trunk.

I slide gloves on, wear my now familiar mask
unwrap my coat and see the Owl
in some ways for the first time

the yellow hook of a beak, comically small
face like a hand thrown clay bowl, tail feathers
sweep boldly back. Trees bow in a quiet repose

Her stillness is full
I know I have only two hours
before returning home to my family

as I stroke the mottled feathers
and stare into vacant black eyes
Knowing it will take all the time

we have together for the week
still I ask, “Can we bury her?”
she graciously lets me drive to the park

I lay the owl under a birch tree
and as the sun sets we cover her
with twigs, branches, lichen and cattails

Our thoughts heavy with silence
as we bend to work alone together.
When finished, the final golden hour sun

lights up our gently laid pile like a pyre
and we hold each other.
Leaving as the dusk drew the life from the moment.

We walked to the beach to find any color that remained
until the full moon rose and the cold crept
into our hands, now talons themselves.

In this in between space,
in the year we’ve lost so much,
we buried an owl

Hidden deep within our core
is the nature of our being.
When you lose touch
and you are no longer seeing….
The wild will be there
calling you home for your freeing.
So you can once again roam
with bare feet on sand domes…
March with the ants
while you follow bees
to their honeycombs…
Then roll in the dirt
and make holes in your pants…
And imagine a dance in her tall green fields…
A sight to be seen and a chance to hear
the grasshopper orchestra beam!
Their music so dear
you can’t help but say a cheer!
And the smell of warm summer dew
still lingers even after, it’s true.
If you listen carefully,
you can hear laughter in every flower
and the joy it brings is her real power.
Let her shower you with love
under the blue skies
and light up your soul with her sweet fireflies.
It’s only when you get lost in the wild,
that you once again
find your inner child.
Let the wild call you home…