don't call out her name
she will not
there is a hole in the bottle
a blanket on the floor
the hallway isn't empty
shoes scatter when they fall
don't turn at the corner
or start towards the door
the light from the window
never reaches very far
shadows cast the grey
the grey narrows to a point
meaningless gradual losses
have taken her astray
don't turn away
you can't reach her anymore

it is winter,
still
although warm days
deceive us

dead branches
brown lawns
desolation

now, finally, in a winter's
black night
giant, sodden,
perfect
snowflakes
drift

the sky clouded
     full of snow
to make the night sky
     day

we stand
each wielding a shovel
working

sharing the joy
in this
perfect
winter
moment

         in which
the universe once again

seems to work

yet,

it is the bond
of the shared moment
which generates an
intensity of
closeness

a perfect understanding
between souls
strung out along
the driveway


shoveling snow
in a cloud of grey
steam

there is no middle of the night
     only a beginning,
endlessly recurring,
     waked
by the body's vigilance
alert, for that hint of pain
like a woodland deer downwind
from his hunter, wary, agitated

woke last night at two am
walked out into the woods
down the drive to the intersection
all aglow from the blue moon
i can feel you in the muggy air tonight
     in the blue of the corona
and in the weight of the moon

when the new day dawns
we will seek visions
fully splendid with glory
but harder to hold, and
we will recognize each other
perhaps for the first time
for what we really are

but for now in the moonlit
street, standing here alone
all losses reassessed
to become as nothing
     inconsequential
in the weight of the moon
in the soft blue
night

i.
morning sand chills my feet
damp grains cling between my toes
a predawn morning cold
mid-August summer day

ii.
down the beach
i watch hawks circling
hunting the tree line, they
work the shore grasses
a narrow strip of tall plants
between beach and wood
circling closer and closer
     coming to me

iii.
they soar a steady breeze off the lake
hunting prey which i hear
scurrying frantically among the tall grasses
the hawks circle now directly above
white bodies with dark wing feathers

iv.
in the beach house
hang two paintings by a local artist
children playing on this very beach
chasing one another and crouching in the tide-pool
shown in fine detail
especially for water color  
yet, i notice, the children
have no faces, merely brown smudges
     featureless

v.
that night, sitting
around a beach bonfire
sparks jump from burning logs
about me forms glow red
i see these faces too appear as
smudges,
     featureless
like an infant
     at it's birth

i laughed and answered, no,
i have not written anything new
it is summer, after all, no moods
no times for reflection, sweet remembrances,
bitter musings banished
summer needs no poet, for
summer should be for the living of it

So we are where we were at the beginning
     you and i, amid the waste of so many years
         and lives spent living amongst one another

I put away your things in the places I have
     learned that you expect to find them and also
          I know the places where you like to put away my things

I know that we must not try to eat breakfast together
     you must have the newspaper fresh, even if I put it back
          so that I have learned to get my news from public radio

You have learned to like my cooking, even when I cannot
     seem to remember that you do not like pears, except in salad
          and I have started to use ketchup on my turkey at Thanksgiving

Now that we have achieved this balance, we find ourselves alone
     again, with no children to referee our lives and focus our attention
         so we are where we were at the beginning, and I wonder, how long

Can we learn to fall in love with the people we have become, you and I?

impulse boys
shooting themselves out of skateboards
into the hearts of lovely girls
sitting on the picnic tables
pretending not to be seen

lonely girls
what more is there to say
about these lonely girls, willing
their way through to picnic tables
pretending not to look

i.
standing almost five feet tall
she must have been eighty five
but there she was, great-grandmother
standing on the trunk of an
ancient pine tree that had blown
across the driveway at Sand Creek

ii.
we used a two-man saw
must have been six feet long
with a handle at each end
the handles made of wood
one hand above and the other
below the blade, which cut on
both the push and the pull

iii.
in the garage, below the
house, the wall held a
wicked looking scythe,
just like the one which
death carries, with a long,
sharp blade, which we
used to mow the fields
around the cabin, to keep
the woods away, as a
     fire break

iv.
my cousin showed up,
riding on a horse, with
a dangerous looking local boy
who had scar across his cheek
white against his tan face
when her horse tried to
lie down and rest, the local
boy jumped off his mount
and started kicking, viciously,
her horse in the ribs

v.
once, we walked right in
front of two long snakes,
making there way between
the porch and the car, i jumped
and ran back up to the porch,
and would not leave that day
grandmother said those
snakes had no business
being this far north
     i agreed

i.
the lake has opened
several places where the ice
has come unfrozen
two idiots drove their
pickup into a hole
last night

ii.
the emergency vehicles
woke me with sirens
racing to drag these
drunks off the
ice before they froze

iii.
the beach sand has been
    uncovered
by the blowing wind
which has driven the snow
into a drift over the dock which we
have stored by the
     treeline

iv.
walking the sandy shore
i stooped to pick up
a piece of green, bottle
     glass

v.
the glass is weighty in my hand, and rounded
     smooth
its edges shaped and polished
by the working of sand, water and time
         like an olive,
         like a cherry,
         like a memory,
              of you

i.
your drunken goodbyes
hang so sweet in the air
filling the space with a
desperate needy embrace

ii.
i stand before you with
no defenses and nothing
i could possibly say except
what do i know about love

iii.
i walk you out into the
East Village night to
see about hailing a cab
sun peeking over the bridge

iv.
everything seems to be
coming apart i wonder
when i surrendered to you
what do i know about pain

v.
i wave goodbye to
the back of your head
and turn back to look
at the pink, foamy sunrise

and, as i stood there
on an unpeopled shore,
as the waves rolled in, one
following the other, i knew
with certainty, as in a
remembered dream,
that there was no returning
neither a going back nor
a turning away...

i felt the salt spray, cold on
my face,
and now i heard the sea birds
and looked,
to see them wheeling
above the water, now diving
and fighting one another
for the catch

and the beach, a grit of
seashell white, seemed as
the ocean itself, endless,
the evidence of great age
all about me in the sand
quartz ground from the
action of the water upon the
mountains
eroding even these
wearing down everything
in time
am i the sand, always washing away, or
the waves, eternally crashing against
the shore

what was it i was saying?
oh yes, i remember...

then, i walked back to the car

all day long, their banging disturbed me at my work
startling me from my reverie, lost deep in the world
of I Wish I Had A Heart Like Yours, Walt Whitman

the birds, returned early from wherever it is they hide
during the long winter, have come to fling themselves
against the over-sized picture window in my living room,

songbird pitch themselves into my poet's dull daytime
so that i am moved to rise from my desk, to look out,
to seek a bird flying away, or peer down to search for the

tiny body maybe roosting among the stalks of the overgrown
hydrangea, which captured  autumn’s maple leaves, worn
like a Chicago matron's mink to keep the winter chill at bay

and, as the spring surrenders to the warmer days, i mow the
brightly greened grass, innocently cutting row after row,
to turn finally to the narrow strip nearest the picture window,

a mixture of grass, dried leaves and tiny twigs, all mulched
by the power mower, where i discover these dessicated bodies  
exhumed from shallow graves at the base of the newly leafed

hydrangea, their stiff, dry feathers bristly, colored a washed
out grey, tiny feet tightly balled, with all the soft parts missing
and the beaks a startling white, as though bleached, bright against

the dullness of the little corpses which seem to have sunk into
the mosses of the yard, so that they lay preserved below the blade
for the first late-spring chore -- mowing the bird bone garden

i sleep with the bedroom window ajar despite the overnight chill
and dream of the memory of birds, their shapes, their white beaks
and, still, the bird songs wake me in the cool green spring morning

1
we ran outside
          gathering the hailstones

before they could return
        
to rain

2
spring thunder storms
        refreshed the

runoff ponds
        
the spring peepers
        chorus chirps


3
soon, to be Indra, Lord of Heaven,
        the God of War as well as Storms and Rainfall,
starter of war

a war which shall engulf
     the planet and

        perish all

4
in solid,
ice
       which shall melt

and drown the littoral lands
lands peopled in the
        billions
and so shall follow
disease plague typhus dysentery
death
         in its many shapes and sizes

5
in drops
       flows from your eye


6
according to religion
        holy water

1
when i woke up again
on the bathroom floor
the tiles were so hard and cool
you stood over me looking
into the mirror with the long
flowing hair hanging down,
which surprised me, as your
hair had not been this long since
1984, why did you let the house spin so,
just, please let me have
a glass of water

2
the owls call a warning
the moon creeps over
the lawn and crosses the
threshold of the window,
the moon has waited so
patiently behind the
line of maple trees along
the ridge,
to wake me now, with the
owl calling, the moon,
the moon

3
the next time i wake
sitting on the edge of
my daughters bed as
she whimpers and jerks
in her sleep, i try to slip
away, and she grasps out,
again, for my hand, soft
her hand is so soft, and
small, in my hand

4
your long hair, the owls
hooting for the moon,
my daughter's soft hand,
whimpering, softly too,
in the night, and the
bathroom tiles, so pink
and so cold, i wonder
did i choose this
wallpaper, or did you?

Hey Fragments!
Keep those haiku coming
We want to leave a good impression.

Hey Fragments! a Haiku Contest!!

Spring is everywhere.

We want everyone to contribute to the first, "Quarterly Season Greetings Haiku Contest!"

We will select a panel of judges, who will send me their three favorite haiku submissions. The haiku with the most selections will be declared the "winner" and enjoy a warm feeling of satisfaction.

Please, have those haiku in by the end of May

No limit on the number of submissions. Your haiku should follow the traditional form, but as always, the poem is more important than strict observance of form.

Write Every Day!

John and LP

i.
we crossed the river
avoiding the worst of
the strainers and yet
you pinned us against
a boulder almost midstream

ii.
i leaned against the wave
hoping to avoid getting
     pushed under
slowly we spun against the side
and emerged to shoot across a
     bow wave

iii.
i turned to cheer you for
clearing this first hazard
only to see the oars drift past
and you were gone

iv.
we pulled into a sandbar
at the next eddy
to laugh and scout
the rapids below

v.
i walked back, wading on the
river's edge, a view downstream
showed me eternity, the river flowing
to the sea, and yet,
i could see my feet on the stones
     of the riverbed

1
         i watch the ice
melt from the roof,

in slow drips, the one
     chasing the other down,

slipping to the pool of
water, edging out onto

  the driveway, where, tonight,
i expect it will refreeze

2
        and,
i wonder,

if i have given you something
and you have given me something

         a gift neither expected
nor intended

       will the sun shine any warmer?

1

              is it enough, ever, merely to wait

upon the coming of the night, or
     can i seek it out in places in which
it might be
              lurking

2

         look for the stars

but not the moon, for the moon
shall hide her face until the stars have swept
    
                 the sky clear

3

         these thoughts crowd my mind as i sit

the desert cold and the air clean as a
   coyote sings for his brothers, or his sisters, or
just calling,
              calling for the moon, again

4

          in this ancient place, above the river

which flows, even at night, swift and brown
     carrying its life mournfully to the ocean
down and down and down through this ancient
         canyon

5

     again the coyote calls, again

where is the moon,
     the great, vast mesa of desert sand
stretches before us, and, on the horizon
a sandstone tower rises,
     distant, austere;

6
        
         and in the night, as far as the
eye could see, fading and falling, in low pleats,
     the grey sand dunes,

         with the wild prickly desert plants on them,
which always seemed to be
         running away, to some moon country,
uninhabited of men

i.
the blood scared me
would mother be angry
maybe stitches
the hot anger of betrayal
mixed like a bonnet pepper
to spice the fear
and the confusion

ii.
playing with friends
in the neighborhood woods
the oldest of three brothers
threw a wooden potato
masher and struck me
in the back of the head

iii.
the root cellar seemed
a good place to hide
i ran out of the wood
across the open field
across the street
in through the
open garage door
the kitchen entrance
to the mud room
and down the back
stairs to the laundry,
might she be there,
and into the root cellar
filled with mold, dust,
and musty mason jars

iv.
hiding there, i forget
how long now, but the
had the blood stopped
running warm and sticky
down the back of my neck
i felt a swollen lump
and an aching head

v.
i do not remember
now how long i hid
there in the root cellar
but the feeling of betrayal
the sense of exclusion
the intense longing
to be a part of that
boyhood group
all seemed lost

vi.
some things are
not forgivable
deliberate cruelty
is not forgivable
i hope that cruelty
is the only real thing
i lost, crying, in that
cellar, so long ago
deliberate cruelty
the one thing of which
i have never been guilty