I thought religion was it.
A gnarly piece of wood
always trying to fit,
I ran and ran as far as I could
took the road east then west
to find the one that was best
jumped in with both feet
since daddy always said
do what you do
work and sweat til complete.
My problem was I couldn’t stick
to this branch
whittle til nice and slick
that other branch looked too good
so I took it -
my piece of wood!
But it wasn’t
so I quit
to search again.
I had to seek
and find something new
risky steeper deeper
and true.

Slow and easy the old cells flake off
unnoticed as my body replaces itself
over time
not bound by one tiny galaxy
or even millennia
your pace is in my every step
shake of my hand
or moment
when one eyelash meets then leaves the other.
You are in the silent pop of synapses
emergent in an idea
in my chest swelling and tingling
with a notion learned between the lines of a novel
in the words of a wise old nun
in the feel of my body in my lover
the scent of her hair
the shake of  my chest
laughing at her hilarious joke
but especially when I shut my mouth
bear with the silence for a while
and listen to the peaceful
voice that speaks only in quiet
only when I can empty the chatter
and effervescence in my mind.

Translucent and
undeserved mercy
streams into me
humbling me like giant sequoias
who draw my eyes to the heavens!

Breathing full
along the brown tree line
next to the silent teal pond
birds still singing winter.
I feel my chest tingle
like when I was twenty five
discovering scotch
a woman’s breath on my neck
still believing somehow God was in that host
the priest raised.
All was ahead of me
and, as now
unknown.

It’s simple, simpler
when in my raucous brain
I well fight the warring birds
and focus on a single idea.

I watched a movie last night
toward the end saw a couple on a boat
rowing toward the western golden light
then the clear Aegean
floated me into a cove in my brain
where mystery and emerald waters
became plain.

My memory organizes my life
by place.

The brownish sandy beach
where I whittled driftwood with my first Case knife.
The oleanders near the cyclone fence,
climbing the wiry fence tops chasing my friend Vince
who cursed those wires that caught his *******.
The river running through Tamaqua
on a family trip east as a kid
but I can’t see the faces or hear the names
of my New Jersey kin
I do see the wood box where me and my cousins hid.
Gone are the faint glimmers of folks
beyond the red-blooming poisonous bush
the names of aunts back east I wrote juvenile letters to
but I recall their ice cream parlor wall painted bright blue.

Closing my eyes
I see the yellow floor
and the bent aluminum legs of the kitchen table
I wiggled under as fast as I was able
to avoid Daddy’s long brown leather belt
and when he missed I heard his anger melt
when he couldn’t suppress a giggle.

Ah! the joy of my lively geographic memory.

I was banging on the big wooden front door
with both fists
there were little square windows
each framed with four mitered corners.
I could see into the church
people singing and raising their hands
but I couldn't get in.

I have many dreams at night
almost all of them forgotten
but in this near-waking state
I knew this one meant something
I needed to pay attention.

Pay attention
what a phrase!

Moving my hands and arms
across the canvas
with the brush in two shades of red
lavishing the northeast corner toward southeast
next to blacks and blues.
Yellows now circling like covered wagons
into the blossom of a daisy.
These strokes took care
in praise of pigments
throwing a few coins for toll
just costly enough to
keep me moving west
the sun not yet setting.

There are always doors
or blinds I cannot open
nearly as easily as I would like
too heavy or out of reach.
Patience also costly.
Like attention.

Slender and humble in its youth
the oak grew in moist earth near the bayou.
Roots pierced the dark land
ate the rich gumbo
silently morphed facets of soil
into a heart
with unexposed power and poise.

Across the bayou
on a screened porch
a young girl watched the new rain
make puffs of dust in the dirt
she daydreamed in the drifts of clouds
and wondered where they were born.

A young man and his friend
off the beaten path of their travels
found the town pool.
Swimming, he saw the beautiful girl
perched above the deep end
and across longitudes and latitudes
of loving, laughing, and weeping
they birthed and raised a family.

The bark’s ridges and gaps reveal
centuries of storms and floods
the oak’s long limbs laden
with life, wisdom, and altered environments.

These two entwined lives enriched
by learning and prodigious practice
their wine a vintage
of passionate enchantment
imbibed by thirsty learners
across decades beyond ordinary borders.

But she like the oak
with open arms
her strength born in good soil.
Hers is a rare power of gentle love
hers a courage born
of some cosmic connection
at the heart of her beautiful humanity.

Dedicated to my cousin Melanie on her eightieth birthday. Both of us born in the Durand line in southern Louisiana not too far from the Evangeline Oak near Bayou Teche. Our lives were seemingly divergent but somehow parallel and ultimately connected, I think, by a power greater than ourselves. If you are interested in more, please see: https://www.currierpoems.net/teche-series

I went to my friend
almost afraid to expose the need
I found as I read the book,
not knowing if he would be deaf to it.
As I spoke of my father
who was not there
to show his boy how to be a man
I recounted my losses
and the load of grief I felt.

My sadness clung to me
a heavy suit of chainmail on a dark knight.
I could feel my face
drooping in lamentation
unable to be the smiling grinning buddy
I normally brought to the room.

Seemingly unable to enter into my pain,
my friend, a man of great intellect, character and conviction,
responded only with a litany of his own.
I tried to listen but my burden
made it a mighty climb.

Now I know my pal is only human
and I am wrestling
with my self
sweating MY
deafness.

Driving home from the airport
from High Ridge Road we peered at downtown.
I told our visitor
this is the view tourists like
looking at the city from afar
or driving past its monuments.
But if you really want to see the city
you have to smell the streets the morning after
or visit Aunt Stella in her trailer.

That night we did just that
laughing with the folks
sitting on her old stuffed couch
and on rickety folding chairs
she’d fetched from the bedroom closet.

We listened to Fred
leaning over his old guitar
playing it as if it were a woman.
His voice was gravel
but when he sang falsetto
I could see him in his mother’s arms.

Stella quietly left for the kitchen
and brought back beers
and saltines and sharp cheddar cheese,
Fred still crooning softly.
We were completely mesmerized by him
and his humble country charm.

As I sat there with our visitor
I was again a boy at home with Mama
and Daddy who’d just got in from the plant
in his khaki pants and shirt  
smudges of oil on his sleeves
smelling of the day’s sweat.

It is a profusion of earth
direct to my brain
in one breath
its brown luxury
sensual and sultry
a lover's naked warmth
under heavy quilts o a cold winter's morn.

It ignores inner constraints
penetrates points of pleasure
hidden deep and unnoticed
until I open this new can of coffee.

The slugger swept the bases
his swift run for home past third  
blew away the dusty traces
his teammates had stirred.

She precisely whisked flour
with oil, eggs, and spice
but played til such a late hour
she had to mix it twice.

The coach signaled a sacrifice fly
but he wanted to slam it
not a martyr kind of guy
so he hit a homer ******!

You might want to make dough
but you’d have to prove the matter
to get your fund and asset to grow
don’t forget you’re mixing a human batter.

“To write is to go looking for what I don’t even know myself before I write it.”
- Annie Ernaux, winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature

I went into the dark canyon
not knowing where it would lead -
another adventure
taken up to pursue a dream,
my hand holding the reins
not knowing what lie ahead
nor what I was looking for.

The notion that led me here
words in my head
the meaning of which were a cypher so cryptic
I knew not what quest I would wrest from them.

But I had been told that this riding
was an exploration of the unknown.
That I was just a hapless pioneer
in a borderless land,
a wilderness
requiring a spindly surrender.

It’s early morning
as he starts down the rocky bank of the lake
he slips
his rod and reel in one hand
his other on a boulder to break his fall.
Already fishing, I am about to laugh
but I see the consternation and fear
on his face.

Late that night we sit up
reading a favorite writer
who never failed to transport and beguile us.
We laughed
remembering a previous predicament
we had barely escaped together.

Comfortable moments of quiet
just thinking about what we had read
trying to make it fit in to each of our so-called separate lives
back in the so-called real world.

But I wonder if those times were more real
as we re membered the body of our friendship.

The music plays its dirgelike tune
repeating it repeating repeating
until it is painful to keep listening,
lonely in its dreary tedium.

I am not sure whether to call this
an ache
or a yearning.

Being enclosed here in this seemingly endless loop
makes me want to jump out of it
onto the ship wreckage floating by me
to find a place with more life and lift
a field of clover and daisies
bees buzzing about the tasks of their short lives.

I looked out over
the peninsula of ice
reaching out into the rippling lake,
unsettled as I.
Snow covered peaks on the horizon
like clouds,
dreams and ideals melted
in decades poured out
in earnest labor.

The tall gaunt preacher
stood stoop-shouldered
his black hat barely gripped
in his hand held against his left leg
his face sad, eyes cast down
as if to discern what had gone wrong.

The rusted out bike
tires flattened, lay on bricks discarded
from an old church
with a cast iron cross
aching and alienated.

A once sparkling life
may seem barely more than refuge
but a soul stirs
still beaming,
a lighthouse
on the sea
crashing against the rocky shoal.

With a bleak wan smile
she confided
when she went to the restroom
she noticed she had not flushed the toilet the previous time
and I could hear a hint of fear and regret in her voice.

For two weeks the pain on the left side of her back
was still there
and an awkward limp
when she got out of bed.
She spoke with a dripping sadness in her words.

In a slightly bewildered tone
she traced her arrival at home
from her visit with her aging nieces.
She reflected on their continual drone about their medical conditions
as she listened mute
without her usual
lively witty
response.

It was as if she could almost feel
the slow creeping shadow
of senescence
and mortality
behind her.

I was again struck
and gratified
by the surprising
frankness of my eighty-six-year-old cousin
as we chatted and each recalled
our Thanksgiving
encounters
with kin.

An insect clinging to driftwood in choppy water
that’s how I felt
small alone bewildered lost
looking for a swift escape.
Not a good place to be.
Scanning the horizon for a buoy
a lighthouse a beach
any mooring.

In the next room she was reading
and with a timidity belied by the long golden strand
of our marriage,
quiet, almost shy I went to her
and said in a worn voice, I need to talk.

Me in my otherwise articulate self
was foundering throwing about for words
finally admitting I was dumbfounded
sodden by fatigue
from the self-imposed tethers
of friendship and loyalty.

Boundaries, she said, boundaries.
You have a young mind in an old body.
Let go and read some poems
and write one.

She knew what I needed.

White trapezoid streetlights spill
amber blotches on the avenue of walls behind them
on the wonky bench
she leans on him
their coats and their bodies
warm them this cool evening.
The rectangle of light he holds grips them
their intense focus on a video, oblivious of all else.

Does he even feel her hair on his cheek
or her hand on his inner thigh
or care that her knee touches his.

At least they are present together
their bodies touch.
Their warm breaths commingle
but do they even notice?

Is this a non-cyber moment
an intentional prelude to intimacy
or merely two atoms about to make a molecule?

I cannot know the worlds two people are entering
or divine the wispy cloud of their intentions  
but I can ****** my imaginings into their night
and wish for them the warm might of love.

I could hear the sky’s unsteady dripping,
comforting as I slept in the cool fall morning
the Navaho-patterned quilt
warmed my body
resting quiet in the blind pull of gravity.
How sweet life is sometimes
age dripping gripping me.
But for now I am without a care.

Can I find a spark in this darkness
see through this grim mass
that surrounds my small galaxy
to see a dawn
within that gloomy volume,
experience colors unseeable,
hear a beating heart,
feel its pulsating energy?

I cannot imagine grace
its slow quiet crawl
into my soul

I watched the squirrels chase each other
along the long limbs of the cedar elm
as its leaves fell sporadically
silently whispering
the approach of autumn.

I took a deep breath of cool air
thinking thanks
for mother earth
her gentle breeze stirred the trees
leaves slow dancing with the sun.

I sit comfortably pleased by the pleasance
of this bright day
and the final flowering of sage.

I push through the fog of doubt
convinced on the other side
is the light of day
clear and bright.

I see your action in my life
and feel it as surely as the air sweeps into my lungs
when I wake and my body moves
into the new day.

Here in the high weeds of violins and flutes
is where I find you
when I pause
and breathe
and listen.

In the marshes
where plant life
saves coastal cities
we who think we are stuck
with nowhere to go
should take root in these shallow waters
of the great ocean.
It is there where
we live most of our lives after all.

If you have something to live for
the transition between this life and the next
(if there is a next)
will be painted in hues of joy.

a five inch wide vine
five hundred years old teaches
me humility

I have heard the word as a condemnation
by a religious hierarchy
which meant a severing of ties with a wayward sinner,
ostracism the worse thing for
one interested in staying -
this loneliness and pain desired by the keepers of the norm.

But I think of those with whom my communication is ex.
Al, my former close friend who turned his norms onto me
Jackie, a good and loving woman now gone
James, a man who no longer wants to have lunch with me.
There are a few more
who’ve wittingly or not
closed the door
but in every case a kind of sad weight
abides near my heart, a pain that literally aches
with tears just behind  my eyes.

To feast one moment at a time
on a bite of eternity
what a blessed gift!

Do you know someone
who’s in the background of your day
and when you pause
if you’re lucky
you remember and smile
can’t suppress a thank you
but feel just a tint of sadness
they’re not in the foreground?

Her dark hair, red lipstick
slightly weathered but alluring face,
the swift efficient way she poured our coffee
a slight sheen of sweat on her cheeks
evidence of her ownership
and hard work at her cafe.

My friend and I having fished from the shores of the nearby lake
from first light
now basked in Pat’s femininity
strength, confidence, and congeniality
as she took our order.
We smiled knowingly at each other as she left our table
our mouths watering as we thought about
her and her pancakes-and eggs-breakfast.

All the wax spent
flame went
wick yet glowing
as if to whimper
I don’t want to die.

Alb blowing casually dancing
enveloping feet glad he ignited
joyous kind loving musical noise
overthrowing Puritanical quagmires
ravaging searchers trying undertaking
valuable xercises yielding zeal.

The storm came through with fierce winds
a large limb fell off our tree
as I inspected the damage
my neighbor joined me in his bare feet.
We chatted about the dove
perched high in the tree
about the variety of trees in our yard
and other musings
in a long peaceful conversation
as we sat on our neighbor’s retaining wall.

As I write I think about how conversations like this
on cool fall days and in the midst of summer
act as retaining walls
for the social landscape of our town
strengthening the links that bind.

We come from different regions.
He is from a land stretching from a mystic desert
through rivered green hills
atop eon-deposited bands of coal
ending on the shores of a mighty ocean.

I from swamps and warm southern coastal climes
from a father who saw with urban eastern eyes
both parents merging into deep flowing rivers
full of lifegiving nutrients and radiant spirits
but I too ending on that same mighty sea.

We steer our separate vessels
our hands firmly on our singular tills
but each with the same cosmic navigator
merging our journeys into a brilliant universe
full of multi-colored nebulas and planets,
but our star sheds upon we two pilgrims
a potent lively light.

And then she said no.
I said I knew
you’d decline my offer
but I had to try anyway.

Sometimes no is the best answer.

I thought she was on her way out
at an age cats usually die.
But still she jumps up on our laps
sleeps there knowing she’s loved,
still finicky, she eats
and when hungry she speaks.
The honeybees and hummingbirds
are out enjoying our sage blossoms.
Life all around defying expectations
of fall’s slow drying on the way to winter's dying.

I hear the soil’s thirst-quenching
in the low rumble of rain on our roof
see it in darkened skies
feel it on cooled skin
bodies refreshed
muscles mellowed
grateful to the Lord of the skies
for easing our drought.

When I start to regret the past
I have to ask
what does that piece of me mean
is it something best forgot
or a lesson
that turns my dark to green
It might make my dust into stars.

I should not waste my scars.

Trying to read deep poem
TV, fan, drum music
Attention too shallow

He swooped down landed atop the jutting eave
surveyed our yard for mice and other prey
and I prayed he wouldn’t leave.
He did not fly away
but up to the elm
keenly searching his realm.

His magnificence took my breath
I a privileged audience
no less than watching Macbeth
or listening to Ravel.

His breast a mottled gray and white
vigilant eyes and lethal raptor beak
his wings perfectly formed for agile flight.

I wondered if our species was perfectly made
and if so for what kind of flying:
gliding into an emerald glade
or lying there to get lost in cloudy skies
or like the hawk look and leap and rise?

I get so tired of one religion
tearing down another.
It seems so cheap to me -
a protestation better muted
in favor of a simple act of helpfulness.

I am Rip
awakened from a long sleep
finally my eyes opening
to see a new world.

It comes to me
on a path yearly worn
yet a path fresh with each step
each breath
each electron sparking through my brain
in its electric searching.

I am alive
yet so small
almost nothing
I am a leaf on a great oak
whose roots reach into the cosmos.

“…how close we are
     to being
     nothing
     most of the time

     and
     for some of us
     nothing all of the time…  - Bukowski: “Meeting Them”


Reading his poem freed me
but bound me to a budding desire
to write
and explore
its roots in a reality
I fear.

How close to being nothing
are we
and is it for eternity
or just a moment?

But just asking the question is liberating
as if I looked death in the face
and just smiled.

How sweet is our time together
falling softly into violin strings
up into sky on mockingbird wings
across piano keys of white and black
where there is nothing I lack
and every moment stretches
across horizons blue and gold
no matter how battered and old
my body of bones and flesh
every minute green and full and fresh.

Lost in labyrinthine passages
flitting from one bright dangly thing to another
following the lead of my cravings
which was no lead at all
somehow roads were paved
in your direction
and I found my way
into the chambers of your heart.

When I think of the stars and galaxies
capable of capturing your notice and care
the splendid finitude of your love for me
pierces my heart.

This is not just an ordinary day
like yesterday or the day before
this day I’ll open a door
to a garden alive in dark clay
hummingbirds searching for paradise
in a heat wave scorching and dry
honeybees saying goodbye
mothers in a war made of sacrifice

No ordinary day this one
I’ll find a way out of sadness
through an hour of madness
out of moments undone
taking thirty minutes for my lover
where we touch our toes
take a risk to expose
mistakes we were loathe to uncover.

We will create this present day
halfway out of old into something new and bold.