corvid dreams

endless december he said
staying in to avoid the hard 
darkfall. nautical 
weather has arrived 
made sailors of us 
all. tidal clouds 
unscarved me on 
slate tongue tunnels 
straight through 
the leafletted ash 
of unplanned city 
silences. i am 
followed by rogue 
sky, repeat 
to increment what was 
too fleeting to grasp
on this epiphany escalator, 
take me to the next floor, 
i'm done 
shopping here and also 
done knocking on 
rocks for notes to discover those 
enslaved with prehistoric 
marimba, dreaming, 
gathering antique shadows 
worn like the night's 
cool cloak. i am a crow 
who has learned to collect 
the pebbles of his thoughts 
to fill the jar. i have passed 
aesop's test.

the day after the day after

walking home from the cafe
almost noon but the sky no brighter 
the day after the day after 
christmas is ash cold. 
i just stole a picture, 
a flower i was surprised to find, 
a flower emerging from 
cracked concrete stairs, 
as if the effort to blossom 
through concrete had hardened 
its resolve to continue 
blossoming through- 
kneeling where it hovered 
above the lichen splotched steps, 
i look up at a crow 
perched on one of several 
diagonally crossing wires, '
pause to admire the symmetry, 
wonder if they appreciate such things,
and notice, suddenly, the rest of those 
dark pauses scattered indiscriminately among 
gnarled limbs, crossing wires, rooftop edges 
and realize that the peculiar feeling i just had 
was the sensation of being observed 
by a quiet aerial collective 
and then the entire murder 
lifts, in a few strong flaps, toward the soft low sky 
as if all the commas in a story you were reading 
abandoned the page together and all at once
as the mechanical gate of the oregon institute for 
clinical investigations slowly & quite dramatically 

opens 
and i laugh out loud. 

eve of the darkest day

black roots twisted up-
ended, the stripping's
completed drip
sculpture wears its
violent blue rain on
the eve of the darkest
day her joy
relented her
misery was pure
twang-
what will you do
when it's too dark to see
through this aquatic day?

*

beauty gash
some petite feathered thing
shivers in the drip cage
among the more feral pine
elderly elm waves a fern
boa, its blinged fingers
studded with the sky's
ones & zeroes
triangular hints of baby
blue
blink through the languid
droop of the tangled
limb maze skeins
the tidal cloud
pillow stars emerge from
this sultry stew

when you don't want to emerge from the warmth

when you don't want to emerge from

the warmth you have hoarded when

it's winter and you don't

have time for the usual

and you don't have time

to shoot the couple

playing with their little dog

fenced in gorgeous sun-

light hurries you up

the empty street wondering

why am i the only one

and almost miss the abandoned

cardboard sign on the grass says

help

i'm homeless

and forty
help

and you don't have time to be

pierced like that

when it's morning,

when it's winter,

and you don't want to emerge from

the warmth you have hoarded.

quote from "Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes" by William Bridges

    In fact, the transitions that punctuate many people's careers after the age of forty or forty-five are the unmarked ruins of this natural time of transition. Whether such transitions take the form of a time when everything "goes dead," a time when things keep going wrong, a time when long-successful strategies suddenly stop working, or a time when the gray fog of depression covers whatever was once bright & interesting, this natural (if often delayed) time of transition starts with an ending, a sense of loss. And after we have acknowledged the ending, the sense of loss is replaced with emptiness, meaninglessness, a feeling that all our accomplishments actually mean very little. We say (if we have the courage to talk about the experience) that our careers aren't going anywhere; we may wonder whether we've been in the wrong career all along; we may consider an early retirement, although we probably at the time lack the funds to pull it off.
    Those questions come from getting caught up in the content of our situation and from overlooking the underlying pattern. The feelings that we encounter at such a time are best understood as signs of a life passage that has been stripped of its rites and tossed aside as no longer useful. We are so distant from this sense that life has natural chapters, along with introductions marking transition, that we hardly know what we are missing. But life remembers . . .  and tries to remind us. 

White Wind Poem by Douglas Spangle (35th Anniversary of Mount St. Helens Eruption)

White Wind


Listen,
just listen.
Intolerable with fusion,
                                            the world is erupting into silence.
The wind and the ash have blasted
                                                                our town into white sleep
like Utrillo's Paris;
                                   not so much blank and barren,
                                   not so much cold
as blind and reflective.
                                            You can feel it with your fingertips.


Close your eyes
and follow the streets
where they unroll like bandages;
                                                              travel them like traffic
in the veins of last autumn's leaves,
                                                                   echo of the last cry
of the dead nestling
                                     crushed at the foot of the red cathedral.


Ash, the salt
with no savor,
falls indiscriminate as death,
crusting the eye and the nostril,
                                                           scoring a curse
on the steel of the engine armature.
                                                                  Ash torments the crevice,
tender junction of petal and sepal.
                                                                White powder twists
frail flames behind heels and wheels;

the cut rose forgotten,
                                          engraved gray with dust,
supine on the doorstep.


Close your eyes,
blink back tears,
just wait.
Wait and listen;
                              as it rasps your face to parchment
the white wind is grinning,
                                                  burning from ear to ear.


Non carpe diem,
don't seize the day:
the summer itself is a seizure;
the world and its death are so close at hand
                                                                        that they blister the skin
and the words spit like flames 
                                                        as they leap through the teeth.

photo by Carmen R. Andrews

http://oregonpoeticvoices.org/poet/379/

amphitheater of faded flower

shame in the house. shame speaking. blossoms wilting and it's not even warm, not yet. freak among freaks takes the window seat, tries not to think how his life would read. fathers & daughters arrive but pose instead of play, insisting every moment be framed. outside, a little girl in striped salmon pink twirls in circles with her arms stretched out, her palms up, a crimson colored blossom weighing one down as she turns round & round. there is a dead fly in my frame that dangles from a spider thread, also turning round & round precisely beside my day-dreaming eye. across the street, a family performs their affection for a hired eye, kneeling on the dandelioned grass before the rhododendron's amphitheater of faded flower. i take a sip of strong black tea, haunted by the knowledge of what i am no longer becoming.