Poetry

There are some things that can’t be conveyed—
description, for instance,
The sundown light on that dog hair lodge pole pine
and the dead branches of spruce trees.

the absent have left the window open:
the last soldier, stricken,
his moustache gently covered over, has left the bed
undone[…]

I watched
a junco
climb a spruce
as if upon
a spiral stair […]

Like rivers, my thoughts flow south,
for no particular reason.
Must be the full moon
That floods the sky, and makes the night wakeful
and full of remorse.

Nothing to hosanna,
you will be buried

Cold. Only the living
go on living.

His face coming briefly into view

As the crowd pushes

Toward the subway entrance.

In its frame of light it faintly glows,
like a projection screen […]

Whose name will be inscribed in the book
                                                                 just before mine?

His hair declared him his own bohemian, a middle-class free spirit
with a mortgage to pay down, a racing bike, a subscription to Netflix,
and a frau as deceptively frail as Hans Memling’s palest Madonna.

The shadows creep across the lawn

In the silence of the afternoon.