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I recently read Middlemarch by George Eliot and have been re-reading Jorie Graham’s The End of Beauty. Eliot’s mystic Victorian wisdom and Graham’s volatile, skeptical, lyrical language are  whirring swirling tidepools in my mind.  Most of the poems I’ve been writing seem rather foreign and a bit unfinished, but I think I’ll put them up here anyway.

Your thoughts are very welcome.

 

Old Hotel, or,

On the Difference Between Us

If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like             hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that             roar which lies on the other side of silence.                                                                                - George Eliot

 

(the secret) there was no one

living not a living soul not one

of them haunting – who breathes through

a place memories – who won’t let

walls forget (all frames

crumble the wish of all bones is to return

like light does. Leaves, dirt).

We were driving (no you

and I was oh) the houses

here are praying they are stooping

frames to earth. In reverence

of: fleeting

the day  a wild view  garden till  guest?  We

were driving the full hips of mountains down

lascivious spine. Each rib is a continuing

deliverance and then

abandon.

What is the opposite

of living in a place? You wanted

syllables, something

you could lip to tongue (here is a _______

I will fill it here is empty presence left bones.  Which will be

the last particle becoming

dirt? Does a disappearing

frame feel that final

release?) Yes, yes you wanted Word. But

that question… – if we weren’t teaching

each other if we weren’t teaching each sound

to the other -

Here and gone

I saw Christmas decorations today for the first time.  My mind is so filled with gourds and apples that they rather startled me.  Granted, October is a bit early, but I’m still surprised at how fast Christmas reappears each year.  More so at Christmas time than at New Year’s, I’m taken aback that another year has come and gone.  Just like that.  And just like that again.

January 27th, I take out the Christmas tree with the trash

In a morning you will wake bold

like the one-time font of a buried

expedition.  The faucet of forever

dripdripdripping legs

longer than vines,

sadder than fake

Cabernet on your first communion.

They say a silver chalice

softens the plague into

bit-size deaths.  But this

morning, in your sipping

in your sleeping

you will taste rain, not blood.

Because you forgot

(to close the shutters)

that you are decades deep.

You will say to some self -

not the one in the lined glass,

or the soft-egg spoon – what happened

between yesterday and

between?

When did the plate pass,

with swallow-size suffering

in plastic?

And you will remember,

plastic causes cancer

so it’s best to store each bead

in glass jars with suck seals on high shelves,

though it’s better to string on string

popcorn and cranberries: rosaries

to wrap around your crunching branches.

In a morning you will wake old.

First Snow

The roasted chestnut stand popped up on the bridge corner two weeks ago.  The air smells like woodsmoke and leaves.  Tuesday’s market has quieted down into baskets of gourds and barrels of fresh-pressed apfelsaft.  Hectic tomatoes have been replaced by crates of apples and the farmers are wearing scarves.

This morning the mountains were capped with snow that probably won’t melt until next May or June.  Over the next few weeks, I’ll watch the snow creep slowly down slopes.  In Michigan, winter tends to hide behind doors so it can pop out and surprise you at the most unexpected times: October 1st, May 30th.  One day it’s autumn, the next, winter.  One day it’s spring, the next, February.  But here, in Switzerland, I watch winter descend, watch her white fingers grope closer and closer.

I was surprised to see snow this morning (Oh, you’re here already, are you) and I’ve been thinking about winter all day.   I started shuffling through some poems I wrote last winter.  I think I’ll welcome them back to the shelf like the box of fleece caps, wool gloves.

The first snow is dangerous, Mom said,

they put you up in a hotel

Snow fell soft and my bare feet felt the snow

fall sharp on the slick and smooth on the

road.  It tickled tires, stung your knees.  It sent

smoke from our mouths, from our broken

windows, from the parachutes that fell like

ten cent army men we used to throw

over the bannister and between the cutting arms

of the ceiling fan that never severed, only

threw our red men to the chimney, brick wall.

They made such an unceremonious flack for falling men

as if they didn’t realize their lives were tied

to plastic bags.  One time your man

got stuck on the fan and flew horizontal for

days until the slitting, the slipsnap, the

split                     second

fall to the snow on the ground and the smoke in my

eyes and the lean to your knees, the no sound of

screaming, the without lights, the everything

exhale.

Welcome welcome.

Hello Readers.  This site features a collection of my wonderings and wanderings in the form of poems, stories and recipes.  I welcome all feedback: gush, criticize, suggest, babble, rewrite… My hope is that you will enjoy interacting (whether it be with wooden spoons or spiral notebooks) with what you find here.

Thank you for reading.  I’m glad you stumbled by.

Oh, and take a minute to peruse my blog roll.  You’ll find some fantastic artists.