Solstice
In certain dark
the moon issues this request:
to be the shadow on the pillow,
the glass candle near the door of sleep.
A hungry Stellar’s jay breaks berries into pulp,
while bats decorate the rafters, and
the wood pile moans under
its burden of fog.
As life encroaches on the dreaming
bedpost, you remember
a chip of ice you found in river
sludge, its sheen a mute witness
to increments of change
as lens and pure belief.
The Exercise
1.
unmoved
by will/choked by sun &
vessels holding water,
under gray adjectives
2.
lion of letters loop of lilies
the bird that swallowed
the cat
circadian sway
of science, its mirrors,
its cyphers,
a sand crab
tossed in a porcelain bowl
3.
remember what sins
you commit
then write shell, that which contains
a softer self
4.
stories hold the brackish
understory
the letters of refusal
(But fire will spread/despite your inclinations)
5.
In brine, a harvest of krill
his never spent notion : to be a water farmer
knee-deep in thistle
6.
He took his cure; mixed love with
blandishments:
checked his mortality at the door
7.
stayed to read the candled letter,
the windswept book of
resolves
8.
Who will outlast this life
Noun + seven
we perform the exercise
often we blush
at the strangeness of engines
Leaf
Nascent in leaf, splurge
of water marks the season’s
start, the flecked eggs found
under an ivy-facing frame.
Morning’s music is cellos
and the warp and weft
of waves curving
under the bridge where
once you stood and tied your
losses like a rope of stones.
When scenes were ended,
their blueness still supreme
reminder that we hold
our longing, abjure
the simpler premise of a swerve
in luck or fate. Summer’s
baggage shows up at our door,
the lesser leaves give way
to green’s inherent richness,
filling in the trumpet vine,
the Daphne stem, whose leaf
is hidden under hearty growth.
In hiding we may find
our only voice or one true word.
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April 24, 2024
The July morning was alive with a sound in the air, strange communications, the acoustics of the big yard amplifying each rustle, each wave. Odd creatures glittering on the ground. Herds spread lavishly, a wilderness of transparent wings, bug eyes, a mosaic of glassy fragments. Glinting. They covered the grass, the sidewalk, covered the branches of the trees.
by Rick Moody
April 17, 2024
The sound reverberated in my sense of what was right and reliable in the world like drone weaponry, and what I wanted to ask was: what business have you left undone, and did you do a thing you so regretted that you can’t let go of it, was there a person you cut off, when sympathy would have been the better gesture, was there a person you trod on to get ahead in your sales job, speaking ill of them, so that they were forever harmed, did you say something awful about a friend in school, did you call a friend the worst of names in middle school, because it was a thing they said then, the boys did that, only to find, later on, that you loved that boy in a way . . . .
April 10, 2024
I do not like old water.
The water in the ocean is old
The lake is old
But maybe it’s not
Subject to the logic of time, of old and new.
Water.
The water in the ocean is old
The lake is old
But maybe it’s not
Subject to the logic of time, of old and new.
Water.