On My Way Down

It takes the class longer to invent some speculative lies about a poem by William Stafford than it probably took him to write it. I tune them out and watch the trees leaning to and fro, shaking their leaves at the wind. With a reaffirming sigh, I understand more of Stafford in an exhale than they will in an hour of explication.

I consider time spent writing poetry and can't help but think it time spent daydreaming. My time was with Shelley and Keats. My time was with the traitor-patriot Eliot and Coleridge, the insufferable. Now their names lie in shelf-dust like tiny paper heartbeats of Ozymandius. Though I can understand Stafford in an exhale, I denounce him with the same breath. He is, to me, a child writing his Christmas wishes on a napkin in a grungy diner. Little more.

We are not all special and unique snowflakes specially carved by a loving god. That none of us share a single fingerprint is nothing greater than odd fact if we fail, as we shall, to leave our prints upon the heart of this earth. My sincerest apologies, Wordsworth, for though I offer you the utmost respect, I can never love you.

Despite, I will surely look for Lowell on my way down from this peak, one jagged rock stumbling downward to the frigid mountain waters of the trough, where I might daydream with trees once more.

Glimpse

Thousands of people have sat on the same love-seat outside of my store. Hundreds of lovers holding hands, being lost in one another. Only two that have mattered.

Mathloaf

I would do anything for love, but I won't do math. Oh, no! No I won't do math.

To Love a Mortal

It is not so stark a distance, the time between a minute and a year. Winters and summers pass without nod or smile, yet camaraderie suffers nothing of the pains of the soil. Standing in the eye, a flawless circle from here to here as the calm lashes down at us. Encompassed - completely devoured - everything looking in from spiraling destruction. Never a flinch. Never the necessity of reassurance. Only cool, cool knowledge that this storm will brew its droplets again and again, all eternity.