Vagabond Poems

jottings

 

I want to live, I want to travel,

I do not want to become a fountain pen.

                                                                — Jean Cocteau

 

like a mole struck from a tunnel, like an onion

dragged from a root cellar, tentacles of hope

lifting green limbs into light

                                                                — George Kalamaras

 

thoughts are only one aspect of conscious life

                                                                — Adrie Kusserow

 

Travel makes you no one

and if you are no one already, travel takes you home

                                                                — Terese Svoboda

 

no word in Greek for privacy

Only secrecy, or loneliness

                                                                — Diane Thiel

 

Ah! Que le monde est grande a la chatte des lampes

Aux yeux du souvenir, que le monde est petit

                                                                — Charles Baudelaire

why take what’s offered, why not walk toward

the green & flickering sea that comes to meet us

                                                                — Diane di Prima

 

it’s not really camping when you don’t have a house

                                                                — Neal Stephenson

 

sleep is the shadow of the earth as it seeps into our skin and 

spreads throughout our limbs, dissolving our individual will into 

the thousand and one selves that compose it — cells, tissues, 

and organs taking their prime directives now from gravity and 

the wind

                                                                — David Abram

 

Imagine that you are always wrong.

                                                                — Y. Madrone

 

When property = freedom

choose itineracy or vagabondage over the happy home.

                                                                — Zoe Tuck

 

I write with a longing that a wire has for electricity.

                                                                — Amir Rabiyah

 

Write a sentence that is a drone.

                                                                — E. C. Crandall

 

It used to be that even talking on the phone meant your voice

had to be somewhere

                                                                — Jaron Lanier

 

it is something strictly American to conceive a space that is filled

with moving, a space of time that is filled always filled with

moving

                                                                — Gertrude Stein

 

and the little breezes of her speeches smell like parsley

                                                               — Alice Oswald

elsewhere

from Eddie Glaube's Begin Again:

Elsewhere is that physical or metaphorical place that affords the space to breathe, to refuse adjustment and accommodation to the demands of society, and to live apart, if just for a time, from the deadly assumptions that threathen to smother.

not metaphoric but metamorphic

Rock Castle Gorge, West Trail

soon as I see bear sign — words

on dirty white metal — I fear

meeting a black bear, me hiking

bravely forward, no, weeping at first

for half a mile I’m quaking inside

bear on the trail, paws tearing bark

from trees, snatching up pine cones

no, I’d scarcely be its chosen meal

a bear would be scared as I am

but a bear would be larger, stronger

& if the bear were it, my death

I would meet it, completely alive

What Might Have Been

The poet roster ends with one

Zukofsky. If not great, he’s at least here

singing of horses on a day without sun.

End of the alphabet, he defines arrear.

Two Ks, a Z & a Y — at school the butt

of jokes, plus he refused to forever pair

with Lorine, forced her to flush twins (gut

punch), then let her go, put Celia there — 

married, they raise a son & music make.

I have a hard time reading his words

due to Niedecker’s trace. It’s offense I take.

Glad I never met him face to face.

Mishap aside, Lorine’s superior pace.

Their offspring might have been twinbird.

Love Is

love is hit or miss, what counts

is dailiness, earthworms, their responsibilities

& segmented grubs, earth-dwelling spiders

earwigs, caterpillars climbing weeds

Rabbit

comes back . what comes back to me is the rabbit

streaking . no . rocketing from front yard to back

rabbit run . a rabbit running for its life . rabbit life

fear here . joy there . full measure . full grown

white tuft aft . four legs outstretched at every bound

not height but length of bound what matters . woods

to lawn to norther woods . another chase won

another day gained . shelter won . of day . of night

High Falls

a natural wonder — water, falling — 

I reach by a wide clean gray gravel road

the park calls a trail, I call it a highway

a motorized wheelchair could climb

the greater the wonder the more public the show

much as I love falling water — boiling froth

slick rock & glassy spills, greenish flat rock

under four feet deep flow — I don’t want

to be here in this carved-out space

nature no longer wild, nature tidy as

a downtown street & just as well attended

once it would have been space for falling

from life too much ache to endure

once it would have been a spot

where my body would never be found

A Wind & a World

scratching wakes me, must be

the cat, yet strange space looms

it’s the back door open, it’s dark space

our house open to the rest of the night

I’m standing now, my heart all thumps

I step into pants, wrestle a shirt, walk

to the threshold, why’s the door open?

is someone here? has the cat escaped?

I find a light, the sleepy puzzled cat

studies me from the hall, she sees

more than I do, if a stranger came here

she’d wake before me, she’d run & hide

daily she begs to go out in the real world

I tell her no, it’s not safe, yet tonight

while I sleep, keen to be with us

a wind & a world push their way inside

Three Words

if today I choose to put an end to

all but three words, I will keep dream

because the only people I’m ever with are in

my dreams — we are busy beavers with real lives

we talk & touch each other in our dreaming world

& I will keep children, plural, so they can be together

afraid & unafraid, because they still have a chance

if the world decides to keep them, & the third word

I've yet to choose, though in thinking about it

I’m ending ever so many words, for example, hero

& good & bad & order & law & before & after & pain

oh, there it is, I found it, the third word is river

because so much must exist for there to be rivers

& rivers run

Once New, Now Old

light comes up, goes down to dark

cloud, more rain, no thought of hiking

few thoughts at all beyond hauling this

then that from the house, parade

of boxes, loose handfuls, old chairs

tunneled byways the history of mice

what we seek is nothing, is the space

trapped in cumbrance, to become

unencumbered is to make space to live

colder too, day masquerading as night

River Run

Hiking upstream along the Charles River

I picture my uncles — Leo, Tom, Charlie,

& Joe — rowing a homemade boat

thirty miles downstream to Boston.

When I was a teen, Charlie — his loose-lipped

maniacal grin — dared me to believe it.

Venturing out in a boat like Odysseus

off to Troy, their sisters watching them go.

It must have been a hard row back home.

Today the river smells sour — chemical

& organic, polluted or thriving — earth

doesn’t speak, wind & cloud won’t say.

Side by side these rural rights of way.

More than a decade these boys, their

sisters, all but these pictures are gone.

The river outruns us, mud-brown water

flowing around & through the livid greens.

After Li Bai

graying hair

east west south north

cycles of sorrow

frost spangles fallen leaves

a thousand shades of red

After Jia Dao

the hermit’s gone

to gather chanterelles

alone & lost the guest

samples amanita

After Zhang Ji

to beg lodging

wish for a friend

a pale night sky

no locks, no bars

moon by morning

After Li Bai

ripe for change

for gray skies

& cold rain

for warm clothes

long nights

hard freezes

silent snowy walks

 

Carving Dragons

heron, egret, crane

three toes carving

through marsh, a road

outlining, rerouting

where bills grope

for diggers & swimmers

footprints the hollows

tidal flows erase

feet lift, wings ruffle

ocean breaths exhale

Tender

John retrieves paper money

strewn in the putrid gray slime

puddling the floor of the Middlebury

Transfer Station dumping bay.

Three bills, folded, crumpled

under his boots as he drives the van.

Home he washes the bills, a five

& two ones, one of the ones

only two thirds of what it once was.

What hand, what pocket or wallet

dropped them? I hope

they weren’t lunch or the gallon of milk

someone meant to bring home.

Flattened, faded, one five one

dried flakes on porch planks.

Trust John to turn tender to art.

After Liu Xie

mantis, we pray you devour

the hordes of mosquitoes

lunge & snap & swallow

one after one, bless us with

chillier walks in coloring woods

without the slapping hands

speck-sized corpses

streaks of sullied blood

the scratching, the scabs

Off-Roading

let the bicycle be a flexile boat

feet not pedaling but paddling

the trail a flowing snaking river

studded with spiky growths

hold the line, maintain momentum

cause if you don’t, the dream

will end, the earth will meet you

not fluid, not yielding, but hard

Ein Ganzes Leben

ripples of a sunshot lake

wooden dock

twig of a red-haired girl

bare throat, arms, knees

stick for a pole

the line between her fingers

twirling a small fish

somewhere in Georgia

                      — after Rilke

Way Stations

each place has its graces

animals outside the doors

natural light, flowers & trees

hiking & biking close by

& each has faults — old stove

or no stove at all, lumpy bed

stiff sheets, too steep stairs

windows that don’t open

doors that don’t lock, damp

& decrepit sofas, lamps

too dim to read by, a copper

sink that doesn’t drain

so many tchotches, dismal art —

when a rental ends

I’m always ready to pack

load the car, load the map

head for the next stop

Plank Road

gravel fills the road

autos, farm trucks, graders carve

bicycles gambol

Single Track

gray chips trace a narrow berm

between two slopes, left down to

a grassy ditch, right down to roots

of taller-than-me grass gone to seed

& spiking thistle, “ride the line,” I cry

aloud, pedal steady, front wheel

straight, thistle grabs, velvety plume

caresses, I stop, pedal again, stop

to pant, to breathe, there'll come a day

Laboratory

a room of large tables, shelves of bottles

the glass brown or clear, the contents liquid

some are tombs for bodies, for body parts

what I learn is the smell of formaldehyde

the look & feel of a glass pipette, a pointed tip

submerged in a beaker of distilled water

“it’s like a straw,” my grandfather says

“draw the liquid up beyond this mark”

an etched number next to an etched line

“then stopper the pipette with the tip of

your index finger, tap to release drop

by drop until the liquid level meets the mark”

this practice, this exactitude, lifelong

Beatrice

I weep for her. John weeps.

Our minds fracture into

search parties. Hunting

on beyond six days

& seven nights, we fear

as she fears. If we are not

to find her, give us a caverned

corpse, a limb, a scatter

of bones to make a cairn of.

We know how strong preys

on strong, how the strike

the wound, the play

plays out, memory of each

mouse, spells of defiance

attempts at escape, casual

buffets & final blow. Like

her namesake, she’s taken

too young. We know

she fought. We travel far

lifelong. We are never done.

Pholcus phalangoides

Don't worry spiders,

I keep house

     casually.

 

— Issa via Robert Hass

all I’ve done for nine months is travel 

what have I learned? what’s the prize?

a newborn seems a prize until it’s crying

I’m sick of moving house, yet here I am

in a house not mine, a bare space, not unlike

any place where life must spring from a pen

to fill the hollows — here’s a gnat, in the sinks

are crane flies & daddy longlegs, Pholcus

phalangioides, aka skull spider — Wiki says

it's like but not a crane fly, aka Tipulidae

some call Opiliones daddy longlegs

though they aren’t, they’re harvestmen

the air in this room brims with Arthropoda

come clades, settle this latest home

Otter Creek at Belden Falls

divide & fall, two times & more

boats climb your bank for portage

conglomerate machinery straddles

your east flank, overlays of

concrete & steel, bolts, pipes

gear that powers towns

rippled glass pours down your brow

tumult below, boil & froth

spill across massive boulders

spiral through wide & narrower gaps

arcing above you a hiker’s bridge

chain-link toe & finger holds

to guide me up & over

a plunge if that day comes

νους / θυμος / επιθυμια

Plato’s theory of the self . . .

νους / nous — reason: the controller

θυμος / thumos — passion: anger / fear / ego

επιθυμια / epithumia — appetite / affection: bodily desire

as if passion were power & affection weakness

Every Boat

hubbub of a city park, whisper of my mind

walking along a paved path, others talking

aloud, a boat — white strings, triangle

of flimsy cloth, silvery hoops & nails joining

three pieces of wood into a proposition

set loose on a pond, motion proof of a breeze

I stop to feel, the sail filling one way

the boat going another, what suggests

a boat will return? freed, it yields

to wind & water’s will, a wallowing hull

a luffing sail, how can a boat not

capsize? my watching can’t but jinx

the ride — best to let the question pass

it’s not my boat, every boat I fancy lost

Preseason

climbing the CAT track

between ski runs

signposted in four colors

past pipes & solar

ready to make snow

the nature center’s

taxidermied beasts

blue jays high on birches

needle ice bursting

thru autumn soil

nine of us reach the top

of Stark Mountain

three dogs, six people

we’re not together

except geographically

we share a dress code

zippers galore

multi-pocketed packs

bright merino beanies

in 36° sunshine

on a Stark’s Nest bench

eating designer snacks

the signal strong

for well-thumbed phones

at least three of us

slip & fall on ice

we’re okay, nothing broke

no missing pieces

the dogs — off leash

day-glo sweatered

nose to earth — ignore

our hubris, our greed

just as we ignore

every coral reef

every atoll nation

every climate refugee

destined for squalor

thanks to our behavior

In Their Shoes Banana Skins & Aspirins

no wallets or phones, those were stolen

or let’s say, they walked to the beach

untethered, locals, noted a blue bunny

under a clump of grass, orphaned children

runaway mothers, the father compelled

by magnets, alchemy, ice — plimsolls

& strappy sandals, aspirins in a vacuum pak

aspirins for those who found them lost

their swimsuits spread on offshore rocks

bananas to fuel their strokes to reach

riptide, abandon of swirl & swept away

gasp, swallow — shoes as urns, vittles

& solace inside, bananas they fed to apes

they met on the sand, bananas the children

took on the dune buggy ride, aspirins

one stole from a kiosk, a small package

easy to palm, aspirins they would take

if rescued, prevented from taking their lives

plimsolls a pastel green, willow her favorite

tree, popple his — the sound of three p’s

let's say they carried harpoons but not

a net, off to spear blues, the glimmer

that fades the farther it travels from true

bananas stolen from farms along the way

gluey, meaty, like perfumed cheese

Snake Mountain

night & day rain, the trail

gleams dark with mud

hikers blister & corduroy

come freeze, every rut is recorded

I feel the trail, think of my boots

how not to sink them, the trail

feels boots, remembers deer

their weightless springing

cleavings at intervals

crossing bog, sleek pelts

fleeing, or without hunters, not fleeing

bed to feed to drink to bed

fawns glance back to locate

others between bare trees, angles

of oak leaves not fallen, feet

dark with earth, that cacophony

Aphasia

one child replaces another — Frances

for Layla, Elsa for Bea — every death

punches a hole in the universe, we all

stream through, unstoppable, like rain

like snow — compensation

for what has been lost, sunlight is backdrop

is scenery, is streaming down on

riprap, forgetting is the collapse

of language’s wave function [Waldrep]

speaking on a roll is speaking a wave of

eminent elegant words from a web

where they hang for safekeeping

now the webs sag, words falter

eminent might have been pertinent

though you feel the swell of eh . . .

exigent . . . though no word comes

besides, who is left to listen?

picture an auditorium waiting for words

like a domed arena, cots in neat rows

nurses washed up, wounded, alive

Cloud

muscled streaks

scud toward black hills

reckonings of water

blood-gorged barbs

burrow into slopes

earth & water

rocks woven into trees

upheave, compress

eons of water

cumuli whittle

to wattles, barnacles

molecular water

commutable sacs of self

karst, cenote

disappearing water

day beginning, day end

bird, beaver, bobcat

mingle at water

Noli Me Tangere

Incompletion makes someone

want to fill your blanks in.

— Kathleen Rooney

    inhabiting Weldon Kees

years turn ulcer

to scar, scar to fold

lost in wrinkles

I climb cold cliffs

mouth open

to wind hail snow

swallow any kind

of weather

I follow the road

enter the woods

let wild beasts come

fail at speaking

a feral tongue

I cross water

barreling

rock after rock

gravity’s darling

take me, fill me

I’m here to be gone

Parade

white trunks, brown foliage

green fir, blue sky

the shimmering image propels a leaf 

loose flowing white-armed Hera

leading the thunder-hurling

ankle-winged, lyre-strumming crew

the trim flotilla streams by me

watching-from-the-lee-shore

long-past-the-time-of-Greek-gods

mortal that I am — each god

I mean ship, I mean leaf

weaves through tapestry

warped in water drawn by sun

once a song of Homer

Kingsland Bay State Park

the lake spreads out like the space

left by a missing year

gleam between winter trees, steel blue

white plastic moorings

cold water, diving ducks, shoreline

curbs the view of more water

below the trail earth plunges, rock

& trees barely hanging

slippy footing on glacier-carved rock

tree roots used to bruises

ahead of us the whole way the dog

noses another trail

a past we can’t perceive

alive to her as if it’s now

she’s old, she closes her eyes

at other dogs

To My Friend Who Is Outraged at Little Marsh Man 

for Disregarding HOA Regulations

 

little marsh man

pruning & sodding

the marsh commons

planting flower gardens

to better his view

he’s adorning

earth, he’s making

what he believes is beauty

or calls beauty

while you, my friend 

rage — 

             I’m not willing

to say that only nature

can triumph

it's the nature of the view

of the viewer

what he wants

vs what you want

likely his position

in the community

outrivals yours

else your complaints

would hold water

instead 

             like the marsh

things ebb & flow

parch & flood

he’s common 

the little marsh man

soon enough 

he will die

as will you & I

while the marsh

water & wild grass

creatures of water & air

& mud

            will remain

Hotel

opening night — live music

drugs at the table, skin on stage —

later the hotel he brings me to

New York City is not my turf

I’ve no idea where we are or why 

the room is so dark, so gray, so grim

smell of someone before me & yes

urine, though I see no toilet

a metal bed low to the floor

he sits me down & stands there

I’ll come back for you in the morning

then I’m alone — street noise, bands

of yellow light, I close my eyes

why did he leave me here?

what’s he doing now?

loud voices outside my door

footsteps back & forth, by morning

who’s to say I won’t be dead?

A Plinth is Temporary

parliament, dogma

regime by regime we founder

toss our bones to fish

scavengers webbed with micro bits

our heroes who sparred for fame

stand naked & maimed

uniformed in urban air

fingerprint smear, pigeon slick

it’s time to end male pranks

agora, politic, campaign

wrecker ball swing, smelter melt

let vixen & witch remain

Path

hemlock branch loaded with snow

you block the path

under your shadow I reach for you

shake shake

uncovered you spring up, weightless

I wait for flakes to settle

my glove, shoulders a scatter of white

now the path is unburdened

I carry no burden

the path can’t be freed

I search for the path not there

fox, bobcat, crow

trees fallen, rocks bare