Painting by Bev Jackson
Poesis
...after Tony Hoagland's "Honda Pavarotti"
Every poem slips under the door of the mind that writes it. It is a commodity coming to you in the back of an eighteen-wheeler like crates of Colorado peaches. Slips in the way the scent of fresh cut melon finds you. The air at night after rain.
You're in your Buick Le Sabre. Passing through deserts under the stars. You tune in to stations in Finland by turning a knob. Well, maybe not Finland, but Chicago for sure. Briefly. Reception unreliable. Intermittent. Mormon Tabernacle Choir becomes Biggie Jeans, becomes fizzles, grizzles, and slides. Scoops up to screeching and down. Just when you're about to give up, a baritone sax in Cincinnati holds a B flat that carries you on its shoulders for miles, and a cool disembodied voice comes to sit beside you. And that's your poem. It slips through time and space. Just to keep you awake.
Time Becomes a Solid Thing
11.27.2023
An icy Wisconsin stream
passes through your fingers
just before you straighten
and stand between muddy banks
and exuberant orange jewel weed.Those tiny cousins of snapdragons
nod and smirk, while a wise old, mottled fish
escapes your grasp. All you can remember
is the translucent ribbing on its tail.
Rilke Says,
Everything is watching you.
I knew this at a very young age
when I felt coffee grounds
under me and voices above me,
when we lived behind the store.I know it here in this coffee shop.
Where hard yellow caulking in a green wall
stares back at me from one round hole.The building across the street was fine once.
Scrolls were carved above the second story.
Dentil woodwork eyebrow the dark windows
that see into my soul.
