Single Poems

Difficult this morning

To bring the necessary gifts

A basket perhaps laid heavy

With the season’s fruit

A person

Turned finally to ask

How it was they came to be here

Tangled into the future

Shared routes.

Difficult to rest

To bring forward a simple question

Drawn together against the contours

Of a person’s voice

Telling us how it is

And while the sun watches

Love looks anxious

Whose streets.

*

It is a late lightness

And haven’t you been thinking about love

Like that clarity of articulation

September brings

Sometimes

Sometimes not

Like all the various berries

For the birds

And perhaps for those

To whom the birds

Sing.

So that we might wrest the language

Wasn’t that love’s objective

We might ask

And therefore we might listen

As a person tells

The season and how it is

Like people dragged from the brink

Who spoke about it softly

Sometimes hell.

*

As the sun watches

I think it might be difficult this morning

These heavy in the heart days

Thinking about love

This grammar

Witness people holding back

I think it must be difficult to rest

Listen

To a person talking

As love states.

Hard I think to name

The practice of a person’s breathing

Like an intricate documentation

Of all we had left

Stories

Spoken long into the night

And some of these picked up belongings

Some kind of algorithm of solidarity

Heavy breath.

*

I wanted to mention

The day my mother left the hospital

Did I tell you

Her face

Shrouded in pain

Her voice

Falling back

Like only the past was certain

Her brother

Calling

Out into the garden

Again.

Her words

Not so clear

Except that she was struggling back

And the garden

Where her father

Discarded his cigarettes

Late into the night

As we helped her out of the building

Treading bravely

Breath left.

*

Again

I wanted to say

I have been writing a letter

To you I think quietly

Those you had in mind

Gathering items up

Those I guess you left behind you

Thinking to come back

Maybe one day

Find

A badge

Badges

Your affiliations

A photograph you lay there

Eyes against the sun

The garden calling back

And those you never spoke of

To recollect in passing

Love undone

*

To you my friend

I write this winter letter

After we had gathered

The last fruit

We walked to collect

Hardened by November weather

Season of revelation

Complex truth

Of starlings

And of love

This mid-winter assembly

You lifted into language

As you sang the scale

Of people reaching out

As if the echo

Landed

As if anybody might ask

Made safe

As if we had a song

We might unfold into a history

Spoken

One day the world was walking

And as if the walk

Was a draft

And you

Stepped aside to say

You never saw a single starling

And then the cellos soared

And song lasts.

*

After Hölderlin

But meanwhile let me walk

Each of us has their measure

Across bridges built lightly

Through the wide streets

Each of them with you

Like something one could hold on to

A song

Lifted quietly

Into human speech

Sung without words

Like you and I were learning the language

As if the method was walking

And we might walk till we sleep

Teach each other names

As if we might occupy the buildings

Whose streets you ask me

Our streets

*

At the demonstration

Did I tell you

How we called across the fence

Some voices called in solidarity

Those the state

Would hide

Called

Those who would be left

As if a voice was a gesture

As if it was possible this morning

In plain sight

Did I tell you

As we assembled

How we named names

The building

Its perimeter

Detention sky

Fence grass

Birds people

People trees

People

Rhyme

*