A silence slipping around like death, Yet chased by a whisper, a sigh, a breath; One group of trees, lean, naked and cold, Inking their cress 'gainst a sky green-gold; One path that knows where the corn flowers were; Lonely, apart, unyielding, one fir; And over it softly leaning down, One star that I loved ere the fields went brown.
Location: Half inch above the K/T boundary Gender:
Posted:
Dec 7, 2020 - 8:07pm
Postscript
And some time make the time to drive out west Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore, In September or October, when the wind And the light are working off each other So that the ocean on one side is wild With foam and glitter, and inland among stones The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans, Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white, Their fully grown headstrong-looking heads Tucked or cresting or busy underwater. Useless to think you'll park and capture it More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there, A hurry through which known and strange things pass As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.
The heart of the matter, the ghost of a chance, A tremor, a fever, an ache in the chest. The moth and the candle beginning their dance, A cool white sheet on which nothing will rest.
Come sit beside me. I've waited alone. What you need to confess I already know. The scent of your shame is a heavy cologne That lingers for hours after you go.
The dregs of the bottle, the end of the line, The laggard, the loser, the last one to know. The unfinished book, the dead-end sign, And last summer's garden buried in snow.
Location: Half inch above the K/T boundary Gender:
Posted:
Dec 6, 2020 - 9:51am
The Heart of the Matter
The heart of the matter, the ghost of a chance, A tremor, a fever, an ache in the chest. The moth and the candle beginning their dance, A cool white sheet on which nothing will rest.
Come sit beside me. I've waited alone. What you need to confess I already know. The scent of your shame is a heavy cologne That lingers for hours after you go.
The dregs of the bottle, the end of the line, The laggard, the loser, the last one to know. The unfinished book, the dead-end sign, And last summer's garden buried in snow.
Location: Half inch above the K/T boundary Gender:
Posted:
Nov 29, 2020 - 4:46am
You Asked For It by George Bilgere
There was a show on TV called You Asked For It. Viewers would write in and ask to see unusual things, such as the world’s greatest slingshot expert. I watched it every week on our humble Motorola, although the only episode I can remember now is the one about the slingshot expert. He was a grown man, as I recall, and he lived in an ordinary place like New Jersey. At a distance of ten or twenty paces he could pulverize one marble with another. He could hit a silver dollar tossed into the air. He was the kind of father I wanted to have, an expert shot, never missing. And I think of him now, perhaps long dead, or frail and gray, his gift forgotten. Just another old guy on a park bench in Fort Lauderdale, fretting about Medicare, grateful for the sun on his back, his slingshot useless in this new world.
Location: Half inch above the K/T boundary Gender:
Posted:
Nov 26, 2020 - 7:32am
Cook
by Jane Hirshfield
Each night you come home with five continents on your hands:
garlic, olive oil, saffron, anise, coriander, tea, your fingernails blackened with marjoram and thyme. Sometimes the zucchini's flesh seems like a fish-steak, cut into neat filets, or the salt-rubbed eggplant yields not bitter water, but dark mystery. You cut everything into bits. No core, no kernel, no seed is sacred: you cut onions for hours and do not cry, cut them to thin transparencies, the red ones spreading before you like fallen flowers; you cut scallions from white to green, you cut radishes, apples, broccoli, you cut oranges, watercress, romaine, you cut your fingers, you cut and cut beyond the heart of things, where nothing remains, and you cut that too, scoring coup on the butcherblock, leaving your mark, when you go your feet are as pounded as brioche dough.
Location: Half inch above the K/T boundary Gender:
Posted:
Nov 18, 2020 - 3:27pm
Fence Line Tree
by Jim Harrison
There’s a single tree at the fence line
here in Montana, a little like a tree in the Sandhills of Nebraska, which may be miles away. When I cross the unfertile pasture strewn with rocks and the holes of gophers, badgers, coyotes, and the rattlesnake den (a thousand killed in a decade because they don’t mix well with dogs and children) in an hour’s walking and reach the tree, I find it oppressive. Likely it’s as old as I am, withstanding its isolation, all gnarled and twisted from its battle with weather. I sit against it until we merge, and when I return home in the cold, windy twilight I feel I’ve been gone for years.
