Mud Pond

young trees, branches bare & budded

(precociously primped for spring) lash

my face bushwhacking along sans

trail, I’m searching for mud pond

I straddle fallen trees, stumble out

& down to patches of snow & ice

deer spoor, reeds treading in slush

must scout for higher drier ground

ahead a pale gleam, the promised pond

I climb a ledge to a logger’s road

of course, why else the young

woods, mossy stumps, I stroll home

so easy, no lashings, no swamp

next time I’ll hike the road down

ready to brave mud pond’s surround

Entanglement

what remains mystery

is what cannot be called information

e.g., how humans think

& what happens to the thinking

after the body dies

the spark of life (like Morse code — 

dot dash space) is more than binary

thus a coin may also be a cow

or sex or ale or an acre

life can also be death

as present deliquesces into past

she is, she isn’t, she was

why my cat doesn’t tear me apart

is something I can’t explain

Like a Fox

sunshine & shadow, flannel clad

cat curls at my feet, sumacs

crowd from either side, cypress

— two, leaning — the winter green

autonomic, the kinetic drive

one cannot but strive, every morning

the blank page, decades of 

accretion, symbiosis

today a tree falls in the woods

I walk out to see what else

Bardo

slow fade to copper

lapis, the blue you cannot see

puddles of ambergris

the paths are never overgrown

things belong to other people

ash, nettles, sediment

water tumbles over river rocks

soup from a thighbone

warm & achy rainy night

Flash Mob

work night, meetings end at the bar

after too many bourbons, I squeeze

beside the piano player, play any

key he’s not already using, cacophony

contrived from Shostakovich

I’m too drunk to reckon anyone else

I free associate, temper my fugue

I thunder, I soar, & pay the price

when hours later toxins flay me

morning after, all I want is to be

a someone else not too drunk

to stand alongside me, see & hear 

my every jarring note, record me

overcharged with unrepentant glory

Hello Bird

slate-gray dark-eyed junco

only now, mid-afternoon, late October

I spot you, rocking boat on flayed forsythia

— pale limbs, flagging yellow leaves —

another you on withered Queen Anne’s Lace

— bendy stalks, umbelled dry flowers —

now twenty you spring like bouncing

beads from browning grass & weeds

all winter you’ll forage near & far

undismayed by cold & snow & ice

welcome home, you feathery surrogate

you mystery marker of circular time