Spring Poem

"Every bite I take is something dead which only loved to live. Every stitch I could be worth, another wound upon the earth."

DUSK, CROSSING 
INTO NEW HAMPSHIRE

April roads are slick with frogs.
I swerve and miss, I wonder at
the blink of death, a minor song.
Life is one wet ditch after another.

The moths can't help but orbit 
me, seeking moon-glow here
to find each other. My lantern 
is the moths’ remaining mother. 

Every bite I take is something 
dead which only loved to live.
Every stitch I could be worth,
another wound upon the earth.

If I grow one cedar bough 
in all that’s coming after, 
maybe I can hold the moss 
that grows in forest rafters. 

If I cleave into a path
for water to run down, 
maybe with the running water 
I can seep into the ground.

---

Another poem that came in all at once. Well, it took some hacking and seaming from the first dirty page to get it right, to make it final, but pretty quick and lucky just the same.

It’s been a couple of weeks since I felt like I could write anything new at all. What’s the fucking point, you know? Have you seen the fucking news?

So, the sorrow and dread and resignation of this poem. We’ve fucked up and now we’re fucking up worse. And worse, and worse, and worse for every day things roll along. We vote away our own controls, we crush the frogs that cross the road, we hurry (with detached cruelty or impotent misery, or both) through the only thing we’ve got. Still the crowds will cheer it all along. I retreat into the metaphors of nature and resurface with a poem like this, only to realize it’s the thinnest of protections. Might as well cast spells, or plan to vote in 2028, which to me sound like the same thing.

This is a time when I struggle to believe in one of the Jim Harrison mantras that anchors a corner of my sanity, though I’m trying really hard:

A creek is more powerful than despair.

Which of the thousand poisoned creeks will first run clear again? Whose despair is leavened by the subtle, quiet changes?

Stay close, and pay attention; it could be yours. Yes, it could be you.