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An exploration of songs and songwriting via the music of Scott Simpson and Dancin' Moon Studio of Spearfish Canyon in the Black Hills of South Dakota
Episodes
Sunday Jan 24, 2021
Sunday Jan 24, 2021
Featured song from 2021's Keys to My Head LP
This Lonely Road
I set out on the 1st of May
I had a hunger in the worst of ways
a hunger for a love, a love like you.
I rounded a corner in the morning light
almost blinded— almost lost my sight
there on the shoulder was you.
Oh my Lord...
I got a feeling
you and I’ve been down this lonely road
this lonely road before.
I got a feeling
you and I’ve been down this lonely road
this lonely road before.
I pulled over in a cloud of dust
your hand-drawn sign said “anywhere or bust”
but oh, that smile.
I don’t recall what state I was in
but your eyes told me that you needed a friend—
just too damn many miles.
Oh my Lord...
I got a feeling
you and I been down this lonely road
this lonely road before.
I got a feeling
you and I’ve been down this lonely road
this lonely road before.
And it’s almost sundown
can’t ever find the right town
to call our home just to call our home.
And it’s almost sundown
can’t ever find the right town
to call our home just to call our home.
(Instrumental)
Well the seasons change and the road goes by
there in the front seat with an Ice Cream pie
and a coffee: It’s just you and I.
We count the markers we count the signs
you count me yours and I'm gonna count you mine
whatever side of the solid line.
Oh my Lord, say...
I got a feeling
you and I been down this lonely road
this lonely road before.
I got a feeling
you and I been down this lonely road
this lonely road before.
I got a feeling
you and I been down this lonely road
this lonely road before.
I got a feeling
you and I been down this lonely road
this lonely road before.
Sunday Jan 17, 2021
Sunday Jan 17, 2021
Featured song from 2021's Keys to My Head LP
If You Wanna Make a Song
You gotta have a hole In your heart,
Stick out your neck so long,
Give everybody the keys
To your head,
If you wanna make a song. (repeat)
When the tension’s too much
Or even not quite enough,
I know I need to tune it up or else I’m
Always gonna play too rough.
Yeah sometimes it’s just electric
And other times it’s not
But all that really matters to me is that
I resonate with all that I’ve got!
You gotta have a hole In your heart,
Stick out your neck so long,
Give everybody the keys
To your head, If you wanna make a song. (repeat)
(Instrumental)
I’m not just a nut
Always thinkin’ everybody’s just pickin’ on me
Got to strap on some confidence
Get respect from anyone who lays a finger on me
I wanna build us a bridge
But never string you along
Some people say I’m just wound too tight
I’ll put my nylons on...
We’ll go out on the town
Me, and my exotic top
If you and I can strike all the right chords
I know we’re never gonna stop
You gotta have a hole In your heart,
Stick out your neck so long,
Give everybody the keys
To your head,
If you wanna make a song.
You gotta have a hole In your heart,
Stick out your neck so long,
Give everybody the keys
If you wanna make a song.
You gotta have a hole In your heart,
If you wanna make a song.
Sunday Jan 10, 2021
Sunday Jan 10, 2021
Ready For Jesus
The missionary is only 20.
He's telling us that the people in Honduras have nothing---
he describes a family of seven
who live in a mud hut
with a dirt floor and a doorway
with no door so the animals wander in and out.
They are ready for Jesus...
he says,
Their existence is painful,
so they're
looking for some meaning.
He tells us that they are the other race
in Honduras,
not the Latinos.
Hundreds of years ago,
a slave ship wrecked
off the coast,
they washed ashore
and never left, kept their language,
their culture,
stayed separate.
In my high school geography text,
a map demonstrated
the movements of the tectonic plates,
how the continents had once fit together as a
single mass called Pangaea.
I wonder if the Honduran coast
would match up
against the original home beach
of these people like
if it weren't for time, this
transplantation
would have been nothing
more than
a hike across the grassland.
The young man's eyes are wild
as he tells us he's broken
off his plans for Law school to do
this.
I pick up my notebook,
and am about to write something
about how pain comes in going
from one thing to another
too suddenly,
being jolted even
half-a-foot
by a car from behind;
or smooth skin made in an instant,
two bleeding halves
by a blade:
the abrupt imposition
of a foreign object
disrupting the order..., when
he asks for money.
The woman across the aisle from me
begins to dig in her purse
for the piece of Jesus she will
send.
*********************
A Conversation with Logos
I
The Greeks described logos as the living
substance that enlivened, animated
all things, they said it inhabited the world like
honey inhabits the honeycomb-- logos
saturates all that we are, is associated with
fire and light.
The Hebrews understood
logos as the great mysterious inter-
cessor between God and humanity... they named it
Torah. But Torah was not simply written
word; the rabbis claimed, When G-d began
to create the world, He consulted Torah... Torah,
logos, the Word that preexists speech,
writing, art, earth, sky, universe.
The gospel of John begins, In the beginning
was logos, and logos was with God
and logos was God, he was with God
in the beginning, and through logos all was
made, without logos nothing that is
could have been, and logos was life, and
that life was light, and that light
shines into darkness... and darkness cannot
overcome... light, word, life,
warmth, logos...
Darkness cannot over-
come, darkness cannot overcome,
darkness cannot overcome
light.
II
The irony of
the Word
preceding all speaking,
the warmth
preceding all fire,
the life
preceding all bodies,
the light
preceding all creation,
is that
all talk must be
silenced, all lamps
extinguished, all
movement
stilled,
all work ceased
in order for
the most important conversation
to begin,
the most brilliant illumination
to be seen,
the most savored breath
to be taken,
and the vocation of living to
start.
III
There is a voice that is mine
that is heard always
though rarely listened to,
and though this voice is mine,
it is one I am just beginning
to recognize—
not mine because I have shaped
its reflections or phrasings, I did not
speak it,
but mine because this voice,
in gentleness and wisdom, is always trying to
speak me.
It knows my true name—the one I'm sure
I knew best only hours after birth, now
mostly forgotten.
While other voices try to speak me into shapes
they've schemed, the shapes that serve them
best,
this voice is sighing gently, the form
called me—the form I had before I was—the form that
serves best.
Only silence parts the lips and moves the breath,
articulates the tongue, my tongue, my breath, my lips
praying my one true voice.
**************************
What People Forget
Is that the universe is more space
than stuff
and that space is what
keeps planets spinning and
galaxies expanding...
Is that their bodies are full
of space as well,
each atom a tiny galaxy tugging
and animated.
At our very core
our most elemental state there
are vast distances, journeys to be
made and
intervals between
open enough for
adventure.
In a moment we tend to think
that what we are is solid, that
what we are is what we will be.
But what I am has never been
certain... the "who" of me
a dynamic set of parameters held
together by that gravity we call
soul.
Now, do not mistake me, thinking
I mean that soul is other than
substance... no, soul is substance
held precious. Soul is one green planet
held in loving embrace by one perfect
star, made inhabitable: a place for
life to multiply.
Soul is not singular
though soul is union
like marriage like the
atom like my body
like my mother
like my father
like my daughter
like my son
like spirit,
breath, wind in
everything,
Like universe,
uni- ONE
verse- POEM
One poem many lines
enough spaces
to make the singing
of it
an exquisite journey.
Monday Jan 04, 2021
Monday Jan 04, 2021
my dream
I see you like this:
you clutch the tiny warm ball
of a new brown field-mouse.
pressing it into the warmth of your
scented neck
where your hair bends gently in to
brush your careful fingers...
it is cold outside,
and your breath moves slowly
away:
clouds of warmth
in the snow-white sunlight,
your words of comfort, your
essence atomized,
released
and later,
if the mists linger in the
year-old plow-valleys
whispering, "It's alright...
All is not cold and hunger,"
you will still be there,
warm.
It is only a dream I have,
a dream in which I am
helpless and
nestled in your neck.
***************
in her bed
our daughter has had her one more story,
her one more drink,
and dreams the part of herself that we never see.
In our living room
we have a movie running,
the Canadian Rockies of the early 17th century shift
in some conflict involving
intimate campfire reds, steel-blue glacial arms
cradling white, and silver-gray aspen groves to move
your intent eyes... I chose the movie this time.
The couch is long enough for us both
as I watch this light playing upon your nightgown
it is more deadly than second-hand smoke:
the Canadian Rockies
moving in the lines of your face, the folds
of your clothing.
I am kneading these silver trout you lay across my lap in this
stream we make of our bodies.
I will lay you in the winter glow of aspens
and smooth the clothing from your skin
so you can warm by our fire---
night-breath bristling the
invisible down
of your neck, fanning the glow
of your eyes.
*****************
Alone for a Week
I've been shuffling
around the house in my thin moccasins
not bothering to turn on lights
or to use dishes, it is quiet
except for the purr of our neighbor's
mowing his homogenous grass in the last
moments of twilight;
the house is dark except for the night-lights
I haven't unplugged in our daughters'
rooms--- those lights
supposed to chase the shadows away,
as though it weren't light that created shadow.
At intervals, I wander into the family room, stare at
the couch, then the blank TV. I am
grabbing at the tail-end of the hour
as it slips around the clock in the corner and my
hands close around still air.
I wonder how long it will take for me
to use up all the air that spent at least some time
in your lungs, moving through your throat and
spilling over your lips?
I know enough to know that I'm not going to get any work
done tonight. I can't let go of the clock
long enough to get lost in some of this stuff you left so I could
complete, undisturbed.
But I don't think I like being undisturbed
or passing by the orange glow from
our daughters' rooms;
and suddenly as my neighbor completes his last lap across his
grass, the evening has gone deaf
and I know fully that silence is a taking away of
something, a loss.
Were I single like one of my friends, perhaps
I would use my dishes and fold the laundry
seeing how these things all have places in the week,
maybe I would throw open the windows to let
today's air in, but in your absence I find that
silence and darkness have new names
and don't whisper, or rise and fall beside me.
The thinness of these moccasins reminds me of the
ground and my weight upon it---
that I'm still here.
***************
Midnight & The Tall House
after Williams
I
Hard, dark night
open wide,
our yellow window light
addresses trees, shaping
canopies to hide the grass
beneath,
where crickets wing a song.
Not long
we're held this way,
you & I,
a sort of gray
haven hedged by
black sky, black soil,
black cricket
& blacker music rising
in his silver clear wings.
II
Wind sweeps out & down, slips over
elm tree, sound
-ing,
sounding
sound
& rounding out the dark.
To know
the park is sleeping, slide &
swing inert;
to know
the dove wing
covers doveling heads
in eaves above,
this is love,
feathered night pulled
past our eyes,
nest full,
sky lanterns
winking dull,
soft wind rocking
broad bough, stretching
closer every pane of glass.
III
Outside, below us
the sun is forgotten,
the impatiens are muted, drooping
down to ground
& dirt & dung & earthworm,
showing quiet colors:
earth colors, night
colors,
browns, dull rust,
their thrust toward sky
forsaken.
Inside, we trust
diminished sight,
open-palmed,
eyes held wide, ears alive.
Touching, twining
spinning colors out of night
-wool,
wind-rhythm,
skin-scent:
impatient love.
****************
with sheryl, outside centennial wyoming
open range
long grass full moon
haloing clouds blue
shoulder of mountains
two rails catch the moon
wind through the grass
silver lines, disjoined
except in the moon's touch
we are small tonight
our words almost too quiet
to pass between us
but something in the luminescence
of your skin
your eyes
the seed swaying heavy
around us on its stem
makes sense
of what is still dark
we shine
where this moon
rides us
where we're worn smooth
with shared use
****************
old camp blue
your laugh
is music on bark,
on leaf
spilling over rocks,
around crags of old boulders
between shadows
of aspen of birch of
pine
on a mat of needles,
your eyes and mine
are windows
too small for looking
only---
the fallen spruce,
half wood half powder
and you and I
go to dust, elemental
making love
of sun
and stone
and leaf
and laughing
as a swelling of clouds
goes dark
with summer rain
*****************
Behind My Back
For Sheryl
She says things behind my
back
I have caught her
on occasion,
stepped around a
corner
as she mentioned
my name
her lips as familiar
with it
as her own
each time
my status is changed:
they look at me
with her eyes
Today
I'll tell her
to her face,
Thank-you
****************
As Night Approaches
I watch the sky
drain from bright blue
to purple
and finally into
deep violet
streaked with bits
of red
She is behind me inside the
house
washing up after dinner
Clink, clank
plate on plate
and her humming
soft, sure
happy
are the only sounds
as night falls
Monday Dec 28, 2020
Monday Dec 28, 2020
Birthright
Jacob stole his birthright,
being clever and tricky
and gets the bad rap
on account of greed,
but what about the sin of Esau
who sold his birthright for a single
bowl of soup?
Sure, at the time
it seemed reasonable
Esau seeing nothing but his hunger
—gut wrenching hunger
but emptiness doesn't always
render us clear of sight—
sometimes it shapes desperate eyes
and snatching hands.
I imagine Esau there at table,
hunger sated, realizing now
the emptiness of the bowl
the emptiness—
what he'd given up...
or maybe not,
maybe Esau simply belched
and excused himself, because
satiation doesn't always
render us mindful of
consequence.
Keep brother stuffed;
he'll never know he's being taken.
And sometimes my own hunger
is the voice I hear telling me to short-sell
for a few immediate spoonfuls...
I have seen the children
of stolen birthrights,
stolen, in the end, by their
feeders--
by those who have something
to sell them... and something to gain
from the selling.
And I'm a teacher
for Heaven's sake,
with a bowl of soup
and some hungry students
willing to eat
what I'm dishing up--
indiscriminately--
filling the pits of swollen bellies
with what's been mandated with
what the research says will surely
fill them.
And I could spend days feeding
them data soup chock-full of
standards
in a warm broth of best practice
and we could raise the bar
make AYP
incentivize the path
till no one's left behind.
But what if something has
been squandered while I was
ladling—
what if they've traded
some blood-right,
some unique mark...
What if we educators
have helped them trade
a birthright
for a bowl of
compliance soup?
*******************
Humpty
That afternoon he'd been stripped
not so much like a banana or an antique
chair, but
quite like some kind of ice
sculpture, having yet the chain-saw grooves
to prove the artist's process—
fresh from the freezer, unsheeted
for show...
He was now gathering
into a puddle
under his own feet
and the hors d'vours were warming
(infinitesimal buzzing of flies,
cheese dark'ning ever-so-slightly)
Rot's a process like stripping
only rather than disambiguation
rotting obscures...
like a peach in the
windowsill, forgotten and now
no longer a peach
but a hard lump of a sow's
severed ear
not hearing, of course,
but also never to be a silk
purse
Whether he was coming clear
or perhaps growing mold
he was not certain,
though he knew he was
in control neither of their eyes
nor curious hands
The innocent are always intrigued
toward tactile amusements,
groping and fondling
the frosty surface, leaving
little fingerprint windows to
the
soul
but curiosity, as they say, kills
catastrophically
beatifically
in a swirl of red,
and he knew as the world tilted
it was he himself askew
and not the snot-nosed toddler in the smart
blazer, his mum releasing only one
brief cry before
the shattering moment, the tremble
of cocktail sauce simultaneously flipped
and letting bright droplets...
At their feet,
his integrity scattered into gritty
stones
like safety glass or human teeth
on the floorboard of the fatal
automobile accident beneath
the still-bleeding passenger,
he knew even the Jaws of Life
could not speak the pieces back into
what he'd dreamed himself to be.
********************
grass clippings like tea leaves
Today, I'm reading the future
from yesterday
laid out in sun-blanched clumps
where mower blades have battled
these less than civil blades and won.
This neat appearance almost argues
design as giver rather than taker,
but fastidious reason
is no creator, it offers mere pruning;
the mower has cut things short
for a season
and this grass will never come to head,
produce seed.
Above us, the Bookcliffs slice late morning,
shadow bleeding into this valley;
my students sprawl upon the
soccer field with journals
and seedling ideas riding the sharp tips of their
burrowing pens.
We hear the mower still at work.
Who can say,
No more—
Growth stops here?
Only the tiniest ant
working deep among
the hidden roots is safe
from the whirring
of the blades,
but, for these twenty minutes,
this young sun,
these credulous pens,
tilling naive pages, we are
all taller.
Monday Dec 21, 2020
Monday Dec 21, 2020
near roubaix lake
they've made a new stream
the early snow has filled
this footbridge barely supports
my weight above the runoff
ten inch PVC hastily
placed releases water
from the makeshift dam
of mud and sticks
to rot the roots
of newly flooded chokecherry shrubs
they will die now
and fall over next spring
or early summer
brown, leafless chokecherryless
we are running
you and I
into new course ways spilling
into low places killing what
once grew
and just maybe, with time
we will find what there is to water
that needs watering,
how to silt fertile
this strange Dakota
soil
further down, cattle graze
oblivious on rich grass stopping
only to drink
where otherwise
they would have gone thirsty
but winter is coming
in the gray clouds
the sun barely a warm spot,
the time when everything
shuts down
into soundless white
It would be simple
to wait it out
hope for a renewed warmth
to pry us into usefulness—
if only love were a thing
that flowed downhill
*******************************
White Christmas
They never have snow in Abilene
so four inches dropping wet
out of a wide, plains sky
on the twenty-sixth of December
is more miracle than ambiance
Grandpa, having slept the night
in jeans and boots in his chair
works up a smile as we pack ourselves
into the tiny hospital room
They've been expecting us
Grandma, one cheek drooping
stubborn as she forms her greeting
How are you-all?
her left hand lying soft, puffy
as dough in her lap
is dressed already for the holiday
in her red pant-suit
with the Indian-head nickel buttons
all buttoned and modest, pretending
the wheel-chair isn't there
Can you be-lieve this snow today?
Beyond the window a hastily-rolled snowman
is slowly lowering his twiggy arms, his face
sliding away under the sun
He will be gone in thirty minutes
My daughters, having given her the picture
of themselves and their sleds, are petting
Grandma's hand, singing softly
tracing lines to connect the brown spots
with the tips of their own tiny
fingers
smoothing her rounded shoulders
Grandpa watches, eyes keener than ours
to the subtle changes—her eyes sinking deeper
the three second waves of blankness
the growing weight of her frame
as he lifts, pulls her into bed
and the fading of something unnamable
something central to her dignity
her integrity
something his grandaughters feel
without knowing as they pat and stroke
her pale skin
Therapy time, the nurse intrudes
and Grandma tugs my sleeve
as they wheel her by Don't
work too hard
when you go back home
she slurs, enjoy
your day in the sun
And Grandpa follows them down the hall
to make certain, among other things
the nurses take care with Grandma's buttons
******************************
night music
"I am a dance—play up there"
-Walt Whitman, The Sleepers
a winter storm
tunes its woodwinds
and its brass
and you and I sit
by the window
our children dance
with no provocation
to tunes their ears alone
hear
they are motion
and music given
to unbridled rhythms
alive touching air
with every inch
of skin of hair
of spirit
you and I are silence,
ancient steps
unwinding into stasis
somewhere inside
clouds,
begin a gentle swell
among the pines
snow, spilling over eaves
in glittering moonlight
don't wake the children—
rouse us
with your music
Sunday Dec 13, 2020
Sunday Dec 13, 2020
Design
1
We have a secret place
my daughters and I where
an old creek
has run empty
The sky above that hill
pushes fast past the swaying tips
of pines
but the birch, oak
and ironwoods have not yet
leaves enough to dance
No dry winter
no drought emptied our creek
the water turned aside
some years ago for other
work and my oldest
stares at the smooth stones
sunk into soil
When will the water
come back?
My youngest has hands
delicate as birch twigs and
burrows pebbles
from the bank
like a busy mole
carries one at a time
to the mound of larger rock
we are shaping into
a ring for our campfire
She chooses a spot
for each
and believing in some master design
believing I would know it asks,
Should I put it here?
Or here?
There, that looks good
right there, but that's really
the question, isn't it
and I think of the water's
working years and centuries
into polished stones
forever setting and re-setting each
here in our creek bed
to be abandoned
2
I cannot tell
how my knees bend
how my fingers
inside these leather gloves
swing on their hinges
I know only the digging and the
occasional sun
on my neck
I cannot read the seasons
burned into the grain
of this handle
or tell what secrets if any
the hills keep
but here, another shovel-full
for a moment visible
mixing with air
thrown toward the sun
3
The deep soil
reclaims each stone we leave
unturned, swallowing her
wayward children
around us, the trees
are smoldering
with an inner fire
relaxing into the dirt
that grew them
flaking open with each rain
skeletons all of ribs marking
the ground
with bright stripes
of greener grass
The air darkens
as rain enters the ravine
like a lost fawn:
one step there, here
hesitant behind us
other side of the tree, there
again, over the rise
and suddenly certain
almost purposeful
all around us
the leafy floor comes alive
with movement
we flee our unfinished altar
rain drenching
stones, wood, dirt
rivulets refilling the creek bed
and back in the car
we decide, tomorrow
to build a bridge
TARAXACUM OFFICINALE
You're lying
in the darkened bedroom
spent from an hour of choosing
which of our bills to pay which
to let slide.
But you'll be glad to know
our girls are helping
as they can:
picking dandelions
collecting their tithes to us
in two piles on the picnic table one
mine, one yours.
I want to know
what makes a thing
dig in
under five months of ice
and at the first touch of spring
push past packed earth
survive herbicide
to spite dreams of solid green
with gold summer
again and again in each of its
hundred heads.
Our debt is to our children:
we owe it to them
to accept the gold they offer.
on cherry hill with my martin backpacking guitar
1
three years ago
Martin began making them--
cut-down, sawn-off
easy to carry anywhere
I know an executive
Chris at the music store told me
who takes his to the office. This is a
big seller for men
30 to 45
half mandolin, half banjo
mellow and light so you can
feel it hum, pressed
against your ribs--
start your whole insides
to singing with one
strum
2
the first time I came out to Cherry Hill
a crack in the old
stone bridge
revealed yellowed photos torn
from Penthouse and Playboy,
sent our 8-yr-old stomachs
to our mouths--
threatened to pull us
inside-out, crotch first
why "Cherry Hill?" I asked
and Kirk told me he'd heard
all the high school girls
had lost their cherries here
we were so young
we looked for them
3
coming out here alone
with my guitar
I have developed a new
religion
or maybe an old one
the long grass on the hill
contains the spirits
of all little boys
who giggle here
and later find the world
mortared with more flesh
than any centerfold
the Spirits Temporal
graze as lost sheep
until I return, an older David
with my harp, singing
Absalom Absalom!
releasing them into the Eternal
in this ritual of adult
perspective
you must be
grass level, facing Heaven and
playing the chords to
Gone to Carolina in My Mind
4
I went walking with my 5-year-old daughter
and our feet led us
to Cherry Hill;
she wanted to stand on the
stone bridge
I'd told her about
see herself in the still creek below
she ran
here and there, collecting bits of
trash, old pop cans
oil jugs, asking, Can we
recycle this? and Why
do people want to trash
this place?
I wanted to tell her
want is too strong a word
but all I said was, Don't touch --
it's dirty. Someone else will get it.
of course, no one else would but at
least she never found
any photos
going home she asked,
Why do they call it "Cherry Hill?" I didn't
see any cherry trees.
and I had a thought
that today was a good day
for planting some
Sunday Dec 06, 2020
Sunday Dec 06, 2020
Joe and Marge at the Movies
They were getting old and they didn't even know it. Joe smiled like the crowsfeet and the false teeth and the double chin didn't show--- weren't there. Marge walked just like the base of her neck didn't bow up and hump down into her spine--- just like the index and middle fingers of her right hand weren't twisting slowly, year by year as the knuckles grew to the size of chestnuts. Joe held that hand when they strolled down the aisle to find their seats, bought popcorn that they put between them, placing their hands in the sack together, later, fighting playfully over the last kernels. And as the movie progressed, Joe slid his arm behind Marge's thin shoulders, resting the crook of his elbow around her crooked back like they were made to fit like that. At the end of the show Joe would grin big as a kid or maybe cry and, either way, Marge would stretch over with her tiny face and kiss his chin, the touch soft as the muzzle of a colt. They would leave slowly, reluctant as lovers at the end of a long-awaited first date, wanting to stretch it out, wanting it not to end, waiting to see all the credits, hear the very last note of the closing overture,
remarking that movies are just too short.
Jay
Jay used to ride around Lincoln NE
with a little empty child-seat
on the back of his bike.
He told me once
that it wasn't the divorce that
bothered him,
it was her moving to New York,
taking little Toby with her.
I always think of Jay
that way---
riding around town with a
little empty child-seat.
While Waiting in the Cafeteria Of Bradshaw Public School for A Meeting, I Check My Watch Once More Before Allowing Myself to Become Distracted
It's a very small cafeteria, I'm thinking,
but it's a small town---
These must be kindergartners in here
doing their Art,
they're so small.
One boy talks loudest--- he is bigger
than all the rest.
He is coloring a map of the U.S.
and now I think these may not be
kindergartners and maybe this is Social Studies,
not Art.
My country's purple... he's saying
and his country fits neatly on the 8 1/2 X 11
dittoed sheet he pinches proudly
in his raised hand---
his country looks good in
purple.
Now the children have left me
with my cup of coffee and watching
one of the cafeteria ladies place
the ketchup dispensers, spacing them evenly
across the fold-out tables,
preparing for lunch
and the squeeze bottle she sets beside me
has a picture of a 1950's housewife
dancing, the brand name,
SQEEZE-Ezy
in box-letters beneath.
I haven't seen a Squeeze-Ezy bottle
since I was 5 and with my parents
at Ideal Cafe' back home---
and suddenly I am 5
and thinking my world might fit
on an 8 1/2 X 11 sheet
and somehow maybe I do
have the power in one hand
to pull out of the box the best color
for the whole place;
and maybe if I had a hairnet like
this cafeteria lady's, her slate curls pulled,
contained, held tightly in place,
maybe one that keeps my head
inside the lines,
keeps me from always hurling myself
to the far ends of the universe---
holds me focused,
wraps the whole complicated mess
into a clearly labeled Crayola wrapper,
then I could make some kind of Art
with it.
Sunday Nov 29, 2020
Sunday Nov 29, 2020
artifacts
I'm burying my head deep
into a distant May
a stretch from this late January where an
unseasonable warmth
has reawakened
these lilacs beneath my skin
(they sprawl, varicose,
purple clusters
across my forearms
around the backs
of my shoulders)
come close
it's on my breath
the soil radiant but cool
just three handfuls down:
water from a spring melt filtering
deep to the roots
the china-doll's broken foot
spent shell casings
and chimney stones
marked by old fires have torn
my nails
wedged the nutrients deep into
my fingers
where growth begins
mid-winter hike
1
home is where I'm too whole and each
step in any direction
is the losing of something
I replace the pieces
with something new—
light on the crusted snow
leg bone of a deer
gnawed twice,
by coyote and myself
trying to get at the marrow
of things
I want to return satiated
full of something I hadn't missed
before, so spent I'm unable
to sleep for dreaming
2
pine cones grow warm
on the side of this hill
where sun has drawn back
the snow
the dry grass, the needles
glow with an idea of what spring is—
memory and prophecy
the cones open
their wooden petals
and seeds are always hidden
near the center waiting for
fire
only wind
and the winter birds' chatter
can speak so patiently
of the slow hand of sun opening up
everything
a bit at a time
unhurried
3
I'm not alone out here,
someone dogs me
at every turn
I fumble to recall
the name
as I stumble home
carrying words
so as not to jostle them
into a trite retelling
who is it? I spin
who's there?
out this far, it's impossible
to be alone
before you teach
1
a few hours before class
drive out Tinton road
until you leave any traffic
behind you
the trees will not distract you
they will stand
perfectly still
here, you must leave the
the beaten path
and join them along
an ancient road left
overgrown
wind your way among them
to a shaded spot
and kill your engine
from here you travel
on foot
speed is no longer
your goal
each step is a lesson
2
here, dig into
the hard dirt bank
find egg-shaped rocks
fractured by the weight
of millennia
and know that a thing
whether fertile or not
left long unhatched
turns to stone
think as you walk
of the mountain lion
waiting patiently
for a sign of weakness
know that hunger
is his nature
and that you have come here
with only a pocket knife
and your senses
see—he has left
for you a sign
claw marks in the mud hole
long and deep,
count them
one, two, three, four, five
straight as a treble clef left empty and waiting
for your half
of his composition
3
coming home
roll down all the windows
and drive fast
letting the dust
filter in
sprinkle, flavor
your books your papers
even your skin
the sweat of the journey
will make it stick
and you will taste it
in your teeth
even as you speak
to your students
Sunday Nov 22, 2020
Sunday Nov 22, 2020
late august seminar in andrews hall
the fields
along I-80 are dark as
three years back
when you moved
behind every stalk
in the side-spill
of my headlights--
silent trips
only three weeks
four weeks
five
after your death marked for me
a new accounting of days
three years and I am here
and something like your arm
has wrapped itself around me
your hands
steer me through campus
the way you slid your bike
in and out of traffic
wind in your long hair
force of all that was behind you
guiding, pushing
counting keeps me
looking back
you, there behind me
not changing--
shrinking with distance
the spot on that narrow road
where I listened for you
in the grass
the gravel of that shoulder
the crescent of black rubber
mapping your short encounter
with something too heavy to resist
you're coming up again
from behind me
the windows are black
late summer is rolling over
into night
the pavement cooling outside
the fever rippling
toward the sky
the dashboard lights
are pale green and orange
how fast I'm not going
how little time has elapsed
how far I haven't been
my headlights hardly touch
the edge of night as I
tug each marker up
from murky water
counting off the next mile
this side of you
Kirk, Coming Down
Here on highway 6, between my feet, they've marked with orange spray-paint, the spot where you landed. Down there, by the tall grass is where they say you were hit. The paper said the man driving just fell asleep for a moment, and your bike was clearly over on the shoulder. Now, it's just a matter of the settlement, no one's pressing charges. They've marked your departure point and where you came to rest, but in between: twenty-five feet of nothing but air and time.
One track meet in
Middleschool
I came out during the rain to
watch you jump.
It was cold
you stripped off
your sweats
down to nothing but
your tank-top and shorts.
Your shoes looked too heavy
swinging on the ends
of your long skinny legs
and you bounced them
on the runway
shifting your weight back
and forth.
You paced off your approach
for the last jump
marked a takeoff point
by placing a wet twig
at the end
of the crescent you measured.
I stood as the rain became deafening
on the surface
of the nylon mat.
This'll be the last jump of the day
coach said.
You hit the twig
and lifted up into the rain
against a thousand
tiny droplets
stretching back, your arm
out
your eyes fierce
and peering back
over your shoulder.
Your torso snapped like a whip
making a loop
of your legs
that unfurled itself
an inch above the bar
and slung your
sneakers up and over.
Look at him fly
just look at him fly
and it seemed
like you'd never come down.
Then you did,
you cleared
the bar, hit the mat
and slid, sending a sheet
of thin rain arching like
tempered glass in front of
our eyes.
Summer of Whistles
We used to walk down the tracks
where it was so bright
the sun seemed to eat away the brown
discarded metal.
We made whistles out of some
(summer of whistles)
until you found that dollar
and the day passed
while we were making plans.
The can we kicked home
echoed, and I looked expecting two other boys
to come around the corner
ahead, they never did--- never did I tell you...
We came to my house
about the time the wind
tousled the trees and your hair
and I grew small under a darkening sky
watching you run fast down the blocks
till your speck turned
out of sight toward your house.
Sometimes I almost cried.
I don't know why I never told you...
That night, I knew you were listening to
the rumble and the rain.
I knew tomorrow would be dry.
I dreamed of you and your dollar bill, of the
sun, and rusty whistles. I dreamed that
tomorrow...
I would tell you
how much I loved you.
Kirk Miller
1964 to 1992