not a pretty picture. not a good. not a bad. picture. but an argument.

Saturday, October 31, 2015

Thursday, October 29, 2015

decay and flight


All Hallows by Louise Glück


Even now this landscape is assembling.
The hills darken. The oxen
sleep in their blue yoke,
the fields having been
picked clean, the sheaves
bound evenly and piled at the roadside
among cinquefoil, as the toothed moon rises:


This is the barrenness
of harvest or pestilence.
And the wife leaning out the window
with her hand extended, as in payment,
and the seeds
distinct, gold, calling
Come here

Come here, little one


And the soul creeps out of the tree.

Saturday, October 24, 2015

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

something metaphysical in the roots


up the logging road someone has preempted a fall,
laid his own mechanical weight and burst the ballast,
lulled the lumber in reverse, timbered the timber.
it's all only a matter of time, they say,
time for the soil to snatch the seed from the scat,
time for the life force to buck and break the bract,
time for the wood to reproduce, careening with cellular force,
veneer methodically ironing itself out,
or like an alien philosophy might slowly overtake its host,
a decaying and susceptible well-primed nation—

hate to see something like that fall on its own.

Tuesday, October 13, 2015

Thursday, October 8, 2015