The newly-fallen snow lights up the night.
We are beholden in the field of the poem.
When the planes lean down into their lights to land, we still ourselves in sink holes from long-ago buried tree trunks.
No one really remembers.
How the plow truck almost found us walking at the edge of the front yard.
How one sable, velvet glove waved to the confused old man from the frozen stream.
Or that there are plastic coffins amassed at the left corner of night in case the plane loses its passengers en route home.
But it’s very late now.
The stars are hidden behind a gauze of cloud-blanket not fog.
One street lamp blinks in and out, a misplaced lighthouse overlooking ice-encrusted tar.
A lazy eye wandering the neighborhood looking for coyotes.
When the missing glove is realized, one is already preoccupied with paying for this month’s electricity, this winter’s heating oil—while lining the pills up on the counter for tomorrow.
Everything hurt all at once, but the dream would come and rescue the old woman from her body.
The dream would set the table for a conversation with our ghosts.
“The dream would set the table for a conversation with our ghosts.”
If only, and then, said he.
The owl, it appears, agreed.
in the midst of composing his Petrarchan sonnet about old age.
Pay Spartan no heed.
His horse is hitched.
Nothing can come
Of his tiny itch.
‘A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing. A writer who appreciates the seriousness of writing so little that he is anxious to make people see he is formally educated, cultured, or well-bred is merely a popinjay. And this too remember; a serious writer is not to be confounded with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl.”’
Being an owl appeals to me, but must I bleed so much? Hemingway did say that writing is to “sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
“ How one sable, velvet glove waved to the confused old man from the frozen stream.”
Ultra-beautiful
There’s nothing like getting quoted–thank you. This means I should keep writing poetry. Soon, I hope, February.
“We are beholden in the field of the poem.”
https://youtu.be/jHN0BfowL7s
Only a holy visionary could write like this. Every poet is bound. Yes, even Oscar Wilde. Perfect line.
You are so kind for such praise, Sir Plato Hemingway.
This comment sustains this humbled poet. Thank you for reading and commenting.
You made my night on a marathon unpoetic day. Eternal gratitude from the exhausted recesses of CT.
Every time I READ this poem, it’s different than the time before. That’s exactly why it’s pure genius. Genius. The Valentine’s Day card, unsigned, a tribute.