Scientist
I see nothing on my own
no plain meaning
think of the power
of the microscope
to find a thing not as I expect
but dangerous as a body
Contemplative poems
Contemplative poems — a collection of the best works on PoemShip.
7 March
paper birch trees can only bend
so far before they break
under the weight of freezing rain
rhododendron leaves
tough as old scrolls are stripped
by starving deer
but some always resprout from the roots
having who knows how many
lifetimes of practice
Leaf Letter [screenplay]
Dear
ground,
thank you for
always being there
for us. In my dreams,
sometimes you aren’t and
I go on falling until I wake.
Thank you for letting us sleep.
Thank you for your enormous
reserves of darkness, which
we have been burning to
keep the darkness at
bay, ashes to ashes.
Thank you for
letting us
all fall
Shifting ground
however I sign and swear
word by word what have I not altered
from one private doubt I descend
to a private land
and buy a pig like a physician
feeling her pulse
Dreamliner
Aircraft. It sounds like something one could learn: how to breathe, how to oxidize. But this craft is the kind that floats, and it is enormous. It takes us the full width of Norway at its widest point to reach cruising altitude.
The Boeing 787 is nicknamed the Dreamliner, and its crowded cabin, though far from silent, is filled with a lovely hush of white noise that makes it difficult to stay awake. The only light left in the sky is a band of red above an oddly low horizon which goes before us like Yahweh leading the Jews out of Egypt, on and on into what my body assures me should be night.
five-hour sunset
a movie plays on the back
of every seat
Cornish haiku
where the dog threw up
at the edge of the road
early morning gulls
the incoming tide
a ground beetle rotates
on its back
through a gap in the hedge
as we flash past
a partridge and her chicks
village museum
retired fishermen gaze
at their old nets
rain in the campground
a girl hops back to her tent
on one foot
the sun comes out
Existential museuming
a blown-glass sculpture
of the HIV virus—
loud children swarm past
An inquiry concerning the poetics of, like, whatever
The poem behind the poem says
what do we do with the other
creatures of this world?
Those that stay put, stay put;
those that move, raise their mobile
devices to the window
and press record. What do we do
with the other languages of this world,
the other ways to forget or fall silent?
Dogs can’t be the only ones
whose vocalizations have adapted
to the inattentiveness of the human ear.
And there’s a bird in New Guinea
that can imitate with equal accuracy
a camera shutter or a chainsaw.
What do we do with ourselves
Canal haiku
It’s sandal season—
you bring back a blister
from the canal.
Light from the water
plays on the steel girders.
A train’s screeching wheels.
Leading a crew
of gnomes and potted plants,
the jolly roger.
After the canal boat passes,
the huge floating leaf
reverses course.
Lowering their heads in threat
again and again: geese
with a single gosling.
Where the high-speed
London from Above
Ten thousand red-brown
mouths of chimney pots
gape at us as we descend,
jet engines howling, into the haze—
a mutual amazement.
Here is the yellow air
of our to-and-froing.
Here are the housing estates
and the scrapyards,
groomed swards of a park
and chaotic allotments,
the circling traffic.
There’s the river and
its slick sheen of a carcass.
Plane trees all in a line
make faint, green gestures
Rock oak
Rocks where an oak
has sat for 200 years—
a lizard flashes by.
Midday storm
Goldfinches gad about
in the blossoming crowns of the oaks,
brassy as advertising.
The clouds draw in.
Wood thrushes begin
their evening songs at noon.
Long feathers of rain
on the breeze—a plumage
the exact color of the world.
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