Poetry

The Bobcat

Without pride, senses controlled,
born or to be born, we met as hilarious strangers,
each wanting something impossible.

I wanted all beings like you to be happy.
You wanted no being to deceive another.

For a brief moment, we were sincere.
Both of us, protected against the spirits of the dead,
on a darkened street, on the outskirts of the city,

waiting to cross over

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Hut Next to Wilderness

Set in China’s ancient T’ang Dynasty,
Gerald Stern’s “Ancient Chinese Egg”
poem says “a hut is a hut be it this or that.”
I have like feelings about our old cabin
in the Adirondack Mountains, which our
father christened “Mateskared” to honor
we four kids by combining first syllables
of our names — Mat, Esther, Karen, and
Edward — a strategy he garnered from
Schaefers’ camp “Cragorehol” that used
first syllables of three nearby mountains.

Having examined our father’s writings
about wilderness, I now wonder if he ever
repented of anthropomorphizing our hut
that now rests just across our dirt access
road from the New York State-designated
Siamese Ponds Wilderness Area. It was
formerly simply park lands that hosted
all our past family, and then later sibling
camping and fishing trips — “Excursions,”
Thoreau might have called them — with
what was, even then, their wild character.

Read More Poems From the New York Almanack HERE.

Leaving the Tunnel

Nothing we see is color
Cezanne said that
but no one believed him

All we really see is light

The mineral-laden earth
with its zillions of herbal
veins and carnivorous flowers

mere pinpoints of light

reverberations of molecular light
adorned with ornaments
of human bones

Read More Poems From the New York Almanack HERE.

What You Cannot Help Naming

Hiking with children, in a nature park at noon,
the world is sparkling and synth-laden.

Without trying, the sacred ibis of thought is upon them,
as their fingerprints singe burn marks of poetry in the bark of trees.

To them, pine needles are hairbrushes for unicorns.

Read More Poems From the New York Almanack HERE.

Poets, like Trackers

What is anything like, but something else?
It’s up to us to connect those unseen dots
Whether written on unfolded envelopes
Or vapor signs of skywriting bi-planes
Sometimes animal disturbances in the dew
Mud prints in the beaver pond’s runway
Breath condensed on a windowpane
Audible sighs of a loved-one asleep.

Read More Poems From the New York Almanack HERE.

The Chickadees

do not land in my palm because they trust me.
I am a phantom they barely notice. They sense my body heat,
the blood coaxed through my thin veins like tree sap, and they hear
my vibrations, the way Beethoven coped with going deaf, stopping
long enough to bathe their tawny-colored tongues with seed, crushed
seashells of safflower and thistle, feeding the groaning earth.

Read More Poems From the New York Almanack HERE.

The Beggar

Fresh as the sour dampness of sawed-off grass cutting,
or pigtailed linen pulled from the dryer, I receive this moment,
this warm awareness, nearby a child sticks painted toes
in the sand, as charred wood burns slow and cool over beach fire.

Read More Poems From the New York Almanack HERE.