“Everything stated or expressed by man is a note in the margin of a completely erased text. From what’s in the note we can extract the gist of what must have been the text, but there’s always a doubt, and the possible meanings are many”
– Fernando Pessoa

Bare Tree/Hunted Sky New Year

“bare ruined choirs”

spare ruining chores
daily done

My Horizon

affectionate irony
is what i’d like

to hear from the sons
and daughters of my pride

to know what i’m about
to say as wise as irony:

“yes but you have no idea
what use that will be to us

that get home free
day of your demise”

Supper in Los Crisis

have I tousled
the salad days’
shimmering little leaves
or not

Grace Under Pleasure

humanism’s warmth:
holding one’s hands
to one’s other’s fire

In the Children’s Hospital

the grown-ups occupy
single rooms with no view

side-step like pigeons
to turn south from north
and back north again

all time in the world
cannot save them

Shadow Box [untitled]
“ – My Blue Peninsula – “
– Emily Dickinson

Joe

do you mind
if I call you

Joe

Clarice Lispector

Impregnable:

“I cannot
explain.

“I refuse
To explain.

“There is
nothing
to explain.”

Nocturnal Reading Notes: “The Ambassadors”

“a monotony of fine weather”
“extravagant curve of the globe”

stranded
each
on a far shore

no community of shipwreck

the way the light glides off
with smoothness into an
other’s light

Hopper Paintings Poem

a bright blank bank
luminous landscape luminous

what a cow in the sun sees
in clouds piling up

do they remember each touch
before they touch in turn

are you in her inner room
a hair on her head caught in her door

here in my littered thought
my situated human view

Winter sparrow/summer song

imawintersparrow.org
butsingasummersong.com

Unknown at This Address

the usual suspicions

retain a memory linked to
sensations of cold turning colder
and no letting up

on the grounds of the Shrine
of Our Lady of General Necessity

pear ripe falling bruised
at the thought
“unknown to this address”

*Joseph Cornell box, Untitled (Snow Maiden), circa 1933