Faith

Good writing often comes when it is least expected. Over the last several weeks I have found myself mulling over old poems, reading work by new poets, subscribing to new magazines - all in search of inspiration. I wanted to write something fresh. Something new. Ever since I came back from Guatemala in March it seemed I hadn't been able to write anything good. Nothing was coming together - which, at least in my experience, is what a good poem must do on its own. Finally, last week, it hit me. I don't know what it was, but something clicked. I found myself writing out what became a two-page long poem. Then, last night, lying in bed and looking up at the ceiling, contemplating what it means to find peace and where I had seen it most in my life, it came again. The words started turning over in my mind. At first it was just a tone, then an image. Soon it became sounds, which then formed into words. Finally, I had to get up. I had to write this down before I forgot the words so perfectly wrought in my creative conscious. This is what came.


FAITH

Zacapa, where hot
wind whistles
in tamarind trees
and we lay star staring
on the roof at night,
the sing-song sound
carried to our ears,
and through the leaves
we saw it –
a single-room church
with white plastic
chair pews, where dirty,
starving, people still
come to pray.

Dandelion Wine

A poem written in early spring, on a line from Thomas Pynchon's 'The Crying of Lot 49.'

DANDELION WINE

In April, you gathered weeds
from the field,
made dandelion wine -
blithe-picked flowers
for drink,
and the old ones, white windborne seeds,
to blow into the air.

Crushed yellow on the pestle,
you bled the juice
into bottles, added yeast,
let it sit, fermenting over months.

The next year, when we opened it,
you poured the wine,
gold into my glass.
We drank -
nourishing ghosts of dandelions,
the dead persisting in a bottle of wine.

Steer

The following poem, "Steer," is one I began working on in mid-December. I can hardly remember working for so long on a single poem, writing and rewriting, filling my journal with revisions. I cut, then expanded, then cut some more. Finally I was able to come up with a draft that I liked. It's been sitting for some time.

Now that it is finished (or at least as close to finished as I can make it), there are a number of things I admire about it - the description of the Texas landscape, the steer wandering off from the ranch, the quick process of dying, and the slow process of decay. The last lines beg the reader to ask the question: what does this all mean? Where is the purpose behind the process of decay; breaking life into dirt? And, of course, what follows: what is the reason for living, if only to return to dust?


STEER

Death is a way of speaking,
breaking bits of life into dirt.
In August, the raw mountains
of Mexico shade the plain,
which stretches out across the
border into the Texas sun.
Thickets of brush grow where
the river dries up, its many
estuaries reduced to small
pools, stagnant water in
channels of red-dry rock.
A little way out from the stream,
a steer wanders off from Laughlin Ranch,
grunting with each step, hooves
catching on cracks in the soil.
Stumbling into the red rock-bed,
his joints go limp, body collapses.
In silence, he stares toward
the mountain shade.
Within the hour the steer’s
eyes tire and go dry – he dies.
Over days, weeks, his eyes
come to harbor shadows,
empty to the open air.
His teeth become exposed.
His chest, a bare cage of bone.
A cloud of orange dust rises
in the desert breeze, fades
to gold as it reaches eye level.

Metroversity Writing Contest

A poem of mine, "Hart County," was recently named honorable mention in this year's Metroversity Writing Contest. The poem was posted in this blog in November, I believe, and is being published in this year's volume of Ariel Magazine. Will post more writing soon!