The Middlewesterner

How
many days

can be
this grey?

“You can't plan
what to write,

but you can
come prepared.”

*

“Am I lost
if I wonder

where I am?”

*

“You have
biscuits and gravy

and still you need
inspiration?”

“With your going,”
he said, “consider

how many miles
per poem.”

*

“What? - you think
silence

will stop me?”

*

“You've said enough
about the poem, if

you've said nothing.”

Broad
wings of the hawk,

bright
eyes, her terrible

claws.

Barns and
churches,

the places
that farmers

do their
business

with God.

So sad
some days

you can't
even

put your
pants on.

Wind, like
water

disturbing
the edge

of things.

Pushing sun.
Curve of road.

Turn. Turn
again.

“The poet's
deity,”

he said,
“would be

a craggy-
faced God,

rough-handed,
fierce,

without much
mercy.”

*

“You run a lot of
make-ready,” he said.

“Poetry is only
efficient

after the fact.”

*

“This is
a waste,”
he said,

“yet I must
waste it.”

“Go ahead,”
he said,

“read your
long poem.

I can take
a snooze.”

*

“Left to themselves,
rivers and poets

have wandering souls.”

*

“The roughness of God,”
the poet said, “is

my kind of wisdom.
Batter me, Lord.”

Restless sleep,
dreams of wild
horses running

away.

Rock, paper, scissors.
Sadness trumps hunger.

Slide under
the darkness;

turn towards
morning's

sharped edge.

Crazy
trees in the switch-

back wind.

Sudden slap
of morning light

and hard wind
breaking the

silence.

“Turn or do not
turn, but don't

talk of turning.”

*

“A bad poem,
like a hand grenade -
you must

fall on it
to spare
your buddies.”

*

“We are beasts.
Why

do we do
noble things?”

“Dig a ditch.
Write a poem.
Make something

happen.”

*

“You never get there looking
back over your shoulder.”

*

“Enough,”
the poet said,

“of your rude
hammering.”

A pushback day.
Wind in my hair.

Is it

water,
sky?

Is it

what,
why?

Tssst of tires
on wet asphalt,

insistence
of a slipped

season.

Fit of rain,
this morning,

and the grey
bucket all day.

Flash of blue
bird. Oh, blue

of blue bird!

“You can never
say enough

to explain your
nakedness.”

*

“Don't force
the words.

You will
break some-

thing and
it will

be lost
forever.

Better
to wait

and catch
its shadow.”

*

“How long, O Lord,
must I endure?

How long must I
write these words?”

“Work it hard,
your poem-maker,

but do not break it.”

*

“Ah,” he said, “if only we
could write poems that would

get us arrested.”

*

“Like a girl with nothing
on but a smile,” he said,

“whatever you call it,
a poem is trouble.”

Water in the ditch.
Crow in the gravel
along the road.

Spring now seems
a possibility.

Sky crowds the earth.
Trees
split the difference.

The river
runs high and fast.

Follow your heart.

Grey chunk of dead beast.
Fog for hundreds of miles.
Disappointment like cold soup.

Which way is home?

The world
closes in again,

too much, too soon.
Fog hugs the road.

I'll find my way
through sadness.

“I am,” the poet
said, “a blind man

begging at the gate.”

*

“Nothing
at heaven's gate

is too much.”

*

“Poets, like crows -
first they eat the eyes.”

“If I did not
drive," he said,

I could not
write.”

*

“To keep
leaving

eventually
is to be

returning.
Going away

becomes
coming home.”

*

“Ah, yes, always
more blank paper

than things to say.”