The Middlewesterner

Red-wing blackbird
breasts a green wind,

rises like fire.

Like the green hills
summer rolls on.

“You have to
believe some of
this stuff,”

he said,
“to see it.”

*

“The world is full
of words I would not
use in a poem,

yet I would leave
no thing out.”

*

“Everything
is poetic,”
he said,

“yet no thing
is the poem.”

“Ha, poet! Beaten
by an old lady

in a fast car.”

*

“Do not write
for fame,”
the poet said.

“Do not write
for money.
Write instead

the clawing words,
the ones which
choke you,

and hope.”

*

“Write til your hands
are bleeding. Now

you're getting somewhere.”

Sorrow is this
cup of emptiness.

Same day.
Different sun.

The fire of
morning comes

undone.

“Last Chance Restaurant” -

stop in before we're gone!

“Ear Corn For Sale” -

get your yesterday's
sun here today.

Tomorrow, a fever
which will not break.

“Better to fail
writing a real
poem, than to

try and slide by
with tricks.”

*

“The word comes
crashing down.

Oh, how you
want to be heard.

Oh, how hopeless
the sounds, the silence.

You cannot unspeak
the unspoken.”

*

“Sometimes
it's only

words, and
sometimes

it's your heart,
torn out.”

“I sit and wait,
nothing to say.

Doesn't mean
there's nothing here,

only that it
escapes me.”

*

“Your style,” he said,
is that which you

can't keep from doing.”

*

“Sometimes I remember
what I forgot to write, so

sometimes I write it.”

Alfalfa field
touched by wind,

this green, and that.

Green wall
of pines,
the wind

digging
up bones.

Stillness.
Not enough

wind to make
a leaf

tremble.

Dust, and the wind
that does not

let it rest.

A lazy circle -
turkey vulture

on wings of wind.

“Emblems, yes.
Symbols? I

know nothing
of symbols.

The crow is
always crow

and sometimes
speaks of
sadness.”

*

“Words are like
buzzing insects. Catch them
if you can.”

*

“Poet, like a fine
martini, shaken

not stirred on this
corduroy road.”

“Beats like a drum.

Pulses like blood
hot with love.

Words the way
we moan our awe.

Wisdom the silence
between all things.”

*

“Sometimes the shape haunts us
until we've filled it.”

*

“The under-
layment of

wisdom is
silence.”

Claw at
sorrow.

Sorrow
snarls.

Eventually even
a blind squirrel gets

killed on the road.

New day. Same sun.
What you get is

what you've got, and
it is enough.

A meandering
day - sun spilled
on the water.

“If you're
at the edge,”
he said,

“push on.
What you're
looking for

is not much
farther.”

*

“How to write?
Establish
a strict routine,

then smash it.”

*

“Hold your words
gently, until

they cut you,”
the poet said,

“then hold them tight.”

“Yes. I recommend biscuits
with the hot sausage gravy.

Poetry needs some of that.”

*

“Yeah, I know -
church mice are

poor as poets.
So claw the sky

and cry.”

*

“Is it bad luck,”
they asked,
“to start that poem

before finishing
this one?” “No,”
he said, “poems

are only starts.”

A reckless wind
and silly birds -

something is
coming but you

don't know what.

Lazy geese on
a slow wind.

All the world
is settling.

Buzz of must, must,
must in the bird's brain,

everflowing, insistent
sing of song, light

lifting the day,
silence stirred with

urgency.

You can
outrun

the rain.
You cannot

outrun your
unhappiness.