The Middlewesterner

A little music, yes.
Music and silence

and the wind.

Shaken sky
and trees.

I can't see
home from here.

Some days
the whole world.

Some days not.

Too much or
not enough.

Wind is on
the water.

The skies
collide.

"If all else
fails, shuffle

your notes, play
the silence."

*

"There's more truth in silence
than

in anything I say."

*

"The only way
to know it's

done is to see
you've stopped,

and that
only after

the fact."

If not red-tail
then harrier
cutting the day

open.

Red-tail -
you can

see it
when you

want to,
if you

wait
patiently.

Wind and lift
and something

with the trees.

Same road,
different day

all the way
home.

Convocation
of crows.

Lots of noise
but no news.

"Even God's ignorance
would be
a thing of beauty."

*

"We think we know
the mind of God,

which displays
unbounded ignorance -

ours, not God's.

*

"Go ahead -
pull my beard.

Perhaps I'll have
more to say."

"If you could see,
truly see,

you wouldn't need
so many words."

*

"The blank page -
when I'm gone,

leave it as I left it,
my testament."

*

"If I can
set it down
when I want,

I can
pick it up
when I don't."

Wind in the trees.
Hawk in the sun.

You've got to
believe in something.

A new house built
upon a cornfield -

this is the way
the world ends.

Sharing a meal
with a fellow poet,

new friend, brother.

Not churchbells.
Not silence.

Heartbeat. Breath.

Only this wine.
I am alone.

"Go ahead,
you can try
if you wish,

but me, I
wouldn't argue
with silence."

*

"How far can you go
before you run out
of poems," they asked.

"How far is an ocean?"

*

"They are my
poems. Of course

I can't know
what they mean."

"With poetry,
not enough

is too much.

With love
it works

the other way."

*

"Do not do it
straight ahead.

Trick yourself
sideways.

Always take
the long way."

*

"Yes, I do throw
some poems away -

it's not like
there won't be more."

She loves me.
Perhaps

she loves the moon
more.

Such expression
of rock here -

no lone stone.

Roughness of
the earth here,

rocks broken
like open

wounds.

Clouds are caught
on these Wisconsin

bluffs. Even a stiff
wind is not enough.

Smear in the east
as if the sun

rose, then fell and
left us not so

much wishing as
wondering.

"This packet of poems -
save them for the dry times,

for it will not always
be as it is today."

*

"There is a lesson, too,
in the silence between."

*

"The mind
a blanket

covering
the world

as it is."

Rim of the world,
edge of sky, wind.

Light like gauze
on everything.

All that is is
all that we are

imagining.

A lifting
sky.

Wind
above

the river.
A red-

winged black
bird,

its sharp
cry.

Tear in the sky,
a promise of sun -

belief is something
best left undone.