The Middlewesterner

This Week's Soup
and Sandwich

Christ Is
Risen

Garage Sale.

“Under New Management”
says the weathered sign,

now barely legible.

Crow or
the shadow
of crow?

Smudge of
day's end.
Cross of

sorrow's heart.

Old, slow crow,
wearer of black,

purveyor of the world's
unsavory wisdom,

holds nothing back.

The river,

dark as our
secret sins,

quiet as
the dead man's

confessing.

Road climbs the ridge.
Ridge climbs the sky.

Here am I,
wondering where

the wind's crib is.

A pressing wind,
single-minded and
undistracted.

The blunt of it
hammers me.

Endurace
is the sluggard's
only chance.

A river as wide
as the eagle's hunger.

Wisdom, like the wind's
impermanence, and what
we know of ignorance.

"A hungry man doesn't
complain about cold soup."

*

"Yes, I am
allergic
to money,

which is not
a problem
since I have

so little."

*

"Poet, you fool

yourself with
foolishness."

Red-tail,
not

the idea
of

red-tail,
tearing

apart
the mouse.

How far
the road

disappearing
into sky?

How far
the sky?

Finding
my way home -

the lovely
urgency

of uncertainty.

Wind gilding
the water
with ripples -

the sun is
spun of wishes.

An eagle dead
along the road.

The sky has fallen.

"No, I would not know
a symbol even if it
clanged me on the head."

*

"If the poet is honest,
he will tell you

we are all amateurs."

*

"Figure out
what it is
you do, and -

by God -
do it."

"These poems?
It's a trick I do

with a few words
and my quick hands."

*

"Why don't you
write long poems,"
they asked.

Said he:
"Why isn't
a cup a jug?"

*

"At the end,
the poem

must lift
itself

away."

Heron in-
visible in

the great blue
sky.

Flap of hawk
like a brown bag

caught in wind.

Wind ripples
the water.

Too much sky.
This much sadness.

Three crows where
two would do -
always some

slop in the system.

Shout of the morning.
Birds on a wire

lifted by wind.
Black-beaded sky.

"To truly see,
remember


you shall not
pass this way


again."


*


"Let's not even
try to pretend


we like nothing
better than this,


which is another
kind of that."


*


"The heavy
pound of your


empty sound -
your words should


be like birds,
stealing away."

"Bleed, and bleed some more.
Lie in pain and listen.

In your silence is the poem."

*

"The blessed state
is silence.

All else is
deviation."

*

"Shine up the first word
and the last, and keep

harmony between."

Wind, no crow. The day
considers

the blessings of silence.