The Middlewesterner

"Even
in high wind
you cannot

outrun
the sound of
your own

whining."

*

"We would.
We could.

We will
We shall.

Words make
promises

we can-
not keep."

*

"Like birds, our words,
dropping from the sky,

pecking at gravel."

An evening
chill

nibbles
the edge

of things
as death

comes
with cold

hands.

A rich palette,
the winter grasses,

this sun.

Woods
huddled there

against winter -
the sun un-

remembered,
the dull day

turning dark,
the fiber of

everything
going cold,

the air
between here

and there
already gone

silent.

The white plane
of the snowy plain -

blue dome above,
line of horizon,

geometry for
a new day.

The roll of snow.
Wind

chasing it home.

"Sing too well,
they'll think it
easy. Not

too much - they'll
want more.
More of yours

does no good.
They must learn
to sing themselves."

*

"An empty room -
ah, the perfect poem."

*

"They are there.
They are out

there, waiting
for us to

say them - words."

"Does word
know what

word is?
I don't

think so."

*

How much
is little

enough?"

*

"Sometimes, something
is caught in
this net of words.

Sometimes, not.

Snow
and tree

where the wind
stops

for coffee.

Ditch full of snow.
Crow.

Anything goes.

I want to think
the white ridge is

a break in dark clouds,
but - no - it's snow.

Snowy field,
pigeons, and

sun on them.

Winter wind
coming around the corner

of the house, and stars
coming into view,

cold-lit.

"Poem,
like a ticket stub

after the show."

*

"Hard work is hope
with its pants on."

*

"Language is
an attitude,"
he said.

"Poetry,

like riding
a motorcycle

naked."

*

"What would you
whisper into God's

good ear, if God
had an ear and it

was any good?"

*

"What
the eye notices,

what
the mind finds."

Bird

against the winter
sky -

its small dark heart -
flies.

Morning. Wood
smoke hangs like

sadness in the
winter trees.

The cold evening,

the cow steaming
as she breathed,

my rough hands
on her full udder,

the sound the milk
made,

hitting the pail.

Old crow.
Dirty snow.

Death at
the wayside -

deer's frozen
carcass,

eyes glazed
hard as

the winter.

Nothing to say,
and a whole winter day

in which to say it.

"If it didn't
make you tired
you weren't

talking to God."

*

"If you
understand

why you
believe,

you cannot
still call it

belief."

*

"Let it be
what it is

and something
more."

"If one
word,

which?"

*

"Loss like fire
consumes us."

*

Sadness a weary-
wear where life

meets the dream."

This
study in black and white -

crow on snow.

The morning buckled
with cold and snow,

light laid low,
lost to sorrow.

Sun,
a cock of the head

south, the solstice
not far off.

Winter chill -
leaf mousing its way
across the road,

wind on its tail.

"Do not be eager
for that which is gift."

*

"Grace
is mercy
and it is

the loveliness
of the gesture."

*

"Make
elaborate preparations

and wait.
You must ready yourself

but what matters
is patience."

"Getting ready to write
is not writing.

Yet how can you
call in words without

a ritual that works?"

*

"That
which breaks

us breaks
itself."

*

"Sometimes I think I know
what I'm doing and

sometimes the poem
shows me I don't."

Oh, yes, the sky -
the clotted clouds,
slash of blue,

thoughts of
coming home

to you.

In-
sistent shadows

and the clean
sweep of sky.