The Middlewesterner

"Driving with
tank on empty -

the poet."

*

"Of course the
sons-a-bitches
never stop -

that's why we call them
sons-a-bitches."

*

"It's
enough

if it
sounds

like it
makes

some sense."

"Always it's the naked chickens
complaining about the storm."

*

"Keeping your ON
button constantly

ON, you run down
the battery, yet

how else poems?"

*

"A poem is
the only few

words that mean
anything."

Smear of clouds
where day would break.

It's always something.

Hawk high in the tree.
Below, grass and snow.

Grey sky.
Grey-winged death

sliding sideways
on frozen wind,

all God's creatures
digging in.

Bird
perched down low,

hoping for sun,
getting snow.

"The hard lesson is
learning to call it

what it is, not what
you wish it to be."

*

"Keep writing," he told them.
"Even a monkey-brain

can make a poem."

*

"How to count
poems like these?

Stomp your foot
on the beat -

that's one, that's two,
that's three and four.

See?"

"So much easier
to just watch the road

than to watch for poems."

*

"You say
you believe
in angels?

Put your
god-damn
pants on."

*

"People,
how can I
write poetry

when you
call me all day
with money

questions and
insurance problems?"

Four below zero
this morning -

the chickadees
talk of nothing else.

Winter so bitter
you can still taste it.

Sun on the wall of snow.
Long shadows on the road.
That which is lovely,

always before me.

Web of the trees
against the evening,
as if a net.

Even in the dead
of winter, the river
wends its way east.

I am headed west,
against the grain.

Not sunset
this mid-winter evening, but an ember
smudged out.

"You don't know
when lightning strikes,

nor when a poem."

*

"Sometimes I have to
hope I run out of

poems before I
run out of paper."

*

"You punch
a poem's

button,
you can't

un-
punch it."

"Does not matter
how many

you throw away.
Only matters

what you keep."

*

"Sometimes they come as neat couplets
and sometimes they get away from

me."

*

"Another day.
Another poet

with nothing
to say."

Winter goes
about, snow

between her toes.

Up before the sun -
but in January

that's not saying much.

These woods
in winter -

darkness
at the edge

of light.

Snow
like dust in the air

and wind
like winter remembering

the hard times.

Trees against the snow
like capillaries -

morning so bitter cold
the blood won't go.

"It's like fishing," he said. "You've
got to keep a line in the water,

watch the bobber, set the hook."

*

"Put your
words
on paper.

Let them
crawl
around."

*

"Prose is
a kind of speech.

Poetry,
a way to see."