— farthest south @farthestsouth - Tumblr Blog

The Young Conifer

I broke down and burned the dead hemlock today - its bone-dry branches bursting like a bomb.

No chipmunk or bird took to it, leaving it still at the top of the small bank in the backyard. It turned brown in a blink - or perhaps begged in my blindness behind the curtain of the crippled Redbud.

Its leading shoot, once green and bendy, now curls like a fuse.

It blisters in the pit with a chorus of cracking and crickets - lit with the lightest of touches - twisting into the air as tall as a tree.

The Trains Run on Time

Not having the poetry means not seeing yourself in the soft light

It means not seeing the mountain of dishes as part of a long line of laying down one’s body for the mundane conveniences of others

And it’s not just the little things—it’s big things. The transcontinental railroad, for example, does it run on rails or does it run over the bones of those who laid those rails down?

And there’s not some abstract glory in that, that’s not what I’m saying. It wasn’t sacrifice, it was survival. And not a pretty one

I’m saying there’s poetry in it. Because those rails and those trains, all these people and all this cargo still run down those lines—and we didn’t deserve their body any more than we deserve yours or anyone else’s nowadays

So it might as well have been yours or mine then—but we’re lucky it wasn’t

So, if you can see the poetry in it, when the dishes pile high, and someone forgot to run the washer the last time through, and someone says where did all the coffee mugs go and you just have no goddamn idea where anything goes, but you know that you’ll stay right here seemingly doing it all and seemingly doing nothing—as if the only cash the universe accepts is time

West Loop, Chicago

The first final act again

The bluebells rise with their leaves already wilting, or softening, as though not quite intending to stay for long

Their flowers, little bells indeed, hang down, dangling, like the bells they told you about from the start, bits of jewelry on the wrists of a dancer bouncing to a stop

And in the balmy sun of May they yellow a bit, and bleach, their pale necks still rising even as their faces bend closer to their baubles, barely buried in the ground

“watch this dada, dada watch this” he says again, as he does the thing he feels born to do, an act which was discernible even from the bing-bong of his song, which would not be impressive, even boring, but somehow worth the watching at the risk of it never having been

Windfall

I am the version of myself that will experience death.

The world found me when I was a child - a seed with enough to leaf, and found me again in my adolescence - a stick with an aching weight at my tip, and found me again as I fought at the frontier of myself, against the blade.

When I became a father, it blew me down.

Now as my third child still ripens on the branch, I am on the ground, bruised and slightly growing over. And when he finds me, he may smell the sugar and think me sweet.

Rooting

The billionaires aren’t bailing us out - they’re going full bore to the stars - they want to be space men, moon men, men of Mars, when the rest of us, down here, are rooting for them.

Billions of us are battening down, working ourselves into the dark ground, like earth worms, earth turned, burned and black, some of us grabbing hold down here, never going back, are rooting for them.

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Reading of “Cave Syndrome” https://farthestsouth.tumblr.com/post/650802601195126784/cave-syndrome-does-the-sun-make-a-sound-when-its

Cave Syndrome

Does the sun make a sound when it’s fiery arms whip round

in open space, It’s bulging surface burping into the ether,

an untended core like a forge smelting weapons for a war

long fought, or perhaps not yet thought of

the mind at night is a cold cavern, walls burned out

and black against a phosphorescent scope,

all pitch and echo, thoughts let go like lanterns

with the hope of a sound ascent

crimson is a silent cut across

the dome, the first quiet light against

a roan coat, soon to be awoke and carrying

all consequence, the hum of some small heat,

a crack, a stone

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Reading of “Soft Seed” https://farthestsouth.tumblr.com/post/648995444295417856/soft-seed-there-is-an-everlasting-mark-upon-the

Soft Seed

There is an everlasting mark upon the surface of the ocean, that persists for at least this generation and perhaps will more, that no swell or break or passing ship has moved

No light shines through it, as black as it is, like a scar, like tissue anchored to some tendon and bone of the sea, a buoy bound beneath its free and bobbing form

I held his hand for the moment he held breath, a perfect paw, curled slightly and sharp, its thinness too thin and thinning, breaking hot through the membrane of this wetter world, a fiery try, both beast and basalt, just barely passing through