Who Told You You Were Naked?

White throated
sparrow. You
wait little
girl. Pressing
your evil-
spots up
the nape
of your
neck. Our (dis)
harmony. Could

I be
alone with
you, each
of us
aware only
of ourselves
and our
surroundings? How
would we
be together?

It scares
me to
think of
being so
naked with
someone. Thank
God we
have birding
and poetry
for cover!

Triangulation

Some existential
morsel. My voice’s music.
The caution of death.

The Speck of Gold

Back up the path,
Dewey thought they saw a moving figure.
Turned out, they were right, as a man
joined them on the beach.
Really wanted to talk, couldn’t shake him,
but that was probably because Dewey kept smiling at him encouragingly.
Told Dewey about some lady slipper flowers fifty yards back.

Dewey said:
I’m with a birding group,
but I’m not a birder myself.
Great area for warblers,
but if it’s too windy you can’t see them.
Shorebirds too.
Well, I guess I’ll go out and be a shorebird myself.

Already taken off sandals
and left them on a pier head.
But the man walked down along.
Never want to go to the lake without putting my feet in—
Is he going to take his shoes off now?—
white hiking jobbers with blue acrylic hiking slacks tucked in,
like Teddy Roosevelt. This is

a little more wet than I expected,

said Teddy, and started talking about gold prospecting.
Brought the pan up here once
and durned if I didn’t get a speck of gold out of it.
Well, got to get back to my party—
Dewey wading like a cormorant
to their perch on a down-tree branch.

Lake of the Woods

*

toes amid
pebbles

shell white

*

Pro Tiller Smoker Craft

Mercury motor

family of three aboard—
solitary bobbing pelican

odd vertical spike in its bill.

*

mostly blighted jack pine through here—

but behind site 55

a whole host of gleaming birch trees

*

bill of cap, bifocal line,

flapping shirt wings,

one foot, then the other

*

two hollow places on your neck

where your spine joins your skull—

your evil spots—

death will be someone massaging

your evil spots for all eternity

*

sojourners waiting for life to end, 
life nothing but a stumbling-block—

meanwhile make poems, observe birds

*

stamping footprints into this wet
sand—fun game—
waves washing them away

*

brackish sand caked above breakers—

date scratched in—

6-20-17

*

all valuable lumber removed

miserable scrub forest—

may heaven send a cleansing spark!

Fuzzy Rock

Why isn’t Wallace Stevens smarmy?
(Smarmy is what most poetry is
and what most poetry lovers
love about it.)

That theorem proposed between
one desperate clod and another
so that the green leaves came and covered the high rock
is not the kind of thing skeletons think about.

And that fluent-mundo stuff
seems plenty smarmy after all—
fat girl, terrestrial,
my summer, my night.

A great poet can earn smarmy-ness

by never forgetting
that the jar is gray and bare, even while
the slovenly wilderness surrounds it.

Invocation (Telling, not Showing)

a bench—why mention?—
more obvious stuff: a lake,
birds

wind ruffles the water
in approaching
sheets

constant knocking-cracking from
different points over the
expanse

when you say a loon calls,

do you have to describe the
sound?

Dewey Asian-Form

Dewey's Haiku

clouds slide
under branches
wet-foot moon

Two Ways to Taunt Death

Dewey’s friend posted re.
an insulting yawn—
his parting kiss for death.

Dewey posted re.

how it pricks them on
to run naked in the woods.

Blab-y Poets

Poets do write about their family

members, but it seems indiscreet—
not to say smarmy.

Is it discreet for Dewey to post poems 
celebrating their own solitary self-enjoyment?—
Kitschy for sure!

Dewey’s Tanka

Dewey child 
wanders out on the edge of town 
into a field of sunflowers—
comfortable clearing—take off
shoes, shirt, pants, socks, underwear

Dewey's Senryu

foot on edge
of porcelain bathtub—Dewey
cutting their toenails

Listing Birds

What is the spur
that pricks me awake?—that’s all
my poems are about.

Relation in play—today
I'll write about my life
with my wife.

“What was that
other flycatcher 
I saw;

blue jay; red-eyed vireo—

the one that says,
‘Here am I, where are you?’”

The Feet of Briseis, Princess of Lyernessus

Can a person be a fetish?
Achilles’s war prize, Briseis—
Achilles so wrathful
when Agamemnon took her for his own!—
and Homer says Briseis was unhappy too.

How did Achilles
feel about Briseis? If she
was his fetish,
it would prick him on in the thickest battle
to think of coming home to her.

Homer says the one who comforted Briseis 

in her captivity with Achilles
was Patroclus,
who hung out with Achilles’s other women,
and slept in Achilles’s own bed.

Dewey's Awesome Power

Except for my glasses frames
and my belly (a bit),
the only part of me I can see
when I’m walking—my darting feet,

making me understand those people
(studied by anthropologists)
who carry their souls with
in little bags—

I carry my soul with wherever I walk
on my beautiful feet,
feeling the earth full
of some fiery juju that impels me.

The sight of my feet always delights me.—
How can I ever completely
give up on God's love while I can worship
my spirit-dwelling feet?