All Is As They Appear

How astonishing it is that language can almost mean,
and frightening that it does not quite. —Jack Gilbert 

 

 

 

:: Found and lost vocabularies :: 

:: Spring to summer the signs change and do not. ::

 

Winging It In Spring

Someone appears
in the trackless, floating field,
a body the color of cloud,
or the gauze that's
slowly stripped away
after sleep or sex,
or genuine pain.

Continuing with Chase Twichell ‘s poem “The Billowing Lights” from her collection from Northern Spy (1981)

It is a soul
who cautiously looks down,
deciding to stay
in the changeable vapors,
small and unborn,
abstract as a crystal,
and have that be its life.

Where they are,
they are safe from fire
and the transforming cold,
safe from money.
And yet,
in certain kinds of weather,
they draw near
as if for comfort,
as people are drawn
to a snowy, foreign place
after marriage or a loss.

They press into the leaves
of trees made explicit by rain,
there in the radiant dark
like a black migration.
Or quite overtly
in a day of blindness,
they come close
to ask for something,
but all we hear
is the dry snow,
its whispering friction,
and the scraping
engines of the plows.

Perhaps it is the sexual
dream they long for,
the ways we have
of thwarting the filthy rains,
and blood and age.

They may come down
out of the sorrowful air,
lured by the billowing
lights of wars
like fish to inedible glitter,
that longing the one
force of their lives.

They peer down
into the earthly light,
the delicate towns
burning in the radium
of the future,
and the white air falling.

Little fossil ghosts,
they grow dim and quiet,
embedded in the sky.
And tonight, to keep them
from the slicing wind,
I do not want them.

NOTES
—Above: “The Billowing Lights” a poem by Chase Twichell from her collection Northern Spy (1981)
—Photos by DB: Murals and wall paintings Springfield Oregon, March 2025 the first week of Spring on Planet Earth.

VEXICON: Truth Street

 As is said: Minds never come from nothing or go to nothing.
—Anne Waldman

Pain Brings Truth
Welcome to Eugene
Coming from Portland Needing To Get To Cottage Grove 5 Dollars I Think… God Bless You
NO Camping
Possibly Lost…Miss Him Dearly
KANDI
YOUR Government Hates You. That Part
UNhoused & Hungrey Still Giving All To Simply Smile Its Infectious A Simple Smile
4give … always with Grace
The Centennial…Bible
Spare any Serotonin?
Phone
ONE Way NO Turns Crosswalk Closed STOP Killing Mountain Lions
Love Is In The Hair
STAY WEIRD

CODA
BARDO OF WRITING

It can be said poets
          talked too much
        wrote too long,
listening to the sound
of their voices.

This was my offering
    to have written little,
        &
    heard the sounds
        of the world.
                —Janet Rodney

 

VEX + ICON = VEXICON

SEEING RED

The past tense of a fire is fire.
The future tense of ash is ash.
                       —Miriam Sagan (from Prayer Flag)

Gertrude 2020-2024      Mural by Bayne

Beware the Power in the Grid

Arctic Vortext

Abstract Composition in Red Minor

Only Fear Fear Itself

Truth Be Devoling... erased by EWEB the next day

You're not ALONE... so, where are You?

The Journey begins with the first step

DeLuxe! Available Now

Ask Not for Whom They Toil

Time/Space is where they find you  --Kokopelli

Our Lady of the Heart of Sorrow

LiveFastDieFree

Who Do You Trust

 

It's difficult to understand the nature of reality when you stand with one foot in a vanished world and the other in chaos. —Ashley Shelby, Muri (2019)