Thursday, March 28, 2024
s t o r m
41km gusts
through
grey, grey pall
a gull calls
three mews into
salt-altered air
where warning shifts
yellow to orange
for coastal events -
cautionary
becomes
coastal foment
foretold.
time stutters, small wet bursts of hours
what has been pushed, crests.
shorebound
surfaces
tossing,
go grey
they too
losing the loci of time
where air is still water
but foamy
earth-bent
The mewing, mewing, mewing
gull returns.
Thursday, March 14, 2024
fish out of water
I couldn't kick the eel
a brown eel
in road shoulder sand
I couldn't kick the brown eel
so close to the river
so far from the river
uma morte no ar
Wednesday, March 13, 2024
Thursday, March 7, 2024
Wednesday, March 6, 2024
vidas e mortes 2
1
Já não estás aqui.
Tenho saudades tuas.
Apareces de vez em quando num sonho,
ou como uma memória dentro de algo,
ou na minha mente quotidiana,
como uma palavra que raramente digo em voz alta.
You're not here anymore.
I miss you.
You appear from time to time in a dream,
or as a memory inside something,
or in my everyday mind,
like a word I rarely say out loud.
2
today
and the small black bees.
Jasmine in a jar keeps me company as I write.
Tuesday, March 5, 2024
Long friendships change. Some slip back into time quietly, quite naturally, create a mutual silence
that grows comfortable over the years.
I prefer this, of course.
But this is not always so.
I've had the pain of letters unanswered,
felt cruel words that, aware of my secrets,
knew exactly where to cut.
But perhaps it's all part of the animal we are, that can choose to ease or hurt a heart.
Tuesday, February 27, 2024
vidas e mortes
1
camelia
wet brown camelias
have fallen upon green grass -
death, new life, lamplit
2
lizard
the drowned lizard I found
carelessness or weather's toll -
do you care, lizard?
3
jardim
Memorizing this
silence, a garden, spring rain
time to plant again
4
the fly
even a fly's death
seems inconsolably sad -
here such a short time.
5
death
Spring's come, sun, but cold
I remember one I lost -
has it been ten years?
Monday, February 26, 2024
Tuesday, February 20, 2024
Saturday, February 17, 2024
p o l e c a t
Grandmother told stories.
With tips of her fingers,
she imitated
ant, spider, inchworm
climbing our arms
until we could name
the lives upon us.
On summer afternoons
when settled round the picnic table
in the shade of the swing oak
she'd narrate us safely into woods
under the moon
where her voice would prod and hiss us up trees.
These, she'd say, are the dark pines where the polecats play.
We'd imagine them paused
claws in bark,
a deeper blur blow as they hunted for meat.
Know to stay away from them,
grandmother would say
they are witchy
keen to make mischief
________________________________________________
Some people say that they're seen as a symbol of an upcoming productive and fruitful period in life.
Gale (Ancient Greek: Γαλῆ, romanized: Galê, lit. 'weasel, marten' pronounced [galɛ̌ː]) is a minor character in Greek mythology. She was a very skillful witch.
Mythology
According to Aelian's On the Characteristics of Animals, Gale was a talented witch who dealt in herbs and potions. But she was extremely lascivious, and had abnormal sexual desires. For this Hecate, the goddess of witchcraft, turned her into a small, "evil" (in the words of Aelian) animal bearing her name, gale (a land-marten or polecat).[1]
Thus the animal became one of the most commonly associated ones with Hecate. Martens/weasels were thought to have magical potency in ancient Greece, though not necessarily of the beneficial kind.[2]
Gale's name shares an etymology with that of Galanthis, another mortal woman who was turned into a weasel at the hands of an angered goddess.[2]
tourão
Monday, February 12, 2024
Sunday, February 11, 2024
The olive jar slipped.
Saw salt water and fruit
plash among smashed glass,
sands of which I'll find for weeks.
Clean, chamomile-scented,
kitchen floor tiles
show motes of dark dirt
flung under the door
fleeing high winds, more rain.
Thyme-seeded soil,
lost to soft mold,
enters the bin bag too.
My hand's unsteady,
worn by the storm,
saddened by seed death.
I take a breath,
tie up the trash,
pull on boots,
pocket keys,
go out.
I need sun, but the rain's won.
Thursday, February 8, 2024
Eu digo que nenhum tempo é mau se eu estiver vivo. Vivo, cada dia é um bom dia.
Tuesday, February 6, 2024
There is peace
that persists in small things -
warm spring earth stubbled green,
a quiet neighborhood schoolyard after
midday play ends,
a cat asleep in the sun.
All things ordinary are hard won
yet often invisible.
I sometimes think
we are animals afraid of
stillness,
of an everyday indivisibility.
Is it possible to stop fidgeting,
for even a brief moment?
I am changing the garden,
rearranging, potting up
grasses and succulents,
and spindly geraniums
that smell of citrus.
The trees are pruned, and soon
the lavender.
The planters wait for flowers, to be planted
among onions, chickweed, and
struggling alyssum.
The terrace smells of laundry and salt.
My mind reaches into the soil,
pulls out hurt,
worry, white paper -
so few words.
Wednesday, January 31, 2024
Sunday, January 28, 2024
Saturday, January 27, 2024
Wednesday, January 24, 2024
Monday, January 22, 2024
Sunday, January 21, 2024
Saturday, January 20, 2024
P e a c e
After the cold rain
the bumbles are again
creeping in and out of the rotten stump,
visiting low lying heather.
Brood and death
are their daily lives.
They're a community
often tested by stress -
internal power struggles,
bee hungry hornets,
humans that see only empty lots
where they've had family plots
for generations.
Friday, January 12, 2024
Wednesday, January 10, 2024
Monday, January 8, 2024
the walk 2
the walk
a caminhada
steps are lines of sight
one foot down
two feet forward
stop
or pause
to see
to remember
memorize
and then continue
________________________
os passos são linhas de visão
um pé para baixo
dois pés para a frente
parar
ou fazer uma pausa
para ver
para recordar
memorizar
e depois continuar
Nunca estou sozinho
Estou sempre sozinho
Sunday, January 7, 2024
the walk 1
the walk
began
downhill
still on a sidewalk
veered under
an overpass and then again
up,
cobbled, asphalt.
Old shoulders.
Cinders pocked
with rubbish.
Without a destination
other than to surprise the eye
I pass plants
called wayward
or weed.
Calla palustris
Wild tobacco
growing
without gardens,
unbound.
In neighborhoods around them,
caverned stumps
clotted with bumble bees
knees white with pollen.
Persian ivy
bristled bare where rusted fence intersects pole and stone -
these all wrapping land that began cultivation centuries ago.
I know each earthen plot on earth has a story.
Common milk thistle
Knapweed
and thistle again
wherever a home once was.
Groundsel swallowing lawns and pasture.
Woad and weld,
close by, dyers plants,
forgotten.
Swedish ivy
strangling pear,
past fruiting.
Scrambling gromwell
blue motes
navel wort,
old stones.
plangent too
you
returning home
uttering
"everything".
blank and back
So many pages left, events remembered, left unwritten, due to what? I want to say the cold, but that's an old excuse, cave-borne, and doesn't quite say it, relay the extent of the mind blankness, the creeping self-doubt and overwhelming course of personal events, bomb ticks, I've felt . Vanish'd sight.
But you do go on, until you don't.
Afterthoughts ought to come in, and begin you again.
All losses are restor'd, and sorrow's end.
Sunday, December 31, 2023
flâneuse
Woolf called it “street haunting”
Sophie Calle, whose celebrated career began the day that, out of boredom, she began secretly following people in the street whom she had chosen arbitrarily
Flânerie, the great war reporter Martha Gellhorn told Victoria Glendinning, “is as necessary as solitude: that is how the compost keeps growing in the mind”.
This is a kind of micro-reporting, telling the world not what happened at a meeting between generals, but how much a loaf of bread mattered to an architect and his children.In her dedication to exposing misery, Gellhorn turned flânerie into testimony.
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/jul/29/female-flaneur-women-reclaim-streets
Friday, December 29, 2023
Tuesday, December 26, 2023
Monday, December 25, 2023
1
a deserted street
lamplight
in the
cold dark
____________
2
lap
cat
attached
adapting
to
you
_______________
酔ひふしのところはここか蓮の花
yoi (drunkenness) he (place) fushi (notable place)
no (possessive)tokoro (yadori-inn) wa koko (individual) ka (?)
basu no hana (lotus flower)
Is this the inn of drunkenness ? lotus flower
Is this the lotus flower where the drunkard is?
Is this the place to get drunk or is it the lotus flower?
_________________
Libertem-na!
Depois, a andar, a nadar ou a voar
ela torna-se
um instrumento
de luz
Release her!
Then walking, swimming or flying
she becomes
a luminous
instrument
of light
Recitar narrativas
Ter pronto um pequeno livro de contos memorizados
para usar como armadura
para proteger
o seu coração
Have ready a small book of memorised tales
to use as armor
to protect
your heart
Saturday, December 23, 2023
My mother told
how the smell of an orange
at Christmas
delighted her
so rare there in the snow
when America was poorer
but really
there were many oranges
somewhere else
a not uncommon fruit
or fragrance
(matter out of place)
her daughter
accustomed now
to avocados
passion fruit
cannot name their season
Both
plentitudes
entering
memory
become
canticles
to presumption
I also sing an ode to
the unused,
an obsolete
Transistor radio
held to my ear
once indispensable
I recall
isn't
necessary at all
or a beloved object
repurposed
that
At ten
you jumped with
at seventy
used
to tie the terrace bench to the wall
against the winds
you know are coming
Friday, December 22, 2023
Thursday, December 21, 2023
Wednesday, December 20, 2023
Tuesday, December 19, 2023
an echo of
seas
valleys
breaking glass
the past
cardinal
cormorant
galinha
have begun
each one
their
revolutionary
flight of
the ordinary
encircling
a person
a planet
a star
Tuesday, December 12, 2023
Saturday, December 9, 2023
Gimikwenden ina?
Do you remember
that even smashed it's reassembled.
Someone bring the glue.
You, too, glue yourself together.
__________________________
Tuesday, December 5, 2023
Friday, November 24, 2023
Sunday, November 12, 2023
Friday, November 10, 2023
thoughts, november
What this life listens to - how much terrible noise we humans make.
1
w i n d p o e m - V i l a d ' E s t e
early winter storm
nothing rigid will survive
so I strive for bent
flex, arc, crook, curve, bow and now
spring back after, unbroken
2
everywhere
in the house
I am outside
3
N o v e a n d a r e s
7 sétimo cães e pessoas barulhentas
6 sexto uma aparição
5 quinto silêncio
4 quarto ou cozinhas
2 segundo afirmação de boa vontade
1 primeiro dez mil passos
res de chão grutas e sepulturas
lua e arvore
Dezasseis luas já passaram e ainda não consegui sair de sarashina.
438 Basho trans. Joãquim M. Palma
At Obusate I will fall
with no one there at all
even the moon
can't see
me a tree
in an agony forest
migrating north
Wednesday, November 8, 2023
"Didn't leave much, did she? Not much for a life, is it?" - Vera S6 Ep3 Pt2
The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story. - Chimamanda Adichie
Laotzu might even have said: The wise man is without bones, like water. - Byunh-chul Han, Absence
Saturday, November 4, 2023
prayer
on this night of fierce howls
help me get through
what's being swept into me
the idiot that I am
has locked herself in a room
seeking refuge
but in reality starving for a silence
away from this wind
that never stops howling my name
Friday, November 3, 2023
wall, walk
Campylopus introflexus Heath star-moss |
uncertain
Tamarillo |
Tuesday, October 31, 2023
Saturday, October 28, 2023
Wednesday, October 25, 2023
Sunday, October 22, 2023
Para proteger a ociosidade que amo
Cercar a inação com muros contra o mar
Abafo o som das ondas
com auscultadores silenciosos e reclinado,
tranquilo,
observo os céus
viajando pelas constelações
_________________________
To protect the idleness I love
I surround inaction with sea walls
I muffle the sound of the waves
with silent headphones and reclining,
tranquil,
I watch the skies
traveling through the constellations
breve sol
Minha vida é um feixe de luz
que tenta pesar
uma sombra
antes de desaparecer
______________________
My life is a beam of light
that tries to weigh down
a shadow
before disappearing
O meu casaco/ My coat
Encontrei
um casaco
feito de
peles e penas
que pensei ter perdido.
Agora estou
feliz por o ter encontrado.
Mostro-vos
fotos a preto e branco dos
os mortos e eu digo
todas elas
cabem perfeitamente
nos bolsos
deste casaco.
O casaco colorido
ali
pertence a outra pessoa.
Este é meu,
realmente meu,
um silencioso
espanto,
castanho
e reconfortante
como
vacas leiteiras e pardais.
_____________________
I found
a coat
made of
fur and feathers
I thought I'd lost.
Now I'm
happy to have found it.
I show you
black and white photos of
the dead and I say
all of these
will fit perfectly
in the pockets
of this coat.
The colored coat
over there
belongs to someone else.
This is mine,
really mine,
a quiet
astonishment,
brown
and comforting
like
milk cows and sparrows.