Monday, April 22, 2024


uma camada de sons

da baía da vida

as atmosferas fracas

que estão a fluir para sudeste

um fluxo sem um nome

através os margems de verde

o que tornam-se campos da areia

um glaciar derrete (imparável)

sudoeste, uma maré salgada

sob as ondas, um nação

acima, um céu, uma cratera azul

 

 

Isto meu mapa do mundo 

os raízes, sangue, e ar

começa ao amanhecer e nunca termina

---------------------------------------------

A layer of sounds

from the bay of life

fragile atmospheres

that are flowing southeast

a stream without a name

through banks of green

which become fields of sand

a glacier melts (unstoppable)

southwest, a salt tide

under the waves, a nation 

above, a sky, blue crater 


this is my map of the world

of roots, blood, air

that begins at dawn and never ends


____________________________________



beyond the dented sky

into the stars


____________________________________


 Red Admiral



 

Silver Y Autographa gamma (Linnaeus, 1758)


 

Sunday, April 21, 2024

 

content

content

happy

hapless

the path to ______?

You walk it in silence.

Keep the way to yourself.

Where others are,

what they are doing

isn't

any of your concern, is it?

 

Keep walking.

 

Bend. Focus.

Bend again.

 

Keep walking.

 

Later, 

arriving 

don't mention it.

Speak instead

about

the sun

or the color of the sea

em os outros línguas,

a alguns estranghos e aos seus amigos

 

 


 

Friday, April 19, 2024

the habit of writing

becomes being

becomes seeing

one word

never alone

a stone among stones -

earth

History

isn't

living less in 

the khipu and codices

or attempts to

when men again

bring light

to bright paper 

we make shadows


Nothing?

 

Everything.

 

 http://oralhistory.columbia.edu/blog-posts/Talking%20Knots:%20Decolonizing%20Oral%20History%20through%20Alternative%20Methods%20of%20Memory%20Transmission

Thursday, April 18, 2024

 É uma poeira também poesia?
 


all day spent in soil and words

modal hours

minus schrift

steadied drift 

 

mid-sea


me

 

alone

Wednesday, April 17, 2024

Perhaps I will disappear.

I am already being erased from other places I've lived.

I look out my window,

high above streets, at the sea.

I imagine myself

a drop of salty water

and smile.

magoar pessoas machudam os outros

hurt people hurt others

Tuesday, April 16, 2024

ikigai

wabi-sabi

mottainai  (nanbu sakiori)

G  A  M  A  N

mono no aware

______________________

Usasama Myoo

Become Humble

Organize your shoes

improve posture

itadakimasu

warué tada taruwo shiru

okage sama de 

sleep, wake early



 

 

Monday, April 15, 2024

we wear our narratives

like cloaks of invisibility

stories

that contain

and protect us

protect our fragility

make us impenetrable


 Chinese art has a functional relationship with nature, not a mimetic one. 

It is not a question of depicting nature as realistically as possible but of 

operating exactly like nature. In nature, successive variations also produce

something very clearly without any kind of genius.

- Byoung-Chul Han


o sobreiro

o sobreiro diz
neste monte eu caio
sem ninguém lá
uma árvore numa floresta envelhecida
enquanto o mundo aquece
e os meus filhos
mais uma vez 

migram para o norte


the cork tree says
on this mount I fall
with no one there at all
a tree in an aging forest
while the world warms
and my children
once again 

migrate north

 

 

 

 The coordination of gazing, glancing, moving over a period of time engages me completely.

- John Virtue

a boat of teeth

lies at the bottom of

a cold lake

clearly there 

settled into the sand

listing

listening

no lament

went down

slowly on a still day

 


the burning

all my journals from 17 to 64

most sketchbooks

gone

the ashes in the old garden with yours

with our two cats

and countless birds

 






 




 

 

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

tenho uma pergunta

sabes o que é isto?
esta água mais azul que os olhos do amor

Pergunto a um pássaro
porque os pássaros sabem muitas coisas
mas o pássaro não responde

O pássaro nunca responderá
Está a fechar seus olhos
está sempre a ouvir
ao sol
a lua
a árvore onde pousa
o ar em que voa
mas o pássaro prefere
se puder
não me ouvir-me

____________________

 

I have a question


do you know what this is?
this water bluer than the eyes of love

I ask a bird
because birds know many things
but the bird won't answer

The bird will never answer
it's closing its eyes
is always listening
to the sun
the moon
the tree where it lands
the air in which it flies
but the bird prefers
if it can
not to listen to me

 



thoughts walking


perovskia 
ou
salvia 
yangii

 
polar mas a sul
lunar mas a oeste
onde há água
e sal
saltar, saltar, saltar
como um peixe
como uma mosca apanhada pelo vento
 
um azul viral 
uma expansão em espiral
 
_______________________________________

polar but south
lunar but to the west
where there is water
and salt
skip, leap, jump
like a fish
like a fly caught in the wind

a viral blue
a spiraling expansion

_________________________________________

sacas de

calçadas

branco

preto

__________

 paisajem 

 

haze hills inscrutable
discovery of impermeable
 
______________________

language is not a competition
the landscape of the foreigner
is one alone
in light, sun, in darkness, night

a língua não é concurso
a paiseje da estrangeira
é uma sozinha
em luz, sol, em escuriso, noite
 
_________________________



 

Wednesday, April 10, 2024


 

 walking to

shake off

winter dampness

a slow mind

a kind of stupor

I rise from


walking to

leave the constant

noise 

the fugues I play

to drown it out

 

walking towards something

that I reject

and so walk somewhere else

 

walking

to remember walking

city roaming

without aim


you were there 
in another room
always
in another room
the pain
until
I woke
realised 
you dead
these 
ten years 
_______________

estava lá
noutra sala
sempre
noutra sala
a dor
até
acordei
percebi
tu morto
estes
dez anos
___
 

Monday, April 8, 2024

num sonho
uma voz falava
suave
invisível
constrói uma nova vida
dizia
 
água no chão
a chuva
a chuva
como mil
votos de felicidade

________________


in a dream
a voice spoke
soft
invisible
build a new life
it said


water on the ground
the rain
the rain
like a thousand
good wishes




Friday, April 5, 2024

songbirds attack

a hungry hawk

doves awake know

the smell of cat

 

I watch the young gulls grow

 

pushing up 

cupped-leaved nasturtium

soil-speckled lobelia

cosmos rising 

a slender net of sway

 

stay a little longer, jasmine

 

 

 


I cannot bear the constant talking

but I do

I find the quiet inside, again and again

I miss the still trains of Tokyo, Osaka

eating alone out, in silence

walking, greeting neighbors in few words, politely

 

o riudo não é mais,  mas para mim é menos

menos mundano, menos cheio 

do que o canto de um pássaro, o miado de um gato

save the nest

scuttle the fish

prune it

kick it

can it

cant it



Sunday, March 31, 2024

 Em abril águas mil

 

Tree slippages -

pin oak    shadow   dry field weedy   duff   loess 

___________

Alliances of
Disputes about
The route of the dissenter
The limits of language
Aren’t the limits of love
_____________
 
Garbage and Golgotha
Did the apostles recycle,
pick up trash
______________

The end times align with the beginning
I for one 
cannot tear them into separate messages
______________
 
Oh, and what about the loss of birds 
the urgency of the fishes?

Quake signs.
Animal residual resistance
Senescence is coming.
 
Nothing was ever without consequences
but led ourselves into thinking so.
What is more interesting than optimism, more prescient than fatalism?
We fogo on.
(Even if it’s only and always indecisive)
 
No figs on the trees but under the duff mushrooms.
No birds in the sky but under the straw thawing ice.
An emmigration of environmental protections.
 
Assonance of Ashoka's Dama
Manga comprida.
Dama Buddha’s longo

Aspects of interstellar intelligence have reached us.
Intimations of mortality, immortal beloved, is life itself,
interstellar and grateful.
 
The brambles - consciousness.

Cinzento vente
Oh e
Deixei e
Tondo
Rondo
Bell
Knell



Mama hen and black white chicks hiding in bramble's consciousness.

Beyond the pink apartments
old men and young men without sandwiches or dogs
have great faith, great doubts.

Approach them.

An angel lives on my roof.
 
apelido é já
Por aqui sei agora. ou vou
Te espírito e em da casa ele estava
A sonho ou sombras ou ambos

Can I find order in my house? 
Do I need to go back 
to that place in my mind where I am mourning?

The small thing is, even though it doesn’t make sense.

You are not a child.
The burned books
Returned to the fish.
Green as earth or water (copper) and for air in holes
Those lost pieces of books are
playing with plastic, glass on the beach.


Almost hypericum nearly nepenthe.




There are many moments over many years that have become a long moment of feeling the world, like an hour during a child's summer day.


joaninha

joaninha, joaninha
sem a cauda
ainda um dragão
com asas de fogo
uma corpa cor de sangue 
salpicado de cinzas

joaninha joaninha
uma caçadora
uma vingadora
ver vermelho
vejo vermelho
quando te vejo

________

ladybird, ladybird
without a tail
still a dragon
with wings of fire
and blood-coloured body
sprinkled with ashes

ladybird ladybird
a huntress
an avenger
see red
I see red
when I see you


Saturday, March 30, 2024

a high shuttered window

has a twin window

glass patched with tape

lets in light

as rain

feeds the roof

rampant with fern and polypody

-----------

Stone bones

grand abandoned homes

The rich have disappeared,

as will the cardboard walls

holding blanketed bodies.

It's in the dog's eyes,

all of it -

such loneliness

------------

 

 

 


Thursday, March 28, 2024

 Andrea Maria from Clavicórdio

"I like to think that my hatred is a kind of mysticism.
It's not a totalitarian hatred, spread without care 
or devotion, but a humble, somewhat hypocritical, 
contemplative hatred, filled to the nostrils, like a saint, 
with a faint rotten aroma and dried blood.
I know that to hate is to still be in relationship. Refusal 
is still a relationship, like the father who abandons his 
son to save us. And I believe wholeheartedly in the son
 mixed with the cross."
 
Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr  john crowley 
 
I had lost my faith, as the church would say it, though I think the reverse is just as true. In fact I’m not sure that faith was ever what I had. I think I was not capax Dei, in Augustine’s phrase: I had, and have, no capacity for God. Living in the sacred time you didn’t really need it; you didn’t even need belief. All you needed were five senses, a sacerdotal language, and the solemnities of repetition. - John Crowley


w a t e r w o r d s

 Several words for bodies of water changed meanings between the old country and the new. 
In England a pond is artificial, but in America it is natural. Creek in British English refers to an inlet from the sea, while in American English it describes a tributary of a river. An English watershed is a line or ridge separating the waters that flow into different drainage areas, but in America it’s a slope down which the water flows, or the catchment area of a river. Americans added the meaning of a small stream or brook to branch and said fork to refer to one arm of a river as well as a fork in the road. 
 
- Rosemary Ostler 2023 from The United States of English-The American Language from Colonial Times to the Twenty-First Century


a poem, repeated

 To whom it may concern, Mr. Kirala's intention is to accelerate the process of making a beautiful tiger, and he is good at it.

各位キララ氏虎美措置加速意図はに得意ひいすんしチンからもちのいい国とは近くイス口せせん


unconformity, a line  that separated time 
radically different rock formations, 
layers of finite

gaps
absences
Siccar Point
three men and no end
cement works at Dunbar
and the Muirs away
driftless
and sere
concrete weirs
here and there
where no fish stay
no children among the grasses
deep time passes
seas
leaves and island for a lake
so deep it’s first in freshwater size
and rarely frozen
surprisingly clear down 8 meters
and found there thomsonite
east
of lonely
Morton Outcrops

a caminhada

a caminhada (the walk)

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

Eu nunca estou sozinho
Estou sempre sozinho

P R O J E C T S

 1

a r t e

Cá estou eu (h e r e  am I, here I am)  

 

projeto um  -  uma visão da vida

 

uma folha de ouro

um velho cão dourado

gengibre

som

o mar Báltico

sicómoro empedrado

uma enfermeira a fumar

_____________________

a vision of  life

one golden leaf 

an old gold dog 

ginger 

sound 

the Baltic sea

cobbled sycamore 

a nurse smoking

_________________

projeto dois - folhas e tableau 

Thimble-sized gold book of margaritas or margaridas 
ou Margaret’s goddess of bloom without pluck, 
fucked by another religion and beheaded


Ana Ann Anne - barrens (barren women) and after 
or 
why you are more than blood or bloodline


Natural histories -
I prefer Juana Alipay’s de Machado Worthington 
to  what?
A pill in a bottle
 
A pleasant legend as many like Grimm are neither natural nor history


Lucretius  Pliny

projeto três -filmes

What’s the skinny?Assets bought and sold
Most unassuming ant richer than that

Boats barquinho the river inland
Susana Monsó philosopher on grief

Directed to see
A house centipede  
Over stained glass
 

Light on sand
In shadow
In hear

Sixteen absences
The heartrecedes
Terminar
Desligaram
An afterword

projeto quatro - coisas

An exhibition of flag poems each inspired by a word an artist in the exhibit provides

 


 

t h o u g h t s

 1

A kiss
that wishes to be 
an expression of freedom,
away from the safety of partnership
 
2
 
I go into old age 
alone
an Alcott Jo that
chose her own ending
 
3
 
Start to or first recognize
your shadows, you said
 
4

What makes me see
 
5

The difficulty of long sickness
the heart in disrepair,
weary of nothing but exhaustion itself

6
To be, truly,
and as a solitary
is the joy.
 
7
Deserved access to your mind’s eye
Interesting interruptions

8
Wind is accessible 

light at the end

light

as it ends

slips under

as it ends 

into such disarray 

that its ellipsis is 

a sloppy summary of day.

Still, it stores unseen greens

to come, or come again.

_________________________

night wind broke the marble

but not the bat, lonely, lost,

lodged under the rolling 

shuttered door

hanging nearby

more refugees, dark shapes.

Midnight brings a bird to the window

and an animal creeping along the sill.



















s t o r m


a gull falls from


salt-altered air

as warnings shift

yellow to orange,

becomes part of

coastal foment

foretold.

 

time stutters, small wet bursts of minutes

 

that have been pushed, crest.

 

shore-bound

surfaces

tousled

 

have lost the locus of time

 

air underwater 

as the gull,

tumbling,

disappears into

fuming spray, 

wings bent, 

and mewling.

 


 



 


Thursday, March 14, 2024

things

(fuzzy, forming)

thought of

(ought, want, could)

when I wake

make omurice

mourn river eel

wrist pain means rain

fish out of water

I couldn't kick the eel

não há coragem
eu não há couragem

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 vida lá
Lá em baixo, no rio
 
e uma morte
uma morte no ar
 
I couldn't kick the brown eel
dead in road shoulder sand
into the green shoulder grass

 
 




 


Wednesday, March 13, 2024

nothing 

much

this

bliss

solitude


friends in

beginning

with

eggs (who are sheep)

then creeping warm

glimpsing

weed

bee,

bird,

boy with ball

all small things

eight stories high

I give thanks for

 




Thursday, March 7, 2024

1

Tonight the inevitable 
creeping into my bones. 
 
 
2
às vezes
ao meu lado
 
sometimes
by my side
 
 
3
need boundaries
 
4

spillt
milk
whole
 

 

 

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

Primeiro, 
os andorinhões regressaram,
hoje 
as joaninhas, 
e as pequenas abelhas pretas.
 
First, 
the swifts returned,
today 
ladybugs,
and the small black bees.
 
 
3
 
O jasmim num frasco faz-me companhia enquanto escrevo.

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

what to

put

in place

of space



days fill

with broken violins

and damp stones.


I believe I need

their weight

to

remain here,

outside myself.


you are now able to breathe 



 


Tuesday, February 20, 2024

o barco dos sonhos
não é o barco dos sonhos?


long nights unslept

kept awake by small impurities

the not good enoughs that haunt

and play

stay under eyelids

and fall out at two am

 


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, romanizedGalê, 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

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

Amanhã regressa o mau tempo, ele disse, que se prolongará por vários dias.

Eu digo que nenhum tempo é mau se eu estiver vivo. Vivo, cada dia é um bom dia.
 
 
 
I am grateful for the shutters, 
flexing and shuddering in the howling wind. 
I thank the rain pouring weight into pots and soil, 
making stable my small high plots of earth. 
 
Dearth of cares when the weather is this. 

Sampling sound. Can rain murmurate?

Can my closed-in rooms hum as hives do?
 
The eucalptus sway under white, and I think
you are bamboo now
imagining their tall trunks 
clacking like snow geese
 
Lone gull
hovering in the midst of it all
young by the color of its feathers
gorgeously ebullient -
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.

The swifts return.

Among gulls,

a brave bee

sees my trees 

eight stories up.

entry of

sun

won over

cold by noon,

dropping at four -

more cold

soon.


When days 

into nights

were sleepless, 

full of unease,

thoughts unpaused

flowed as rivers do

in early snow-melt spring,

things askew,

jumbled, 

tossed,

sound thoughts turned

flotsam.

An herb draught drunk, a pill,

and now 

with calmer, earlier, sleep

I rise with the fog.


Three nights unknown.

Dreamless fissures.

 


Saturday, February 3, 2024

Wednesday, January 31, 2024

 If your world is very small

you seem very large

but if the universe

in its expansiveness

calls

small is

a star

so far away

 that's all

 

so much more

than before

 

But I guess

less

will return



Sunday, January 28, 2024

I found it today

the Febros

running dark 

through bottom land 

a dirt trail beside it

roads of calçadas

and houses perched like herons along it


I walked 

got lost

to my surprise

my eyes

remembered how to 

return to solitude


that house streaming light

as you open its door




Saturday, January 27, 2024

sleeplessness

fierce winds

endless winds

and rain

ainda

she says 

as razões para viver continuam a ressurgir

 

In Um Rakuba, a third within are children

In Kutapalong,

some drown in monsoon rains

 

There are more.

Say the names - Kakuma, Dadaad, Za' ateri. 

 


 

He'd guessed as much,

that she was south.

Was it Rafah? Khan Younis?

 

He had to let her go.

 

When the shelling resumes,

a gifted translator

jobless now

reaches

for her children,

memorising their misery

in four languages.

Wednesday, January 24, 2024

 Morning.

I shoo seagulls into the air

into the warm bright sunlight.

I am grateful.

The lengthening days

the long quiet hours ahead

are enough.

Is this peace?

 


 

 

Monday, January 22, 2024

Yemanjá comes in with the rain 

in from the sea, blesses

my body, 

thick with water and salt.

 

 

Sunday, January 21, 2024

1

(more than anything)

I believe

that I am real.

 

2

My joy doesn't

need me.

 

3

I delight in old remnants

that are ridiculed as rags

 

4

I am hurt by the hubris

that kills children

 


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.











 

 

 

 

 

 


 



 

 

 


 small poems

 

 1

c left

clef t


2

itidatemashita

onegaishimasu

kudasai


3

gallinas

gallinas

vinte quatro ovos

e

um galo castanho

sozinho

Friday, January 12, 2024


each

and

every

 

We're not lost 

in leisure

nor John Clares

worked to the bone -

I'd call us

river stone,

clearly worn

but still here


reading 

Flannery and Eudora

storied

lives

sliced

once

or twice

with sound



Wednesday, January 10, 2024

the particular

unknown

then again

lost in  it


_______________________


umbilicus   mundo 


________________________


the appearance of



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

 Last

hours of sun -

greeted by a lizard

a podengo

the meow of a peacock.

 

Última

horas de sol -

saudado por um lagarto

um podengo

o miado de um pavão.

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".


 


 

uprooted limão

and sorrowful marmelo

too late

too early 

to fruit

More the physicality of 

moving through

where you are are

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.

 

 

 
 
 
30
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unus'd to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe,
And moan th' expense of many a vanish'd sight;
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restor'd, and sorrows end.