“Astronomy for the use of schools and academies.” Joseph A. Gillett (1882)
Oceanus Procellarum
His eyes the hue of all Earth’s oceans tossed In tumult (spume, spray) churn infinitely Her heart, the oceans of the moon, ensconced In basalt magma mares laid anciently He senses love and feels it coursing through Her ever-present depth, the seat of grief Conditions both are now accustomed to By life’s relentless quest to find relief Yet, love and laughter fill their atmosphere A world where they alone can live and be It saves them from an epoch of disaster– A home, a space, a place—this you and me New woven in this moment learning how Their love gives import to the here and now
Sunset over Utah Lake. (February 2025)
Sea of Scorpio
Darling, I haven’t yet told you How beautiful your eyes are Like the ocean’s depth, a sea Moved by primordial currents, dark, Yes, below the surface, but there Beautiful, almost infinitesimal Flecks of ochre, golden troves, In the rippling rich blue that Remind me of the entire universe Contained in that chasm, which Is to say soul, kelp ribbons Amber stones, acorn barnacles, Brittle stars brought to surface by Maelstrom. Sign that all the Depths you’ve fathomed where You learned through excruciating Joy and wracking gladness, an Abyss rife with life and pain, Eternal you, there laid bare Inside your beautiful eyes
each stalk of grass is hollow and barren this time of year skeletons of viridescent pasts like raw leafless trees memories of living and of dying the pulling back the cocooning of life in silent night, darkness chambers, interiors of many plants and animals teaches us all about the death and the rebirth of life, light so that we won’t fully despair
Deer Creek. Image, my own.
The Return
the light returns this morning with the owls they call from tree to branch, as sun
pinks surely over the charcoaled horizon kilned through night, and sealed in the new, cold light
of this winter morning where I’m aghast at the magic, memory magnificence, majesty transitive verb
of the whole thing where I am present when the light is seven minutes old and each
photon graces my retina with the reminder that the light always returns until it doesn’t
until the whole sky is bathed in numinous halogenic possibility the presence of the now
as the light returns may we remember the power of the darkness the importance
of slow, intentional rest, the rejuvenating properties of sleep for a world that simply needs to listen to
the magic of the intransitive verbs of owls
Christmas Windmill. Image, my own.
Dark
Enfold me in your blackness, I don’t want to be afraid of the dark In fact, I want to embrace my shadow Shadows of all that I thought would Suck the marrow out of me, but instead Offered me a respite, a resting place A hallowed breath of solace and silence Dark, the thing that so much incandescent Luminosity is meant to fight, to ward off, as Humanity wilts under all this light
Tamarisk and Gray Skies. Image, my own.
Space
Maybe the most surprising thing about poems is that they take a fair amount of space and time The words are often all there, waiting on the lip, the tip of consciousness, but flow takes room Takes open-ended realities, wide skies like altars in the arcing air, vast closenesses and distances Which the heart contemplates, the healing place, the hell, the compassionate lengths to which a Human will go to tell a truth, a peace, a playful nothing, a love, a life, a poem
The Road. Image, my own.
Don’t Die
when it began, I’m not quite sure, but as of late my son has a new post script for nearly every exchange, “don’t die” he tells me as I start the engine of the car, “don’t die” he encourages as I head off to work “don’t die” when the rain is falling in sheets that darken each atom of exposed earth, he must understand something about the nature of life
Beloved and Time. Image, Aubreigh Parks.
Celebration
sometimes the celebration will be the growing of the light minute by minute over the horizon, moment by moment in our children’s eyes. Sometimes the celebration will be the sleep, the forgetting, the separation and the longing which brings deeper communion with the divine, the place, the way, unsure, the path, the journey, one precious step at a time. Sometimes the celebration will be the growing of the self, the yearning, expanding, nearly cracking open of your sternum with the enlarging, ever-beating heart, the lungs full-burdened with life giving nitrogen plus oxygen, exhale the heaviness and grief, inhale, close your eyes and let go
Jupiter and the Pleiades. November. Northern Hemisphere. Image, my own.
Holocene
When the sky lifts, so lapis and milky blue, Your ocular senses are overwhelmed The owl calls out, into and through the pencil- Sketched branches of the cottonwood, then Down from the neighbor’s roof, as the golden
Sky continues to lift into day, a flat aquamarine The stark lines of leafless branches against The air stand beckoning, the promise and Possibility of new– growth, change, revivification Glittering diamonds of momentary snow still
Hold winter’s mystery. We do not know what We will be when the new buds come, but only What is– this moment, this tree, this Possibility of everything, anything Makes our heads spin and swim
Bounded by our humanness, mortality Consequence, but dazzled by all that is In us– the roads we’ve wandered, mountains We’ve scaled, journeys taken and joyed over And travailed. So much unknown
It still feels like the owl is a good omen Round white face, deep open amber eyes, wide And night-visioned, all the flecks and freckled feather patterns of each wing spread against dawn and dusk Gifts that portent deaths and lives to come
No Name Saloon. Park City. Image, my own.
Shoes
When your shoes wear out run like hell through tulip fields Take off to the mountains Climb every geologic Formation Just to Prove You’re alive You can You’re not dead… yet You still want To spend that moment with the crickets under night’s blackness only the stars know you’re there
When your shoes are worn out you take your daughter to the gravel pit and train your camera lens on the North Star tripod so still to prove you know where you are going even though you Don’t you depress the shutter let the sky bleed in for hours and all you are left with is time
No time left But you have those Shoes to remind you to keep you on your journey Home– Through– Around– To– To that time When the cosmos smudged its glory across the lens of your camera Film Still the most sure sign that the stars will fall in to center North Balance bringing these stars to you
Autumn Sunset. November 2024. Image, my own.
Question(s)
For all those who question: Borders Boundaries Countries Alliances Allies Friends Enemies Economies Lovers Children Fools Frauds Race Place Faith
I love you
Winter Dandelion. Acrylic on heavyweight cotton paper. Margo Elizabeth Glass. 2024
Night Guide
When Ursa Major dips so low In the Northern Hemisphere that Only her two guiding stars are Visible in the deep of darkness Black, the seven sisters start to rise Pleiades, in silent winter’s night as Cassiopeia, queen, stands out above The calm chill also pointing her way to our Closest cosmic simulacrum Andromeda The stars are there, uncaring and seemingly Cold, distant even impossibly far, and yet Known, seen, perceived though the crickets Haven’t made a sound, the air, nearly Incorporeal breaths of rest, sleep, A thousand dreams take flight
Can you imagine? Deafness where once was joyous Sound Blindness where once filtrations of color-filled light Ricocheted Can you imagine? Losing everything? If you are human, the guess is, yes But why must pain catalyze all our understanding? Is it Truly our only teacher? Isn’t the promise of Death Enough to cause us to cling to love, to Life, to now, maybe not. So maybe we go deaf, blind, Senseless Into that good night, into the dark, waiting for The dawn with breath so small we barely live, sore Respiration Reaction, all part of this existence when what we Thought we wanted most is gone, dematerialized where Reality is echoed and Chambered Oh heart, please, live, please drink the night and day as A cup of bitter sweetness, lasting but a blink A piano hammer in the abyss, hammer to string, string bing, bing, ba-bing, go, boogie, Be
Gold Nike Shoes. Oakland Museum of California. Image, my own.
Andante
It will never do to keep running Into yourself if you can’t look up, Ponder the path of the stars in The night sky, gaze with longing And new eyes, on the moon with Rapture, take in the horizon each Day and walk into a new lifetime
Light Bulb(s). Image, my own.
Honey
Honey, laughter and green curry are all the #soulfood I need the joy of bright kaffir lime leaves charged into garlic and simmered over vegetables, a meal to carry us through the ages, a gale of fascist hail and bull shit, the storm of the century is upon us, and all we can do is cook, sing, and watch the moon as it rises high in the night, silent observer of her earthly neighbors what a perplexity what a tragedy, only for a moment, all mixed with joy and delight, how will we last, how will we survive the fight join it, gear up, only history knows on this very first calm snowy night. We hunker in, we knit, we resist like life depends on it because it does, resistance can be small nearly silent until the way is clear and that same moon swims overhead as the path is lit in the quiet dark
Moon. Image, my own.
Orb
In reality In the body Black and gray White and blue softest aura Hazing purple Bold broad Moon the Clouds opaled All around Stars and sky Dappled through and Through Lord, Bless Gratitude for Ohs and glitters Heavens and Earth The glory of it All that lone Full Moon
creation is like wielding the mystery for a moment being given the chance to turn the nautilus over in your hands and awe for a few precious flashes its precise and perfect structure, wonder at being given transubstantiational power, snippet of the infinite, devotional on the unity of all the cosmos unraveled, a glittering equilibirc instant
Driftwood, grass, trees, stones. Image, my own.
Shit That Makes Poets Laugh
a couplet of haiku getting to write the word Uranus espousing astrology while being an unbeliever writing all the people you know into poems recording the natural world and wishing for more smell words—the olfactory is important, man, and so under expressioned—playing with all mediums of art– music, history, science, language, painting, sculpture, theater– being a badass generalist the fact that mostly poets read your poems realizing that everything is art, and it’s easier than you think to tell someone to fuck off trying to figure out if anyone really has an editor? (Maggie Smith, in my dreams you’re reading this and cutting and slashing, and un en- jambing to your heart’s delight.) Hearing that one of Mary Oliver’s best poems, ‘Wild Geese’ was an exercise, and experiment in end- stopped lines performed for another poet, a magic trick (hear Krista Tippet’s interview with Oliver on her unparalleled podcast *On Being*) realizing that your fly is down, thank you John Craigie trying to figure out the infinite mystery while trying to figure out american politics while simultaneously realizing that life is built on water looking up the word ‘word’ in a thesaurus realizing that you should have hidden an easter egg in all of your work and you’ve forgotten
Balance. Oregon Coast. Image, my own.
Libra Season
As Libra season concludes, I’d like to invite all of us to love a lot of Libras for the next few days. Like my triple air massage therapist, bless her. And my best friend of all time, he could not be more elegant and nuanced in his approach to the world, and people who I don’t even know, and people I once knew all air signs, maybe it is the open-hearted pleasers, balancing their relationships, the “we” that Libras present, it’s that fire in me that always gets stirred up by the scale and measure, skin and bones, maybe it is the quality of the breeze this time of year that makes me fall in love with Libras, a little more each October, regardless, I breath the unruly whips of Wind and Rain, the scatter of leaves, the romance of dying with Libras in mind
Hunter’s Moon. Super Moon. Full Moon. October 2024. Image, my own.
Chap Book best is the open chap book on the soul leave it vulnerable in air
Green things and fog. Image, my own.
Lovng Hard (no i) Sussing and figuring and preparing and planning as to how to love difficult people: Drive the Bus, Like Mo Willems’ Pigeon, in the front seat Self-assured, ready Without license, but there is no playbook to love these difficult, purposeless individuals NPCs, people who have, a bit, burned out on life Who see the end, but seem to have no ideas on wellness or whole ness- are not willing or able to take the reins any longer, who are Offensive and rude Blunt without purpose Unmeasured in their Aimless wanderings through Time and Space, Pretentious in their lack of attention to others, Tough
Refined + Rugged 