Mayday

Thirty poems in thirty days. It's a good exercise (but I'm glad it's over). Writing on a daily basis is a healthy thing for a writer, and the daily poems make that happen, whether they are any good or not. Most of them are not. But they're grist, or fodder, or seed--whatever metaphor suits. And now, on to May, the most beautiful month of the year in Minnesota! Let there be light.

Day 30

Theme of wind, accompaniment

 of rain. All in the key of green

major. Modulation to greener

green with trumpets of sun. It’s

all a silly metaphor. Words are,

themselves, metaphors. Units of

memory, units of measure. We

say inch and mean worm, short

line, time stuck. We say grand-

mother and mean the past, a

warm lap, childhood, indifference.

We say heart and mean the

beating organ, what moves us,

that thing that someday stops.

Day 29

Where there is no path, walking

is good if difficult, vivid refuse

of the season everywhere

littering the surface of the ground.

We don’t mow it, rake it, burn it;

we leave it where it is, dropped

and fallen, blown and torn,

shredded and broken. The loose,

half-accidental scattering

is what we come to see, here,

where there is no path walking.

Day 28

At night when everything expands

and edges melt into the next dark

I hear the canticle of the pipes—

my lungs and heart speaking to each other

sending messages to the universe

of arteries and far-flung capillaries.

Press your ear against the wall and listen.

The sun has already begun to rise.

Day 27

Very Short Poem

Of all the ways

I have

of making

safety

you are

the best.

Day 26

There’s music in it. From the center

it comes out or up or even down,

depending on where you stand. There is

no gravity in music, so it

doesn’t care where you are and it

can reach you anyhow. It doesn’t fall

like an apple off a tree; Newton

the musician would never have

discovered gravity. It drifts, weightless,

more like wind than anything. Or it

flies, following certain patterns through

the air. Although it seems to fade away

until you can no longer hear it, out there,

somewhere, the music always is.

Day 25

A Week or So in Early Spring

At night she had six bay horses

and the horses wove

a plait of animals for her.

At night she heard the rain

that in the morning

had disappeared.

At night she met people

in the long ago.

In the morning the red-

lipsticked tulips

took their color back.

At night she wore her mother’s

silk suit, the one she had been

buried in.

At night coyotes yipped and woke her

late. In the morning the neighbor’s

rooster woke her early.

At night she met people

she had only known.

At night she walked up stairs

that went in only

one direction.

In the morning she adjusted

her eyesight to match

the changes.

In the morning she checked off

the transformations.

At night she stroked the

black manes and fine jaws

of her six bay horses.