Poem: September 11, 2023

A Discovery in the Library

We forget about the library
and its towering stacks--
the ordered labyrinth, the lines
that wrap around corners and
zag from top to bottom like
the path of an antique typewriter.

We forget we can travel from
Aristotle to Aristophanes, then
Herakles and Homer, Juno and Jove
and the collapse of whole civilizations
that lurched toward our own.
Ebbing and flowing. Exploding slow.

We forget we can get so lost in
the corners where no one has pulled
this history of textiles or that bible
of southern cuisine for maybe fifteen
years, but there they are, the voices
whose particular passions preceded us.

We forget there are treasures buried
in silt at the bottom of rivers of books.
We forget the lost cities sunk under
the weight of new cities, and thoughts
branched away from and returning to
themselves. We forget that libraries

remember.

Poem: January 26, 2023

Through a Crack in the Door

Think of those times late at night,

really any time in the long expanse

of life when you are walking down

any empty hallway, alone, but trying

to not draw attention to yourself, as if

you were an interloper progressing

deeper into the heart of a shadow.

Maybe you are six years old and awake

and padding through a sleeping house.

Maybe you are older and lost in

an unfamiliar wing of a glass and 

green formica office building, or

maybe this is a dream, a dark corridor

of memory and archetype and symbol.

Note the many doors, some locked, 

some dark, some lit from within, all

shadow and yellow glass, some ajar.

Imagine the slivers of otherness, 

the temptations of other stories, an echo

of music, a whispered argument, 

a red shoe, the click of a typewriter, 

some slow flickers, some sudden flashes.

Imagine the absence of invitation

and the guilty refusal to look away.

Poem: January 1, 2023

New Year’s Day

Today the work

is imagining the days ahead-

a waking dream in which

we wander through our hopes

for ourselves and let loose

this crusty psychological 

accumulation.

Today is a long stretch

Of a day. Today is 

a warm cat napping in our lap.

Today is a tall glass of clear water,

effortless and essential,

a winding tide that laps

at the best and gentle part of us.

Poem: December 9, 2022

Lost and Found

If it’s true that in this world

of cell phones, and satellites, and GPS,

of FInd My iPhone and Find My Friends, 

location services,

virtual assistants, 

and facial recognition,

If it’s true nothing can be truly lost,

then it is true as well that nothing can be found,

Or newly found- no new

discovery around the bend, no new

friend or beautiful stone, or missing piece

that hasn’t already been viewed on YouTube

at least a few times, 

no place one could find oneself 

that Google hasn’t mapped

or that passing spy cams can’t access– 

the eyes that capture, the eyes that trap.

Searching is not the searching of the past.

Clicking fingers, scrolling screens focus, track.

And finding lacks a certain pleasure, 

The treasure of found objects

And unexpected art. 

Imagine what we’ve lost.  

Poem: December 7, 2022

An Open Letter to My Students

To Whom It May Concern:

The pharmacy informs me that due

to the national shortage of Adderall-

which hasn’t been available locally

since much earlier this fall-

doctors have been prescribing

concerta to their patients instead,

thus creating an unanticipated,

public run on my daily meds, 

and so, they tell me, they can’t predict

when they will be able to fill

my request for my monthly bottle

of little white barrel-shaped pills.

So now I find myself explaining

the consequences of seven days,

unmedicated and still at work. 

So to start, I am walking through a haze, 

left without access to the clearer,

straighter path, while also finding that

I am surrounded by every noise which,

a week ago, wouldn’t have mattered,

so I am overstimulated by, yes, 

literally every single thing that’s here, 

and my anxiety spikes, and my

heart races so quickly that I fear

I will snap at one of you even though

you’re doing nothing different or wrong,

but my exhaustion has peaked,

and my reserves are all gone,

which brings me to this letter’s point:

to make of you a simple request-

Please chill out and do your work-

I truly believe that would be best.

Sincerely, 

Mr. W

Poem: December 2, 2022

Passion Project

So I will take my hammer,

my drill and saw, 

and in an open space, 

I will build some joy.

With plane and lathe

and hasp and file

I will do my best to shape

the great happiness.

With sand and paint

and a yellow stain

I will create the shining thing

that sings and sings.

And I will place it 

in a public square

and, smiling, greet the friends

who join me there.

Poem: December 1, 2022

The State of Play

It’s easy enough to imagine

myself, now, when I’m feeling

generally healthy, generally

fashionable, generally

on top of things, as I say, 

to imagine myself as being

in a state of perpetual youth.

Truly, I feel that way. 

Like I’m eighteen and in no way

decaying.

Ascendant, if anything.

Until… until… until…

I do that thing to my back

just reaching for the cat

or I forget a word that I know

I know, something like that.

or I don’t recover as fast

as I should from the heavy meal,

the second glass, or staying up

an hour past my habitual 

eight o’clock.

Or when I wipe away

the glaze of steam from

my morning mirror

and uncover the gray,

the gray, the gray, the gray.

My very own Dorian Gray.