The ground, soft, sticky, and smelly
is melting away beyond my window.
I cannot touch or smell it.
I cannot hold it in my hand.
My view fades as the fog rolls in from the fields;
It has disappeared; vanished.

I step through my window
I walk out on the nothingness
I do not sink or stumble or dissipate
I am held by the unknown ground

The rock, solid, rough-hewn, and firm
is firmly in my grasp.
I look down the cliff’s face.
I look confident and controlled.
My life falls from the mountain as the rock crumbles in my grip;
It has disappeared; vanished.

I fall through the air with the greatest of ease
I smash, lifeless, against the rocks below
I think my last thought, “I was certain…”
I am loosed by the firm ground

The path, dark, twisted, and chartless
is the one that I must take.
I thought, “Straight is the path”?
I thought, “Narrow is the gate”?
My life slips from view as I venture on, to the unknown;
I must disappear; vanish.

GATHER ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old time is still a-flying :
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he’s a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he’s to setting.

That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer ;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may go marry :
For having lost but once your prime
You may for ever tarry.

The darkness pounds, pounds, pounds;
It pounds a way into my head.
Depression is all around me and soon it may enter my soul.

My body is weak, my mind is weak, my soul is weak.
How do I strengthen them?
How do I discipline myself?

I do, do, do;
The very things I should not do.
How do I train myself to defeat myself? How do I best my worst?

I am the darkness, I am the weakness, I am the things I hate.
I do not know how to not do.
I do not know how to live.

My father always knew the secret
name of everything–
stove bolt and wing nut,
set screw and rasp, ratchet
wrench, band saw, and ball
peen hammer. He was my
tour guide and translator
through that foreign country
with its short-tempered natives
in their crew cuts and tattoos,
who suffered my incompetence
with gruffness and disgust.
Pay attention, he would say,
and you’ll learn a thing or two.

Now it’s forty years later,
and I’m packing up his tools
(If you know the proper
names of things you’re never
at a loss) tongue-tied, incompetent,
my hands and heart full
of doohickeys and widgets,
watchamacallits, thingamabobs.

http://mendota.english.wisc.edu/~WALLACE/poems.html

Windows is shutting down, and grammar are
On their last leg. So what am we to do?
A letter of complaint go just so far,
Proving the only one in step are you.

Better, perhaps, to simply let it goes.
A sentence have to be screwed pretty bad
Before they gets to where you doesnt knows
The meaning what it must of meant to had.

The meteor have hit. Extinction spread,
But evolution do not stop for that.
A mutant languages rise from the dead
And all them rules is suddenly old hat.

Too bad for we, us what has had so long
The best seat from the only game in town.
But there it am, and whom can say its wrong?
Those are the break. Windows is shutting down.

(Guardian, April 27, 2005)

This year Marie drives back and forth
from the hospital room of her dying friend
to the office of the adoption agency.

I bet sometimes she doesn’t know
what threshold she is waiting at –

the hand of her sick friend, hot with fever;
the theoretical baby just a lot of paperwork so far.

But next year she might be standing by a grave,
wearing black with a splash of
banana vomit on it,

the little girl just starting to say Sesame Street
and Cappuccino latte grande Mommy.
The future ours for a while to hold, with its heaviness –

and hope moving from one location to another
like the holy ghost that it is.

***http://www.panhala.net/Archive/Migration.html

My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn’t pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.

A Primer of the Daily Round

by Howard Nemerov

A peels an apple, while B kneels to God,
C telephones to D, who has a hand
On E’s knee, F coughs, G turns up the sod
For H’s grave, I do not understand
But J is bringing one clay pigeon down
While K brings down a nightstick on L’s head,
And M takes mustard, N drives into town,
O goes to bed with P, and Q drops dead,
R lies to S, but happens to be heard
By T, who tells U not to fire V
For having to give W the word
That X is now deceiving Y with Z,
Who happens just now to remember A
Peeling an apple somewhere far away.

“Prayer Chain” by Tim Nolan

My mother called to tell me
about an old classmate of mine who

was dying on the parish prayer chain—
or was very sick—or destitute—

or it had not worked out—the marriage—
or the kids were all on drugs—and

all the old mothers were praying intensely
for all the pain of their children

and for life—they were praying for life—
in their quiet rooms—sipping decaf coffee—

I bet they’ve been praying for me at times—
so I’ll find my way—so I won’t rob a bank—

I’ll take them—the mystical prayers of old mothers—
it matters—all this patient and purposeful love.