Category: A Daily Poem

(Poem #474 on new numbering scheme)

Solidly overcast sky pins people like butterflies, broken
creatures who lack any purpose or meaning, and nothing is spoken.

(Poem #473 on new numbering scheme)

long meetings eat time
time gyres around like a top
then time eats the sky

(Poem #472 on new numbering scheme)

I heard that it snowed
from my students. But the ground
was snowless by noon.

(Poem #471 on new numbering scheme)

A leaf tore loose and fluttered down.
A girl was walking slow.
She saw the leaf and stretched her hand.
She caught it like a pro.

(Poem #470 on new numbering scheme)

You.
You talked.
You explained.
You challenged me.
You gave me presents.
You said, "Don't ever change."
You lived, laughed, traveled, and cried.
You said, "You've changed." I had to leave.
You then made clear the world was not yours.

(Poem #469 on new numbering scheme)

I needed to get out of my house.
I walked around my neighborhood.
I saw a lot of buildings.
I saw a lot of cars.
I looked at the trees.
I stepped on leaves.
I saw birds.
I thought.
I.

(Poem #468 on new numbering scheme)

passing buses wail
a magpie glides to a branch
atoms get slower

[daily log: walking, 8km]

(Poem #466 on new numbering scheme)

Everyone seated on cushions, around a long table for late night
eating and drinking, a constant slow patter of talk in Korean
that I can't quite understand: the ubiquitous Korean group dinner.
I have decided to write down and publish this ode to the hweh-sik.
What is an ode? You expect me to tell you about bouts of fondness,
share some congenial anecdote. No. I just sit and absorb words.

(Poem #465 on new numbering scheme)

sun
shining
down on me
through my window
actually it's
annoying me a lot
so i think i'll pull my shade
and get it out of my eyes now
it's not that i don't like the sun
but well sometimes it gets on my nerves

(Poem #464 on new numbering scheme)

Only one student
came last night to that bad class
so it was less bad.

(Poem #463 on new numbering scheme)

I can taste the salt
the other tongue-senses lost...
but still there is salt.

(Poem #462 on new numbering scheme)

A twilight settles like dust on sand,
the sky consumed by lavender,
the clouds slightly soft and vague,
the roar of cars on streets
imperceptible
until you pay
attention:
zooming...
hiss.

(Poem #460 on new numbering scheme)

The wind grasped puddles
left over from morning rain
and the moon was full.

(Poem #459 on new numbering scheme)

Kay turned, saying, “My birthday was Saturday. Were you aware?”
Next to me, she pushed out from her desk, but not looking at me.
“I didn’t know.” Put my head down, sighed. So she said, “And my sister
died early Sunday. She still knew – in her coma – her deathday
shouldn’t be shared with my birthday.” Suddenly tears were appearing.
“I didn’t plan on this… why am I crying again?” I sat silent.
Gathering scattered cool remnants of calm, she returned to her work.
Just an odd, errant outburst of emotion disturbing smooth water.

Coda. I watched a small orangegold leaf twist, struggle, detach
float and then hang, now suspended against a wide orangegray sky,
held there in place by a wind that was blowing from somewhere quite far.
It was so strange. Maybe life’s endless terminations grant
sweeping perspective on things – if not hope – and so, pulling my eyes
down and away from the spinning dead leaf, in the end I keep walking.

(Poem #458 on new numbering scheme)

Beasts of the Earth, part-uncoiled from the sphere, rising up skyward,

cruising alongside the edge of the sky, become platforms of gold stone.

(Poem #457 on new numbering scheme)

Skeletons, mummies,
witches and ghosts. The fall night
decorates the trees.

(Poem #455 on new numbering scheme)

ㅁ
A terrible inertia settles in
created by exhaustion, setbacks, sighs.

– a couplet in (quite rough) blank verse (iambic pentameter?).

(Poem #454 on new numbering scheme)

I came home from work.
My computer was broken.
So I did not blog.

(Poem #453 on new numbering scheme)

The world is chopped in pieces, then,
the gods' desires irrelevant.

(Poem #452 on new numbering scheme)

I listen to the radio:
it's Minnesota news.
It tells me it will snow today.
I miss that sort of muse.

(Poem #451 on new numbering scheme)

Even in Goyang,
sometimes woodsmoke scents the air.
It smells like camping.

(Poem #450 on new numbering scheme)

The air had turned cold
as I walked home. At last Fall
falls down from heaven.

(Poem #449 on new numbering scheme)

“What is appropriate,” she asked, “when all around us the world burns?”

“Well let’s discuss the gold sky’s hues, then, or instead, let’s sing,” I said.

(Poem #448 on new numbering scheme)

The people brought machines to bear -
they sought to solve some things.
Instead they found they should submit
beneath their gadgets' wings.

(Poem #447 on new numbering scheme)

There is no poem that can get you unstuck from the daily experience.

Actually, stuckness can only be tackled by diligent disregard.

(Poem #446 on new numbering scheme)

The lines project across the hollow gulfs
that underlie imagination's flights.

(Poem #444 on new numbering scheme)

Dawn comes later now
But gray gives way to silver
blue or pink or gold

(Poem #443 on new numbering scheme)

Lately the poems are not coming so easily. Epics and haikus are
difficult; weather and sunsets and student behavior become tired.

– some kind of effort at a heroic couplet (dactylic hexameter)

(Poem #442 on new numbering scheme)

The sun was large, and alligators played
beneath a random rainbow made of trash.

You can see the following blogpost for context of this couplet.