Ghost Buffalo

In which the working poet asks a question of the wind.   On a Saturday morning at 3am the winds began.   So fierce were they, and so long in duration, one couldn’t help take it personally.     Become entirely discombobulated.   Consider putting a gun to one’s head.   I canceled my plans for the day, having heard the gusts were at 60 MPH all over the valley.   The howling was incessant.   The cats began attacking one another.   The dog sunk into a deep depression.   Chimes and chairs and birdhouses flew past the windows.   Food sounded awful, drink even worse.   I paced the perimeters, watched from the bedroom as a metal piece of yard art split   in two.   Our yard- umbrella, its pole staked and buried into the hard ground months ago, was finally upended.   As it somersaulted across the yard and down the ravine, it knocked over our beloved cast iron bench.    I recounted the horrors to the husband,   who was secretly glad to be enjoying the temperate air in San Francisco.   I was,

Her candle burned at both ends. * The Idea is the Fleeting Ghostly Fish Kate Light that's lit up in the world of fathoms-deep; announcing its arrival with a swish that makes the waters murmur in their sleep. There always blooms that steady stream of snow like plankton fallout in the sea of brain, from which you snitch a thought not yes not no; but Something from the world's incessant rain. The ghostly fish that's lit up from within, and bright enough to catch your eye that sweeps the depths, or reaches, or the narrrow place; its luminescence gets beneath your skin,  and cheers you when it finds your tearstained face. And if you mimic it or rise to match its pace, then you become the company it keeps. 

When it comes to Heather McHugh, I do not know which to prefer the extraordinary work or the  life the extraordinary do or the word. when it comes to Heather McHugh, same sing, blackbird.  --- GRANNY'S SONG                - Heather McHugh  If the fact itself were not at odds with most of my hopes for human life, I'd want to know why sex was always best when I stood to lose the most. Why make its charms so devilishly proximal to risk? The patterns ought to favor children's best protection -- not one parent hardened and one hurt; one predator, one weak. But nurturance appeared to have no part in our old fastest appetites -- our grappling hooks and eye-meats. Well, a mortally afflicted tree will scatter seed. That's nature's way of furthering its kind. In my own sixties (here where issue's not the issue -- not unless I go to Delhi for an embryo implant. and let me tell you I am not THAT nuts) -- here newly sixtified

From the epic to the lullaby, the stakes so high they dwarf the sky.

From the ludicrous  to the sublime, the end rhyme  is all about time.