NORTHEAST MOUNTAIN PEOPLE
  • On Hiking (Home)
    • Southern New England Highest Summits
    • White Mountain Parsnip
  • About
  • Links
A Cargo of Green Hearts
~POEMS~

rain, 2

6/29/2017

 
rain is on my mind
and how I will lie down
in it some day
or be laid down
not in the dry earth
to be the grey dust
the religious insist
I was born of
but to melt fully
under the liquid fingertips
in the way, all my life
I've melted incompletely
to tears and kisses
fully this time
not a toenail withheld 
not a thought
just a pool of water
there for the drinkers
to become drunk on
and so drunk,
live.

​

June

6/23/2017

 
some days I feel almost content with the open
window through which the June
breeze is a kind of satisfaction, not nearly
as love, or the contact of a body,
both which I imagined I'd die without
but have not, years after the fact
although I often do not
know what to do with myself
even under the breeze and June, kindest
of months. it's as if I had gone to
the store for provisions and kept
driving, run out of gas and daylight
and kept on, then on foot, through
the months, till June came around again
and I was reminded that I'd set out for 
something but could not recall what, 
and shrugged
acknowledging I was still alive
without whatever it was and not starved to death 
not all bone, knowing that June
is still June, the breeze pleasant,
my feet kicked up on the bags
that I never unpacked.
​

rain

6/19/2017

 
​they say of rain I was 
made, of a heart filled
like a cistern, down the street
how I dragged my long hair 
and sang among storms
and flattened gardens. 
they shivered when lightning
split the nut of the sky
and I danced; they shivered
and shook while I cut myself
full of windows and drank.
but the plants took their fill 
and all the throats of the earth 
opened up, witnesses 
for me and me alone if you will
umbrella-breaker, reading
these lines and drowning,
in love, or out
as does the soul, made 
of water, and as water the soul
transubstantiated returning 
as love or out as water, or else why
do we believe the dead rise
and join the clouds? why
do we weep for those lost
which are also moving like water
which are also carrying their 
slow buckets across the jet stream 
and returning from the other side
of the earth, where it was
dark, where the dark spoke
to them in secret language
and hollowed them
with capacity everlasting,
and filled it with clean rain?
​

Varahi, 2

6/6/2017

 
​I am heading toward the sea.
I’ve loitered too much on land
lugging my bones around, following
measly stars that lead only inward.
I know they say it is necessary,
thyself: be known 
shadows: stand still, be counted
soul: inhabit this shining vocation
shirt: wear a pledge pin, stick it in deep.
insist. 
but I want to disappear.
no cloud keeps its shape.
when the rain fell it didn’t have plans
to go anywhere. just splattered
just went down, just spread out;
all the holes with their tiny tongues
trying to lick it up. 
it made me cry to think: what if this
is for me, too? to be inhaled by
the earth, to be indistinguishable.
I always imagined I’d amount 
to something. I ate dirt, stones.
I used bricks, cinderblocks. 
I carved me into things. 
then, the sea. all the blue wheels,
no mercy, lighthouses
strobing the void, salt-rotted 
graves of lost mariners pointing 
outward, away from land. 
I had a vision then, of longing 
how it never ends. 
I never knew how filthy 
I was, lover, how heavy until you 
drove me into the sea with both
tusks and took this flimsy name 
out of my clutching fingers.
​

    Poetry Log

    Poems  are posted here when I'm ready to share them. I often don't title my poems. The date you see above the poem may be the date it was posted here and not necessarily the date it was created.  To see more, click on the Archives below. 

    Archives

    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    January 2019
    November 2018
    October 2018
    August 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013



    Categories

    All
    Notifications
    Poems


    RSS Feed


    Picture

    Picture
    Unless otherwise noted, all content ©Paul-William Gagnon, Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-NoDerivs license.
Proudly powered by Weebly
  • On Hiking (Home)
    • Southern New England Highest Summits
    • White Mountain Parsnip
  • About
  • Links