Winter Walk #11 (I Went Out)

i went out

in bleary winter

to gather in some raw ideas

but the frozen ground 

just glared back up at me

and groused:

Who are you to catalog,

What catalogs can't hold?

You are not the engineer,

But the imaginer of cold

incredulous, I sank back in my boots

and quickly started doing calculus:

these boots are stiff and salty.

how's that? who wears them?

the sky's the color of a road.

so what? who rides it?

the falling snow is writing Bach.

falling where? who hears it?

again the ground flared up at me

bald and rumbling:

There is no such subject

To an object uncreated

They are perpendicular 

And thus always related

and sure enough,

the more I scribbled

the less I mattered,

and the more I vanished,

the less got finished,

until eventually,

reams of no poems

snowed down to the ground in shreds

unwritten and unread

Winter Walk #10 (Without Apology)

Hurrying through the glum lot,

I saw 

a distant herd of 

unemployed umbrellas,

standing proud in cold rain.

They looked green

and dimly mocking,

and I believed that they existed.

Just then, a faint horn blew-

it echoed,

filling and redefining all space.

Those umbrellas were over there

because I was over here,

and I simply believed they could exist

without committing to their existence.

Stopping, I now stood sopping

and watched them shelter nothing

without apology,

no longer straining to imagine 

what it would feel like to be 

so resolutely useless,

so unemployed. . . 

which is to say,

self employed.

Winter Walk #9 (Can I Just Say)

A warm day in January,

is perfectly plausible

but intimidating

How can I just say

it's wet

and grey today

on a walk so unconstitutional?

How can I just be

bedraggled or

beleaguered or

bedeviled or

bereft of 

decent adjectives and sleep

While the bulging sky 

ripples with laughter  

in breeze-motivated mud puddles

Then again,

maybe I'm not so constitutional either

Maybe I can just say

that I am breaking in a pair of new boots today

Or that I'm perfectly plausibly wearing 

the wrong coat

Or maybe 

if I just keep walking

and stop clutching at the clouds

all sorts of novel words

will soon rain down

to bail me out

Winter Walk #8 (Spring Preview)

in the post-wet morning,

clean pavement gleams-

reflective

un-posessed 

and vaguely satisfied with

its oblique take on

distant grave stones

everything else in the lenient breeze

just seems to smear into the smell

of fecund mud

and mild rot

both of which 

tickle hunger

Winter Walk #7 (Unpersuaded)

slack

and obtuse,

i step redundantly 

through the vague morning,

reaching past the dull strain of lingering sleep

to wonder dimly

which of the following i am most like:

that snowy pond,

a silent, unpolished mirror,

keeping nothing, giving nothing back?

or this empty bench,

a ceaseless proposal,

always so-inclined?

or a proud battalion of flag poles,

resolute, 

unpersuaded by the wind?

but then i grasp

that i can choose

which makes me all

or makes me none

i'm not so unreflective,

and i could never be so constant

i am happily irrational,

intensely free to change my direction

maybe, then

just a few dark birds;

pointless arrows

colonizing power lines

Winter Walk #6 (Tacit)

this mottled path

those boney brambles

everything is silent

steeped in indiscriminate gray

above

two faint gulls wheeling

are one in a million

i am in no mood

i am a product of these mild accidents

nothing under winter's dull pall

feels the least bit clever

every sign looks empty

every sound unstruck

all is just

far off chalk smoke just curls

stray flurries, they just swirl

and my footsteps just fall

one after one

unheard

Winter Walk #5 (In Blue Hell)

in blue hell,

every thought is

smeared and 

residual,

like the faint 

thin 

vapor trails 

that streak the hollow sky,

unspelling 

the wreck of all fact

and ruin of all time

nothing bound

is happening,

and nothing definite

is bound to happen

my skin 

is not deaf 

from this mute shout

and i'm 

definitely not thinking 

i can't walk smart in these 

dumb boots

Winter Walk #4 (No Future in Weather)

Streaked by January sun

in the wide shot of

a skyless blue

that stiff caucus

of bald trees

is demanding

company. It's titanic

to hear the measure

of far sirens, or pass

that short lusty

fence, or view the crisp

right angles

of high-definition

buildings with windows

lacquered

in light, and not

to think—

like Deadalus—of what

thought

first dreamt them up.

But the truth

is there's no future

in weather

or adjectives; there's

no winter in these

fractals and

no past in Greece

or January. There's

no intention

and no artifice

and nothing to append to trees

but vogue ultimatums: Tomorrow,

I'll stop writing

rectangles where there are none

and I'll start

praying to myself instead

in the boundless

company of no good

words, because this is

a mad crowd

and aimless—

and I could never draw it if

I wanted to.

Winter Walk #3

Sometimes I'd like

to say I'm Stevens

Trudging down 

a cold skinny road

Clad in stony 

workday wool and fixing

this to frost and that to pines

hanging spangled mobiles on the raw wind

and pinning Christ to flighty birds

But let's just say 

I can't just say that

And let's just say

this coat's acrylic 

And let's just say 

one word: thesaurus

Besides

if you want to imagine a thing 

like frosted pines

or the sound of land

or the ice-shagged anything

you can't really go out and get it

you have to stay at home

beacause even a mind of winter 

can't imagine New England 

ever moving inland

Winter Walk #2

Here

along the scraggly  

woodfall

Clipped 

by a two-lane's rudest 

curve

Tidelines of sunbleached garbage 

look too readymade for 

Duchamp

Winter Walk #1

This morning while I walked to work
I watched the hysterical sun try 
to sell a heedless strand of geese
on a whole showroom of
shellacked branches
while a glitzy array of sharp crystals
winked hard to erode the asphalt's
coldest grudge

Awed but undeterred, I just resolved
to step more conscientiously
around all the frozen dowels of
salt-marbled birdshit