turning season

Summer is gathering momentum,

almost as tall as wide,

in these weeks of July when even

the ocean starts to steam 

and predators grow bold

and we prepare for Teshuvah, the turning.

My mother is singing Hebrew melodies

over the white water, words swallowed by wind.

Black cranes gaze unmoving

into waves cracked by light.

A haze holds these sweeter scenes

in preparation for storms, or in their aftermath.

A film of sand on our feet means

we never leave this ground.

A one armed man in grief over divorce 

built the bones of the beautiful bungalow in the inlet

by the sea, now overtaken with weeds,

where we yelled and then ran for shelter,

where the stars first appear at dusk

and where the two of us suddenly made love

with nothing,

with the end,

and begged god to witness.

Back at the house the family is stretched out 

like a once full ballon

sitting quietly at this dinner table

less laughter, less air without him.

Come back to a place long enough

you begin to think it is only

full of endings.

But, when i pull the car onto the gravel

after days of drinking, and it is late, 

later than anyone can stay awake,

and i roll down the window smelling salt and cedar in the humidity--

a low engine starts up

in the gut of my heart.

A short field and then ivy and pines, hydrangea, 

beach plums and roses, blue jays

and cardinals with their eyes closed and beaks

tucked beneath their wings, bouncing

twigs and pockets where rabbits sniffle silently

below, where coyotes pad and prowl,

yip and scatch and skunks waddle home

with dirt on their snouts and roots in their

teeth and oh god the human beings,

tight bellied, buzzing electricity and prodding, 

the heat coming off of them, the way they stay just so close

and far, their skin with all its history, their strips of cloth 

all around, their complicated patterns 

of color and speech and memories they love so much.

How could we believe only in endings?

.Here.

I have loved and she is gone away.

And I have unlearned many lessons that now

I’ll suffer to learn again.

But down the hill in shadow or

bright green day, kicking up dust or clumping

mud, crushing spiders’ legs or carving ditches

to house new creatures, with great cacophony and splendor

or quiet as the sharks sleep,

we are rolling on

with every imperfection you can think of

growing strong and weak at times

but always on,

accustomed, new, rhythmic, strange

dozing off at times thinking it’s all done

or all the same and then, sometimes predictably,

sometimes suddenly,

waking up to it all.

This season

you are not ending,

but turning.

Wake up!

learning

Evidence covered with a carpet of grass,

Network drawing slowly without ever

Taking away, dark and scattered home

In the corner of your arms, whenever

I visit, kiss your eyes

Perhaps the old maple from my childhood spoiled

Me for human love, that

Ebbs and flows, responds thunderously,
That expects

And needs.

It is not pretty, this view of me

From high in the bows.

We get stuck wanting to only grow.

Today is a cold sun

And warm wind, flags

Waving their arms planted over tombs

Of men infrequently remembered. they

Enlisted young

And it does not matter much what they did

To their descendants.

We who examine every project

Like the foreign thrum of an unseen beetle

Could never be so brave nor so young

Nor dead in quite the same way, though all

Things are not in exactly the same way.

I remember vaguely:

10 or 11 i took off

My shoes and wandered

Over hot pavement,

Mica shining

Like stars, until

Reaching a cool

Hill covered in mossy

Grasses, leaves all

About. I was late and

Could hear the dinner bell

But reached out a hand

To a knot of roots

Standing upright,

A thick rope of

Coils arising from all

Across the cemetery

It seemed, like many

Tongues of a fire,

And i looked

Up--

We have seen many

Restarts together, as the moon,

And a job, a love, a home,

A friend disappear, through it all

All hurt and poison,

All shimmering heat and flood, all

Pleasant and simple days, we take

Slowly what we can hold,

What we can use, and we

Incorporate what lives into our life.

Make a crown.

Then we incorporate what is gone but still lives.

Curl around it like a wound

until we do not.

Old friend, how do we accept Jung’s turning,

That we will never be

Any taller and i wonder

What are you drinking now

From beneath my feet?

Winter story

I believe this darkness has a name

That does not have a name, and lord i pray

Not to know it for so long that we are calling

Each other at all; don’t let it make it’s home

Anywhere else inside, metastasize its logic

Through my blood, let me not pump

Memory of this into me.

But though love offers no escape,

Sinking through does,

As if down to a cave beneath the water.

Below the sanity of darkness, is light.

Behind the motel room curtains,

Red lights dazedly drip as they stare

At my naked body just out of the shower.

We are sober together, i hope,

Because they are driving off

And i am settling into a new understanding

Of my same life. It is here not waiting, not calling,

But letting nothing not be it.

Letting me choose, here I am.

This is all of ours.

Lowland journey

12.17
What does it mean to dream of racing fingers stretching
along like train tracks?

Last night i fell asleep with no woman and no tv
for the first time in years.
I wake feeling sick, and lie with my eyes closed,
knowing i'll never make it to Aberfeldy.

Stepping out onto the quiet street by the cemetery,
i turn nextdoor and order egg and sausage,
slathered in brown sauce which gets all over my hands.

Lot was the brother of Mordred.
Lothian is hidden in the valley,
lowlands, skin beneath the belt
of cities. this land's been farmed for
2000 years. the spent mash is good for cattle.

Collin and Linda pick me up on the outskirts
of Edinburgh, retired traffic cop & shop-keeper,
first hitch and after waking late, I'm sweaty.
I was never going to make it to Aberfeldy, stinking
of jet fuel and orange juice from concentrate.
Though they are headed to Pencaitland,
after twenty minutes of old coal mines and salt-water and ships
from the Black Sea, they drive me down into the green valley,
along the winding roads with one lane and wet asphalt,
until we reach the distillery.

I think it is closed. Nothing moves.
but I send them off with a smile,
it isn't their responsibility.
we snap a photo. a worker walks out,
and seeing my sign asks to take a picture.
says I'm the first to hitch here, which feels hardly true,
since it only took 1 ride.

Entering the place is shadows and chilly,
a dram of blended is poured out
and i deposit my jacket and oversized pack in the backroom.

Alistair receives and guides me, a nervous smile,
thin and tall, professional but as if to obscure something,
I grow to trust him and his love of detail throughout the tour.
The rule of 3s brings a smile to his face and mine too
as it is a sacred number.

This place uses 80,000 liters of water a day.
I'd never heard of the whiskey before. Glenn Kinchie.
in old photos of the workers, eyes and smiles glazed with their pours of whiskey
taken before and after work each day,
there is a dog, Bruce, who worked there too, hunted the vermin chasing after
sweet byproducts. Bruce came and went. but was always bruce.
________________________________________________________
Allistair warmed up by the end,
he just returned from 12 yrs working in cognac country,
didn't mean to be back, but
here he is.
 His coworkers kept walking up to warn him to watch the shop
as we sat at the bar and drank,
he waved them off,
said it must be mighty hard to do what I do,
that is with unions and all that.

When he unlocked the back to fetch me cardboard
for a hitching sign, everyone smiles, Michael who offers private tours
to and from Edinburgh tells me just to hop in the bus
and not say nothing, rather than me walking the 3 miles into town to hitch a ride
"It's christmas after all"

So i sit back into a leather char with poetry, try
to buy another dram, have the money waved off--
this country's full of hidden valleys,
grey-green rivers and glenns, berns feeding underground springs,
even as the sun sets,
what an overflowing!

Carla is the one who pours me a few more whiskeys,
she works in the distillery during holidays,
father a farmer, she is studying law in Aberdeen,
through the distillery you can hear her
light voice playing over those of foreigners
talking about breakfast whiskies, she wants advice
for going to the isle of skye next holiday.

I wander out onto a road sloping up the hill,
it will go on forever, past farmhouses with busted roofs,
and fields of barley, and the trickle of rivers.
An old phone booth is overgrown with ivy.
A woman emerges out of the mist with a baby carriage.
In the distance, a small bright moon overlooks a stand of trees.
I could wander that road for eternity in the light dust of early december snow.

Michael is a friendly chap,
collecting pension and driving a few days on the side.
he takes his wife to the same hotel in cuba every year.
As I hop out, he smiles, and tells me to go for luxury.
After dropping the group who contracted him to drive in the denseness of the city,
he drops me at my doorstep in the South, as he lives only a few blocks away.
I am glad to be with is fat hands in the darkness,
I am glad to not know what will happen tomorrow.

I am abuzz from this first day,
from the 6 whiskies, the moonlight.
________________________

Clynelish 14-- waxy, full for a speyside, still sweet but not flatly so, brown sugar, mulch, pear.
Cragganmore distillers edition-- rich port finish, plum and bitter herb body, a washing of salt
Daluaine 16-- heavy tannins, short and sweet, nutty, simple
Glen Kinchie 12-- lemon on nose, honey, grass, pucker & dryness in the finish
Glenn Kinchie Distillers Edition-- almost no nose, purely brown sweet and simple, body is complicated, a little peat, muddied with sherry sweetness, still some citrus flavors, but overall quite round and dark while still remaining a light lowland
Singleton 15-- high rye, honey and wheat, something roasted, raisins

Edinburgh arrival

12/16
Hello there, do not think it will be easy to get in.
There’s a key on the other side,
Blocking your way.
It grows dark and you are confused.
Next door, the cemetery is silent and wet.
The shops are closed early.
At city center, where the bustle grows
Like a fungus, every language
Curls up the old stone walls.
But your pack is heavy,
2 days heavy with no sleep.
No change, the bus driver says smiling.
———————————-
Aberfeldy hitch

First hold a sign for Perth
A701 south to Edinburgh bypass (45 minute walk)
A720 west to fog at roundabout or straight on to the M8
M8 west to m9
M9 north to m90
M90 to A9 @ Perth
A9 to A827 @ Logierait
A827 to Aberfeldy
——————————————-

When I make it outside again
John Leslie wasn’t serving food
So I head to the old bell inn
All red leather and short wood tables.
Order a 15yr Scapa and fish n chips.
17 pounds. A bundled woman walks in
With a terrier, the two men beside me
Are incoherently drunk and clasping
Each other’s hands very close
To their red faces. It is 6pm.

Later I learn, only one
Was drunk. Tom. 68.
He says two or three words before throwing
The rest away with his hands. He’s 68.
Was in the hazy, now alone. 68. He says
He had 3 sisters, tears fill with eyes behind smudged glasses
How did his fingers get so big, too big to touch eyes.
He pounds his fist. I think he’ll hit me.
I’m sure he’d rather that than cry. After,
I think of where he’ll go. He was wearing
A wedding ring. Still. 68. But it
Was 6pm and he’s too sad for
Me to imagine him home
Anywhere but the old bell inn.
———————————————————
“And it seems like I’ll miss autumn in Edinburgh
That’s the one I should have spent with you—
With the rain lashing down, a fog on the meadows
As the festival lights, as the festival lights go dim”
——————————————————-
At the royal oak
We were joking
About her being a prostitute
Forward limbs in the holiday lights
Two foreigners on a piano bench
Bad teeth. Something about how the fog rises
Outside and the uncollard husky inside
Scratching at the door—
A splotchy man in a turtleneck
Hugging his guitar to his chin
Singing “city of immigrants”
And the whisper of sickness at my
Neck keeping me quiet and
The night could be forgotten one way
Or another but probably
This one.

She was the only sloppy nicotine
Kiss I didn’t want but sometimes
You’ve got a folk tune in there
That doesn’t quite
Fit.

——————
“What are you writing?” She asks —“I’m on
An adventure, look at me
Having feelings and being a pretty lad” then
She hit me in the mouth.
—————————————

Make a big deal about the purpose
Of the trip to a lot of women
A lot of sad women there
And in this room listening to
The pudgey man with the black guitar.
But first thing I do is always first,
Didn’t choose anything, just wanted
Is all. I was quiet enough for her
To project what she desired
And when I did choose 1 book of Scottish poetry
To bring, spent an hour sweating
With my pack in a crowded bookstore—
The poet I chose is from Iran
He never lived in this land
And neither shall I.
Hope is not circumstantial
But constant, not a rain,
But a well
Of purpose.
Here I am sick in the drizzle
Reading the poetry of a young alcoholic
Trying to let down so I can rise
Before dawn.
With the black travel

Day 1 Scotland— in the air

Sitting in Stewart airport 2 hours outside of NYC, I wonder what the fuck I’m doing. I’ve taken two weeks off of work to go to a place I do not know where I know no one and it is cold and I have no plan. I’ve got 20 minutes until my plane boards for another continent.

I got here on 2 buses and a shared cab with 3 people I met on the streets of New York sprinting as we were told there were no more seats on the last bus to the airport. I squeezed my phone with its eboarding pass in sweaty palms. So much for planning.

10 minutes before boarding and I break down and text her, my love, though we agreed we would not speak until February. I love her, she is in all beauty I see. And someday we will know nothing together again.

I am thinking about dying a lot these days. After the synagogue shooting,  butive also always been ready to be attacked. Since I can remember I daydreamed of passers by in the street suddenly turning on me. I’ve thought about what I would do and felt that adrenaline. How’s that for internalized generational trauma?!

I’m thinking about dying in the air, in a car, on a cliff. My ability to decide anything is more important than fear is key to my concept of self and strength. I refuse to be directed by fear alone.

What does this trip mean? 2 weeks in Scotland alone. Is it an escape? A journey closer to the heart? A seeking of distraction? I could go across the world and watch Netflix, could go and sleep with a bunch of women, could go live out of hotels or B&bs or hostels. It is all free and somewhat arbitrary.

I want to see myself, not look away— be nervous, be unsure, figure it out, listen to what my soul wants. I will not do things to not feel bad.

I wrote a few poems that first 36 hour day, here they are—

I’ve got a knack for missing buses,
Early dark nights of uncharted
Destinations, squinting to match.
I’m not the only one— when it’s cold
Our eyes close more than open, mouths
More open than ever to let in light we say,
Arms and legs open such that
They are closed to what we need at times.

What I mean is this:
Nobody has to be on this
180 seat airplane about to cross
The Atlantic at hundred of mph, we each
Made our way here on different flickering
Paths, but here is the same air recycled
Through or lungs, in all of us a glimmering,
That something about the world will be different
When we reach land again.

I’m in love with a kind of love that
Sticks and burns like ice
Spreading— I want a woman
With legs like the sun
And a mind like the churning moon
And lips like fall
And I love her human human eyes.

About to cross a world
Into wild abundance (I hope),
The throaty cry of winter in the highlands
Calling me. But it is her forehead
Against mine I feel, her words
In my hair.

Each morning as I sit in silence
Sometimes naked dripping from the shower
But usually rushed and barely dipped in day,
I release all I do not need,
All that is not me,
All that sorry,
All that pushes and pulls,
All I cannot breathe.

It’s shocking how often
When my breath and heart slow
When the whir of words quiets
Tothe dumb pulse of me—
How often I am left unalone,
With a thousand others who’ve touched
And been touched
We expand and flow with each other.
I feel it for a moment
As we begin to fly.

___________________

Goodnight lights over the Atlantic My grandmothers cousin crashed his plane Into your sharp deep when he was only a boy They found the machine 60 years later And had a ceremony, I’m not sure It was called a burial One Monday night at dinner she Pulls out the letter he wrote her— Young men will always be the same I think—all excitement and lithe bravado At the first taste of the mystery. My seat mate pulls out a half drunk bottle of Tito’s on the plane. We muffle our conversation and eat smuggled chocolates together As the lights grow fewer and The reality that I am on this journey alone Sets in. Tomorrow I will wake amidst the green- Shake of Ireland, and then The gravel led hills of Scotland And no women nor booze nor fight nor story Shall change the moment to moment The ebb and throb. There are practices for the heart But then there is the willingness To sit still To lower the heart down Into the grey chill of real anxiety For a few moments and then draw it out. To feel it, know it by choice, To be in readiness Not fooled by any quick boozy warmth or fantasy. Find a pride in Be ready for this to be it.

Oasis

I was bathing with an old swedish couple,

feet planted in the raw grain of the wooden tub

when the feeling came on, up from somewhere

In the community room of the japanese healing studio in south somerville

Or from the screaming jet pouring its heart out into oceans of sweat

Next to the Jewish lesbian union organizer

Who has just won a 6 week strike.

Flakes of dirt and skin swirl out

And all of it is too hot, steam pushing up

my blood. what life is left for us?

We fight with brittle nails for a place to sink the seeds.

Jake and Sid are dead and their ash seems to cloud the world

Like the gnashing fires of the west.

Our old homefeeling is gone, has packed his bags and fled over the hills.

Yesterday by the old watch tower, i stood still for 45 minutes

As the sky turned pink then grey then swallowed itself

With the forks and knives of the city. Is it supposed

To grow feeble with age, this desire? Or simply more cunning,

Sharper and quicker, to find the veins of this world?

I wonder if any fight is enough to satisfy this beast inside me

That wants to eat Nazis and fuck poets and

Suck the sap from my sweet brothers until we must all die of it

Or else live forever.

I climb out to the trees behind the mountain that stretch on for miles,

And try not to hear the cars, the white noise of sleep.

This society, these thousands of people where the light touched just before

It gave way to shadow, we are crawling into the wet earth of our end.

I feel it when i breathe now, the air is sticky with its gummy pulp.

Try to spend 10 minutes with it sometime,

Between the cold of our arms plunged into a great river seeking to become islands there.

and the creeping pollution of our choices thickening the blood.

Our joy is stung with it, brutal brightness of light that leaves polyps

Of darkness as you blink away in surprise.

As i rubbed my eyes in the tub, muscles all hot

And loose and swollen, i see across from me

The overweight swedish woman has laid her head back

Into her husband’s hand, and her belly rises above the water like

A whale, and her eyes close as her feet leave the ground,

Silked up by her husband,

hands thin and stiff, veins below the skin wandering , curling up around her

Thick limbs like dried flowers. She sighs.

He steps out into the deep

And slowly

Turns her

Back

And forth

And later when i am shaving my face in the steam of the shower

The touch of those hot blades on my neck is too much

And i lose them in the stream.

The gentle holding of that love,

How strange it appears to me, a bright room

I cannot quite make out through a snowy window,

How shocking the tenderness of their shared frailty.

We must move through this world with that too.