There are moments that cry out to be fulfilled.
Like, telling someone you love them.
Or giving your money away, all of it.
Your heart is beating, isn’t it?
You’re not in chains, are you?
There is nothing more pathetic than caution
when headlong might save a life,
even, possibly, your own.
I thought: all this is only preparation
For learning, at last, how to die.
Mornings and dusks, in the grass under a maple
Laura sleeping without pants, on a headrest of raspberries,
While Filon, happy, washes himself in the stream.
Mornings and years. Every glass of wine,
Laura, and the sea, land, and archipelago
Bring us nearer, I believed, to one aim
And should be used with a thought to that aim.
But a paraplegic in my street
Whom they move together with his chair
From shade into sunlight, sunlight into shade,
Looks at a cat, a leaf, the chrome steel on an auto,
And mumbles to himself, “Beau temps, beau temps.”
It is true. We have a beautiful time
As long as time is time at all.
by Czeslaw Milosz
God lingers,
in the clouds,
distressed
and
I suppose no
greater affection can
be paid to another,
than to be heart-
broken in their
absence.
(poem by christopher woodhull)
art by Mark Rothko
what to make of it,
for instance,
before a smile –
all this waiting
in a single moment
falling away into
her eyes, and her
hands touching the
counter, lightly
as if playing
for the first time
before she says
can she help me?
by Chris Woodhull
i am in
a crowd
of selves
talking and
telling,
standing
to close
i step back
my arms open:
a kind of
untethering,
resignation
letting go as they say,
drifting from the
shore, (what shore?)
unmoored into –
languor? buoyancy?
alone:
it all grows still
unknown, irresponsible,
not responsible
at sea
after days it occurs
to me
the only
thing left to do
is slip from the boat
and into my body.
(second attempt)
i used to court
sadness like
a lover
sinewy and
sensuous
beguiling
everything i wanted
we went
everywhere
together
i believed
everything
i gave her
a place
but she is gone
and that made
me sad
in another way
a beauty
uprooted
a possession, a toy
my keeping kept
something from growing
(final attempt)
she is back
in my life
unrecognizable
though not
as sadness
as someone else,
not sure who.
chris woodhull
Out of bed
with the feeling
i had left
already
making it
twice in one day
i awake with
out a clue
where to find
my next self
sleeping again.
chris woodhull
some days, the words
find me or i
find them and
they may or
may not open
the hatch,
the secret opening,
the place where
God is said
to be.
who made the hatch?
in one side, out the other
and back again.
forgetting the hatch
i am free.
chris woodhull
the night tears away
like a match, billowing
and booming in
movie stills —
the mind, a hand turning
images, sepia
and azure blue.
something slips on nights
as these, the track of being?
i sat in the car all night
nearly frozen, alone
surrounded by the machinery
of worry –
she had left
this storm is dark, I am
a character looking for a line –
what is the meaning
of this storm and rain
and why is my mind
fixed on it?
as if it mattered.
poem by chris woodhull / art by mark rothko
Monks & Mannequins 