PETE TALKS WOODY ~

HEAVEN LAKE ( 31 ) ~

photo ~ Graham Leese

When

When the cat

doesn’t get

its way

it does

what none of

us have yet

learned

to

do

it

goes back

to the

couch

curls up

shuts up

I’ll Never Be Poor

How she does it

I don’t know

don’t want

to know

will never

know as

she turns to me and

it’s new all over again

Question

How alone are you?

In your sweet

Baby’s arms

Not Least

A night after

the meteor shower

of the century

wrapped in blankets

we counted shooting stars until

we lost count

though it was a lone star

the next night spearing

the woods darkness

as if a late comer —

that seemed to

count the most

___________________

Bob Arnold

Heaven Lake

Longhouse 2018

TANGERINE DREAM ~

LAURIE ANDERSON ~

THE AMAZING JAN MORRIS ~

Morris is 92 and walks carefully, with the help of a cane. She has lived in this corner of North Wales — a 3-plus hour train ride from London, and then another 45 minutes by car — for most of her life.

As a journalist, Morris was embedded with Edmund Hillary's Everest team in 1953. "It altered my life so much. Now I'm the only surviving member of the expedition, and I miss them all," said Morris, pictured congratulating Hillary after the ascent.CreditGeorge Lowe/Royal Geographical Society, via Getty Images

J A N     M O R R I S

HONDO ~

J O H N      H A V L I C E K

MOONSHAKE (CAN) ~

EDGAR VARESE ~

WILLIAM CORBETT ~

Mirror, Mirror





As I wipe dust

from the old mirror

my face looks out

red from the sun,

unshaven, tiny river

systems of burst

blood vessels, skin tag

under one eye,

same old friendly moles,

nose hairs—how they

grow!—flesh crease

where chins divide.

I'm a round faced,

heavy faced, middle

age man with a hand's

span of forehead topping

a big head. Size 7 1/2

for hats. "Master dome,"

says Arden who has one

of her own. The little Billy

I was, unmarked, cute

enough to eat with a spoon,

gone with so much else

to the mirror's other side.

God bless him.



______________________

William Corbett
Boston Vermont
Zoland Books, 1999

William Corbett, 1975

photograph by Jonathan Williams

STEPHEN JONAS ~

R E A D      M E

City Lights Books

HEAVEN LAKE (30) ~

Stone Sonnet

A young dump truck driver

with a new truck and a handsome

stainless steel dump body that he

is very proud of and listen how the

load of small stones seem to laugh

as they rush in the thousands down

to the ground

he asks —

“why did you ask for the pile

of stone to be dropped

right in front of the door?”

I said, “if you want something

moved

put it in your way”

Fair Warning

I went to find an old friend today

I had no idea it was a friend until I arrived

over the slope of early spring forest

the snow all vanished

the many spaces without foliage

a clean look for any eye

and coming over the rise

there was my old friend

long gone sugar maple tree

it was my companion decades

ago when cutting winter firewood

in this woodlot, now mostly broken

down and in massive sections rotting

into the earth, and the twenty feet still

standing is beyond recognition, you see

this was a tree I once talked to, knew it

was slowly dying then but I thought it

would take forever and now we are beyond

forever and I’m coming to grips what time

has passed, 200 feet away in my house, so easy

to see from where my friend passed on with-

out a word, in the wind, the winter, summer

play, fall passage and discovery spring —

I’m too late

don’t you be

Framing The Barn

How trusting, relaxed!

Daddy-Longlegs moves

Inches from my hammer blows

The Winter Of Big Snow

I shoveled more

snow bank today

cut it like

a wedding cake

moved the blocks 

of snow as if

I was indeed

building an

igloo —

I did once

with my

son

he adored it

we both crawled inside

________________________

Bob Arnold

Heaven Lake

Longhouse 2018

DONNA SUMMER ~

RAYMOND SCOTT ~

REMBETIKA ~ SONGS OF THE GREEK UNDERGROUND ~

AIME CESAIRE ~

Spring Backroad Chalkie

A I M E       C E S A  I  R E

SUN RA (MEDIA DREAMS) ~

LUC FERRARI ~

TOMAZ SALAMUN ~

From Stone



I pushed him deeper into the slope.

The water was sweet and



tepid. For centuries the winch

hasn't worked.



Sing-alongs go to dust.

Scent is powder.



Algae, handled, harnessed

first into waves,



the into shudder. Shudder, shudder,

shudder on the shore. On the



shore by the boat. When the

drum, the ring around the



the cosmos, melts. We're inside a small house.

There's a fingerbreadth of the Lord.




__________________

Tomaz Salamun
Andes
translated by Jeffrey Young and
Katarina Vladimirov Young
Black Ocean Press

YESTERNOW (MILES DAVIS) ~

HEAVEN LAKE (29) ~

Departures

I brought a big sack of laundry

to the laundromat to wash

in fact I brought two

on a cold winter slush ground day

and I was the only one in there

reading my book of a Slovene poet

when two other guys showed up

one with his smart phone entertainment

the other with a nifty jazz player hat

me with my book on a bench

two dryers tumbling

one with a jumbled sound

which turned out to have a

rhythm all its own when it

finally stopped, clothes almost dry

(they are never completely dry)

the fellow with the jazzy hat said

without turning around, "Just when

I was getting used to the rhythm of

that sound" and I replied, “And isn’t it

Just like rhythm, once it’s noticed

it’s gone."

It Happens

Getting older —

The dark woods

Look darker

Authority

Some mouse has woven

a paper nest in my stored

away mud boots all winter

It’s now sloppy spring

and I’m needing

my boots

who am

I to wreck

a warm home?

Flying

I tell him I have never flown in a plane

He looks at me quietly for a moment

Then repeats what he can’t believe he has heard —

You have never flown in a plane. . .

Others have reacted the same way over the years

I look at their expressions, their whole faces

Faces that are full of disbelief and somehow larger

So that I feel like I am flying over mountains

Notes

Every night, late,

I have written a note I leave

for the woman I love

over 40 years this way

Somewhere there is a drawer

or drawers of these notes

she saved everything

which tells you everything

If one day you come upon these notes

remember when I tell you

we were in love

as you feel only the paper

___________________________

Bob Arnold

Heaven Lake

Longhouse 2018