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

PETER LA FARGE ~

M O R E ~

Nation Books
2009

MARIA POPOVA ~

My best book of 2019

Don't hesitate

M O R E !

Pantheon 2019

HERBIE HANCOCK ~

DANIEL ELLSBERG: FREE PRESS ~

TRAIN NORWAY TO THE ARCTIC CIRCLE ~

ALICE OSWALD ~

River





in the black gland of the earth

the tiny inkling of a river



put your ear to the river you hear trees

put your ear to the trees you hear the widening

numerical workings of the river



right down the length of Devon,

under a milky square of light that keeps quite still



the river slows down and goes on



with storm trash clustered on its branches

and paper unfolding underwater

and pairs of ducks swimming over bright grass among flooded    
     willows



the earth's eye

looking through the earth's bones



carries the moon carries the sun but keeps nothing





______________

Alice Oswald
Woods etc.
Faber & Faber
2005

NEW! PERSIAN POETS ~

Longhouse, 2019
Trade size softcover, 242 pages

$25

   postpaid 

    in the U.S.

     payable by Paypal

      by using our email:

      poetry@sover.net

       or contact us at ~

Longhouse

P.O. Box 2454

West Brattleboro

Vermont

05303

MORE THAN MEAT JOY ~

R E A D      M E

edited by Bruce McPherson

Documentext 1979

HEAVEN LAKE ( 28 ) ~

As I Was Told

For years I have worked

As a gardener and for years

I have stood by flower and

Vegetable beds with an owner

Who would like this planted

And this pulled out and only

Occasionally have I not done

As I was told like this morning

The wild violets off to them-

Selves and still beaded with

Last night’s rain come crowded

Up past witch grass which makes

Me think I’ll protect them

Until the end

All You Need To Know

All you need to know about

America now is —

all my old tools are with me

working daily

hammers, trowels, levels

saws, plumb-bobs, rakes

while all my new tools

are soon broken

Instructor

Teenage girls in

Shorts and blouses

Holding notebooks

Visiting us in spring

Rain and later standing

In my work room of

Books paintings gifts

And the students pivot

In place soaking up

Everything yet are

Dumbfounded and

Cannot stop looking at

One wood sculpture

Ample naked figure

Propped against

One window —

A nut-

Cracker —

I thought not to show

How her legs parted

My Kind Of Place

with the wet rag

clump at the cash

register, anyone can

clean the tables

____________________

Bob Arnold

Heaven Lake

Longhouse 2018

HARD PRESS ~

There were 12 postcards designed and released by the poet Rochelle Kraut
in this series and here are a handful  —  
all drawn from poets who were moving 
through the East Village of New York in the 1980s.

A HISTORY OF CLOUDS ~

Atomic Weight 12. 011



All that is black or white or transparent,

hard or soft, sooty or gleaming, all that

we use to solder, shine, heat and write —

that all of it should be one and the same,



able to enter into 10 (to the power 6) different marriages,

form honeycombs, lattices, chains, rings, tangles,

cords and screws, and that what we breathe is

what we fly with is what we can suffocate on,



and that nothing alive lives without it —

no one except those who want to know all

would have hit upon it, and what we,

who now know it, should do with it —



we do not know.



translated by Esther Kinsky




__________________________________

A History of Clouds
Hans Magnus Enzensberger
Seagull Books

MICHAEL PERKINS (RENIE PERKINS) ~

Renie Perkins, The Life and Work of a Young Artist Who Died by Her Own Hand at the Age of Twenty-Five. Croton Press, New York City 1969, Text by Michael Perkins.  Trade Paperback 57 Pages.  The book contains a biography and 31 black and white pages of Renie's artwork, including drawings and paintings.

R E A D      M E

KIRBY DOYLE ~

Billy Batman & Kirby Doyle

K I R B Y     D O Y L E     A R C H I V E