When this old hull starts sinking
I turn my spinning rumination
to rest on groundless thinking
or inter-galactic speculation
View
Sky & Telescope
The essential magazine of Astronomy
two missives
from
A FAVORITE POET
All upright things are bent and bowed by wind
by R.Nemo Hill
All upright things are bent and bowed by wind.
Who taught your hair to argue with the wind?
Be still now. Let this rose collapse.
Why whisper in an overwhelming wind?
Here is the place we built, and here we knelt
till storms arrived to simplify with wind.
Each breath I draw now is a corner turned
too suddenly, face first, to meet warm wind.
How long can one frail singer's voice pretend
that anyone can rearrange the wind?
Each night the tops of trees begin again
the task of ending somewhere in the wind.
Here is no man. He slips right through your arms.
He can't control the volume of the wind.
Who taught your hair to argue with the wind?
Be still now. Let this rose collapse.
Why whisper in an overwhelming wind?
Here is the place we built, and here we knelt
till storms arrived to simplify with wind.
Each breath I draw now is a corner turned
too suddenly, face first, to meet warm wind.
How long can one frail singer's voice pretend
that anyone can rearrange the wind?
Each night the tops of trees begin again
the task of ending somewhere in the wind.
Here is no man. He slips right through your arms.
He can't control the volume of the wind.
(for those with audio capacity)
LISTEN
Journal Entry
by R. Nemo Hill
A butterfly just settled on my knee—
some smoke and moonlight smudged with a confetti
of limestone dust. A scattered salt of stars
dissolving near the water’s edge of dawn,
it’s here one moment and the next it’s gone.
Another lands now on this journal entry—
each snowy wing stamped with a single sentry,
a wide unblinking eye, blue iris scarred
and rusted. Nervous fawn or gliding swan,
it’s here one moment and the next it’s gone.
It’s hard to take responsibility
for my own permanence when any breeze
can lift these pages like the wings they are,
exquisitely hand-dated and hand-drawn
with lines here for a moment and then gone.
(21 February, 1999—Petulu, Bali)
by R. Nemo Hill
A butterfly just settled on my knee—
some smoke and moonlight smudged with a confetti
of limestone dust. A scattered salt of stars
dissolving near the water’s edge of dawn,
it’s here one moment and the next it’s gone.
Another lands now on this journal entry—
each snowy wing stamped with a single sentry,
a wide unblinking eye, blue iris scarred
and rusted. Nervous fawn or gliding swan,
it’s here one moment and the next it’s gone.
It’s hard to take responsibility
for my own permanence when any breeze
can lift these pages like the wings they are,
exquisitely hand-dated and hand-drawn
with lines here for a moment and then gone.
(21 February, 1999—Petulu, Bali)
