There is a forest that I return to when I can’t get away from the pulsationsof thinking. A forest of tombs as still as dead tree trunks and melodious as raindropson red pine needles. The paths of my ancestors. In this forest, I am not alive like I usually am. Stepping in mink tracks, I know this place […]
poetry
Mendon Ponds
Life is just beginning todawn on most of us. But that happens here quickerthan most other places. Even though here, the glacierswere lured into a dead end,as the huge claws of timehauled across the ground likea long pause in someone’sconversation, leaving shoulder humpslike a bison’s, in looselyformed spherical organisms. Here, I feel the improbabilityof our connected minds.Codes in the […]
The Heart is a Constellation
Dying almost assoon as it is born,the heart dances ingroups of newborn stars. The heart isa constellation- a great disk shaped systemof gas, a retinue of unlit planets: An accident by the standards of the cosmos. Like a colossal swarm and a starsimply spluttering its way througha long series of ordinary eruptions. George Cassidy Payne is a poet from Rochester, NY. His work […]
Always Ringing
To make the headempty is such a heavything to do. For our minds are like a set of clear bucketshung out to gather rain. To be free of the distance betweenour father’s voice is such a close sound-one always ringing from the void. George Cassidy Payne is a poet from Rochester, NY. His work has been included in […]
Ordinary Like Our Sun
There are many kinds of deserts,but they all reject the notion that lifeshould flourish. That’s gravity. A grim background disturbing the atmosphere. But it can’t make you fall in love, or at least that’swhat Einstein said. With an exquisite fussiness, it intones mystical equations and leaks blood in -alabaster basins. Gravity is a creature of two […]
Simulator
At the science museum they have a simulator. This one puts you on the surface of the Moon.It’s fun and unique for an adult. For a 3 year old,it’s a little terrifying. With every bump and shakeof the machine, he holds my shoulders a little tighter. I tell him we are almost done and he says […]
A Good Kiss
A good kiss smells like nectar-filled factories and feels like skin wrapped over a corpse. Erupting from long-patient seeds,it stands still in the mouth, as eyelids movewith the vaporizing speed of a crouching cougarat a midday spring. Shimmering ghostly white. A good kiss is petite, luminous, and stingless.Buzzing like undisturbed bees sipping from the edges covered with pink and emerald beadwork, […]
Stormy Monday
It’s as if a cat is unworthy of grief. After all, there are so many dying children. But some nights I pull into my driveway,still hoping to see him. I look up at the skyand wonder if it will snow. I examine the tracks in the yard. Is he in the landscape anymore?I turn the car off and […]
A Poem Written on the Day Mary Oliver Died
A poem is about being ready tochange your mind. Mary Oliver knew that. Today, Mary Oliver died. And whole morainespale blue with blossoms swept the hillinside. She was one who knew boundaries, and whathonored her own name. Deviating into sensibility, she was one who made honey mesquite with words- so hard scanning the darkness, like a […]
From the Beginning
There is a hushfrom the beginningof time, where youcan hear yourself blink. There is a hush,where a minute agowe were two million milescloser to this cluster thanwe are now. There is a hushwhen we realize how it isthat we belong at the limitof the powers of observation. There is a hushwhen the universe evolvedfrom the […]