. . . but we need poetry

Someone once said I should be careful about putting my unpublished poems on my blog. Yeah-so?

Here's one for you, as I perceive it, because otherwise the world doesn't make any sense:

The Anatomies

The possibility of a world without shadows
terrifies her. Trees floating without anchors,
the position of the sun persisting mysteriously.

Ground was meant to bear weight, the heft of objects,
of oak, madrone, pickup trucks, oil rigs,
people maybe. The anatomy of shadow connects

with the anatomy of light, two disciplines in her mind,
but of the same mother, like art and science
providing a strategy for the existence of things.

Careful when she sketches the hemisphere’s curve,
the convergence of depth where orthagonals meet,
she arrests all points at the horizon.


Line is all-important to me, whether it be an orthogonal line or the turn of a line of poetry. Line is the boundary we create, a matter of form, or in the flatter sense of the word, shape.