December 27, 2015

This is good.

The Weather
John Newlove, 1938 - 2003
From: Apology for Absence: Selected Poems 1962-1992

I’d like to live a slower life.
The weather gets in my words
and I want them dry. Line after line
writes itself on my face, not a grace
of age but wrinkled humour. I laugh
more than I should or more
than anyone should. This is good.

But guess again. Everyone leans, each
on each other. This is a life
without an image. But only
because nothing does much more
than just resemble. Do the shamans
do what they say they do, dancing?
This is epistemology.

This is guesswork, this is love,
this is giving up gorgeousness to please you,
you beautiful dead to be. God bless
the weather and the words. Any words. Any weather.
And where or whom. I’d never taken count before.
I wish I had. And then
I did. And here
the weather wrote again.

Things that have been on my mind as we approach the end of the year: I would like to live a slower life, and I laugh more than I should. This is good.