Across the Lake of Clouds

I paddle across the lake of cumulus: I think there is enough time to make the shore before nightfall: balancing a bag of gifts on a kayak: for all my friends; a year’s honor in a few words: when I read aloud on these cold days: small clouds are born: they rise and I can only hope to see them come around the world again: I bring one companion with me: snowy owl who knows my heart: often times better than I have known: she flies to the shores on either side: news from the world: and assurances on direction: I stop my paddling to take it all in: this journey: the blue of the sky so bright: I do not make a ripple: and peer beneath the surface to the depths that will not take me: I am part of this timeless reflection: and I am better for it. 

(first appeared in the North American Review)

Everyone is a National Treasure

Whether we know which nation we are in at that moment all that is lost and swirling, all that is sucked into the great abyss or stares back, or reaches out, or says our name in the quiet creaking languages of old houses makes us unique enough to hold the title. We might have been George Washington’s valet in a previous life, or someone killed at Waterloo, perhaps one of the spectators who caught a stray bullet much like the fans who chat at baseball games and are concussed by a foul ball, who spend the rest of the innings somewhere in the bowels of the stadium counting fingers and saying the names of presidents. For everyone who has knowingly offered something unselfishly, just once, and perhaps never understanding why it was given or how it truly felt to receive, and all the while your ghosts sing their anthem of Because, and you don't get any of that either. —But it made you feel something you will never forget. Even when you are too rightened to put a naked foot on the stair, to step down slowly into the dark, because of something you heard, that raises the hair on your nape, something wild, and perhaps evil, and still the next foot falls, and you, with your vase or bat go down into the shadows with all your hopes for nothing buried alive in your chest. And maybe you think of the brightest place you've ever been, that edge of the Grand Canyon, that day you held love's hand and vowed your life, and the world was lit in aspen golds and reflective snow, and now you're at the bottom of the stairs just listening to a rolodex of imagined reasons and maybe you stand there, ready to knock something or someone out of the park, and it never comes. Long minutes in the winter night, still, no wind, no moon, only the dark, the lip of the abyss, with its eye closed, and you so alert and vigilant and willing to sacrifice.

meadow

She's a burnt red that reminds me of the last
of the dry summer grass. She is lean
and she studies the yard for any sign of prey—
instincts being as they are. In her before time,
she hunted rabbits in the high plains
of Spanish countryside till betrayed,
abandoned, left hurt and dying.
A sad common occurrence.
Most never completely heal
—their distrust like the old jagged bone
splinters in their legs.
Through the cooling evening air, I call her in.
Her eyes reflect the floodlights
from a hundred yards out,
but she is inside in seconds.
I settle in a chair and wait for her to finish
lapping water. She shakes off what's
left of the night fields and sits at my shoulder.
Then she gets right up to my face,
nose to nose, and looks into my eyes—
she's searching inside me.
And perhaps a small part of me worries
that I don't know dogs as well as I think,
that she will explode into a storm of teeth
and jaws—ruin me with doubt and fear,
but she sighs deeply and settles next to me.
I follow her repose with my hand;
she rubs her head hard into the palm
three times before slowly falling into sleep.
In my mind, her eyes were the most intense
lenses magnifying golden suns. I felt judged.
And I feel good about it.

Living Room

—after an art piece by John Gallaher

These days I am all elegies and regrets.
I cannot find a page that sings to me
unless something is missing. It is as if life
has become a lacuna. I am asking everything
to reassemble and make sense around
what’s missing.
It is a hard life, this shuffling of the tarot—
just to find a cup that will water a hanged man.
Friends disappear as more and more sharks
circle and muscle the currents. I saw one drift
across a graying sky. Sometimes I think a friend
might have grown a dorsal fin and fallen into the deep
never to sleep. Each elegy is a flower . . . .
or an ice cream cone.
Some days I think I might be an open book
of erasure. Other days I am just another black suit
ready to sit and listen to another procession,
another remembrance wept from a podium
in a church with its god on full display.
Still others deem I might be a ghost myself—just think
of it, all those people who I had thought were gone
back now from a service, sitting in my living
room, remembering and missing me.

(first appeared in Cultural Daily)

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J. P. Dancing Bear known to his friends as JP, Jerry, or most frequently “Bear,” was an American poet and publisher beloved for his supportive and editorial contributions to the literary community.

Please see full bio and tribute HERE.