TED PEARSON

PERSONAL EFFECTS

BLAZEVOX [BOOKS]

Buffalo, New York

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 Copyright © 2018 by Ted Pearson
All rights reserved

Some of these poems previously appeared in BathHouse.

Design & Typesetting by Geoffrey Gatza

Printed in the United States of America
Author Photo by Stephen Emerson

First Edition
ISBN 978-1-60964-331-7
Library of Congress Catalogue
No. 2018957378

BlazeVOX [books]
131 Euclid Avenue
Kenmore, NY 14217
Editor@blazevox.org

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 Postcards

Crosscurrents

49

Riffles

67

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6
PERSONAL EFFECTS

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8
 Postcards
absolutes are nothing / like the sky

– Larry Eigner

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 for Maude Honemann

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1.

Shadows lengthen
as dusk approaches.
A light wind stirs
the dry air.

Above the horizon,

a gibbous moon
silhouettes the hills
of home.

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2.

Subjects yearn
for object status.
Nightfall leaves us
in deepest shade,

all but absent

to ourselves
and the wide world
no less spectral.

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3.

A night train passes,

south of the wash.
“Hear that lonesome
whistle blow.”

It is not the word

made flesh one wants,
but the marrow
in its bones.

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4.

Your former selves

beset your becoming,
bold apparitions
that cannot last.

History takes
the long way home
to avoid
its storied past.

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5.

The body in pain

was a period style.
Now, it has a life
of its own.

Imperious? Sure,
we get complaints.
But the body
in pain endures.

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6.

I dreamt last night

of whitewashed walls
covered with names,
but none I knew,

only to waken
among strangers
like the dead who walk
in our shoes.

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7.

Sense parses
what the senses sense,
but in what sense
does that make meaning?

Lovers see
what they want to see.
The word on the street
is mum.

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8.

An updraft powers
the flight of raptors
circling above
the stalled traffic,

sublimely indifferent
to the rat-race millions
brought by their numbers
to heel.

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9.

A slash of color
vivifies the canvas.
We can’t wait
to see what’s next.

Time passes
as the paint dries.
That will be all
for today.

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10.

The Archer rests

above the tree line.
By noon, the valley
is blanketed in heat.

Just after sunset,

a new moon rises
in search of the fullness
to come.

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11.

Palm trees bend,

not to break.
Then the wind
subsides.

The stillness that follows

is an object lesson.
How heavy the minutes
have become.

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12.

Not all memories

are built to last.
So says our once
and future past –

when what we knew

was what we’d done,
if not what we
were doing.

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13.

The prophetic tradition

preserves the code.
Silence reigns
among its glyphs.

Of course, there’s madness

in any method.
The message is still
in the bottle.

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14.

No known patent
secures our existence.
A mirror captures
the waning light.

Aging has shown us

some new wrinkles.
Dead stars populate
the sacred night.

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15.

The Dream ends

in the “small lawns of home”
where myriad tracts
that once were groves

beget their churches,

schools, and malls
to fill the fruitless
plain.

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16.

Summits rise
above the fray,
silent sentinels
of geologic time,

in which the present

is bound to traverse
the topography
of past relations.

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17.

I used to think that

hummingbirds were angels.
Now, I find it
difficult to choose

between the red-tailed

hawk on high
and the sure-footed
roadrunner, bookin’.

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18.

Having come this far,

we wonder what
to do and where
to go.

All such questions

answer themselves
by doing and then
by going.

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19.

Known plots stagger

to known conclusions.
The frame delimits
the picture plane.

Unending design
must take its time
to suture
what remains.

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20.

Sunrise augurs
a new beginning,
replete with omens
that set the odds.

The molecular weight

of a word, for example.
Or the molt
of a feathered god.

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