WATERMARK

a poet’s notebook

Established 02004

April 11, 2004

june 6, the last spring,first summer day this year

the river has stopped rising
   trees are in it up to their hips
         there are no islands anywhere
            only birch and aspen swaying
                  in water    their hair    a shimmer

of green and yellow light    I sit on the porch
   my hair    gathers seeds    white fluff
         pods    fine yellow pollen    a dark butterfly
            passes by in the wind another shimmering light-
                  catching thing    starlings whistle    sky

story-book sky all blue with sweet white
   clouds    sun lays its buttery hand across
         clover    columbine    tulips    smooth river
            stones in the garden    this small poem is
                  for mariah    on this    her eighteenth birthday

Poems

Ancestral (Artificial )Intelligence

I do not use AI to write. For me, writing is how I think, and I prefer to do it myself. If/when I post anything here that I suspect or know to be AI generated, I will tell you.

I have changed this from Artificial to Ancestral, after Abi Awomosu @ Substack. This medium was made with human history, human thought. All of it, bright and dark. It is ancestral.

Poems

Please do not assume that I am the speaker/ subject of my poems.

In these times of creative nonfiction and fictionalized memoirs, I think of the poem itself as true fiction: it is most likely not factual, but it must be true.

It is likely to be — it is best if it is — a truth I did not know before I wrote, and may not understand even then.

A poem is my way of discovering (dis-covering) what I feel; sometimes, what I think — but it is not necessarily biographical.

june 6, the last spring,first summer day this year

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