Fall Haiku

 At this hour, this year,
midfall, the sun turns this one 
oak tree's brown leaves gold.

The Purpose of Writing

 The publisher, in refusing to accept my refusal to rewrite the book to fit his specifications, said: "I believe we have a disagreement over what the purpose of writing is." Had I replied, I would said this:

The purpose of writing (writing as a form of art) is to provide an experience. It is an experience that echoes but is not matched by any other experience. Being both emotional and intellectual in a way that no experience with "things" or "nature" can match, it provides room for reflection if not insight into life that only it can. 

If you have any other view of what writing is, you should trade it in for this one.  

What You Are Now

It’s like this: you aim the head of the maul
at the heart of the log and you drive it
straight over the center of your skull full force.
You don’t want to do this twice.

The maul head thunks against the chopping block.
But as for the piece of wood you were aiming at
it darts away like startled game. 
You hit it so close to the edge
you barely shaved a slice of bark,
a sliver of kindling.

Shit, you say, and shit, again, and fucking god.
You drop the maul and hoist the thing to strike again.
Shit, you say, and fucking god
with all these hundreds of logs 

and winter coming with its trainlike inertia, 

slow, relentless, and bound to arrive before all the wood is split 

and stacked 

and dry.
Shit you say and fucking god

damn this wood and these arms and these eyes
that have swung this heavy maul 10,000 times and still
can’t reliably hit the heart.
 
The more you miss and curse 

the more you miss and curse.

Nor can you recall when you need them the words 
that set your heart at ease just yesterday
when you were not splitting logs and the rain stayed away
when the honking geese drew your eyes everywhere 

until you found their dark chevron just where it should be

gliding south against the clouds, high as an airplane--
and the competent afternoon sun laid splotches of gold 
on the mums and the ever blooming zinnias and marigolds
and you harvested seeds in coffee cans.

That was a good day.
 
It’s not the coming of the winter or the fear of cold,
it’s the impulse to anger, 
it's some imperfectly traceable injury 
from years and years ago, you guess,
that you still can't lay a finger on,
that drives you to curse when you fail 
to master simple tasks. Something so long wired now
you can’t unwire it by any effort of will 
repetition of effort.
It’s just that.
 
You don’t have to be good
at everything. You don’t have to be
who you are now at every moment.
You will never master the art of swinging a maul.
You will never master the art of writing poems.
You may never be fit to love yourself so well you no longer curse
your failures. You may never know why. No one’s perfect. No one’s perfect.
No one’s perfect. You are what you are now.
Now you are what you are now.
Now you are what you are
now.