Code
Pish-Posh, Pish-Posh,
pebble rain at the window
calls in rhythm
the sound of a name
you have to decipher
to spell it in air.
Each drizzle of water,
each slap of wind
makes the cold inside colder.
It’s the thin signature
of leaving. It’s
the meaning of left.
Regarding Nature
The simple part
is the argument of flesh
we cannot leave behind
except in the world of dreams
where you become any animal
and roam any forest
or jungle or wide plain,
free as the wind
ricocheting off the cliffs,
innumerable scents in the air
under a blood moon,
hunting or hunted.
Regret
There’s no reason for the regret I feel
on a beautiful July morning
or if there is, I can’t see it
behind the sun on the leaves,
or the leaves themselves,
sprinkled with Summer.
If it’s out there I can’t find it,
lost like the squirrel that was here
just a minute ago, dancing on the deck
before disappearing into a shrub.
If you want to take this further,
and maybe I have to,
you and I both know that regret
comes with the world, comes with being
in the world, comes with being yourself
in a world you didn’t make and must leave,
whether you want to or not,
the way light leaves the trees,
when all I want to do
is dance.
Stan Sanvel Rubin’s fourth full collection, There. Here., was published by Lost Horse Press, his third, Hidden Sequel, won the Barrow Street Press Poetry Prize. Poems in numerous journals including Agni, Georgia Review, Poetry Northwest, Kenyon Review, One, etc. plus two recent anthologies, the 25th Anniversary of Atlanta Review and Nautilus Book Award winner, For Love of Orca. He lives on the north Olympic Peninsula of Washington State.
