Happy to report that things are moving along with the, uhm, move to McMinnville. We’re situated in a new home and are piecing together who we are from what we have been — which is to say that all our stuff is here, but not fully organized.
As time has been slipping past me during this move, I thought it only suiting to share this week’s poem by Charles Simic. I continue to admire Simic’s knack for images that read with a riddle-like thrill. The subtlety with which one image suggests the next, until we’re left at the “lip” of the poem’s ending is the work of imaginative intuition. Both poet and reader listen with the same “ear” throughout.
Watch Repair – Charles Simic
A small wheel
Incandescent,
Shivering like
A pinned butterfly.
Hands thrown up
In all directions:
The crossroads
One arrives at
In a nightmare.
Higher than that
Number 12 presides
Like a beekeeper
Over the swarming honeycomb
Of the open watch.
Other wheels
That could fit
Inside a raindrop.
Tools
That must be splinters
Of arctic starlight.
Tiny golden mills
Grinding invisible
Coffee beans.
When the coffee’s boiling
Cautiously,
So it doesn’t burn us,
We raise it
To the lips
Of the nearest
Ear.
*
A quick note of thanks for those of you who have helped welcome my new book, Small Fires, into the world. Copies can still be found via FutureCycle Press and Amazon. I’m really proud of this collection!
Happy earing!
José
This week brought the release of my new poetry collection, 
The Influence 