For Dom Johan

in twenty fifteen
I met a man who’d never
touched the internet

“first thing I would do
is visit the place that plays
the songs of Dylan”

an aging Dutch monk
who wrote haiku & called them
Dog of Tobias

where did they come from
& why, what function had they
but for joy’s bookends

“haiku,” he offered
as we neared the pond, “is a
poor man’s poetry”

stripped to essentials
so the life can come through—“I’m
a walking haiku”

dying unpublished
he’ll rest beneath a small cross
with no inscription

Shapes of Loss

ash on my left hand
wood-fire stove exhaling dust
I sigh for your skin

sprawled at the summit
thinking, my ear in your mouth
I heard the ocean

doves, the warm whiteness
in a chilled unending blue
your eyes in winter

I thumb the bookmark
halfway through the Confessions
you left by my sink

if only there were
on this ocean’s other side
one longing for me

Dido, Aeneas
Andrei, Natasha—meet me
in death’s tenderness