“the past didn’t go anywhere”

the story I told about the mourning dove’s coo in
the draw a low gray clarinet note washed over by

sparrows’ silver chatter the grapefruit sunrise the one
pink poppy coming awake amongst orange poppies the

irises purple & yellow & maroon a metal spiral
staircase outside an old white farmhouse a teardrop

mandolin posed on the lawn near the young catalpa’s
teardrop leaves—the story I told about red red shoots of beb

willows in the draw & the stream’s liquid song thru the
underbrush a purple chord on an archtop guitar in a per-

petual evening—& the lilacs’ whispering evening even at
6 a.m.—the story I told about the mourning dove’s coo in the

beb willows & the sparrows’ rippling conversation—ok
I know “the past didn’t go anywhere”—the stream’s liquid

song the cowbirds’ liquid song a horse trailer rattling up the
dirt road—the story I told didn’t go anywhere in

the grapefruit sunrise—traveling into the past to avoid
death—we talked about that & sex which is perpetually

now—the mourning dove’s gray coo in the grapefruit
sunrise wasn’t the past it was a memory drenched in the

stream’s liquid song over slate gray rocks where per-
petual past & future embrace in a liquid moment


quote is from folksinger/songwriter Utah Phillips

Jack Hayes
© 2010

Ghazal 5/23

the electrical chirp of cicadas at 3:00 a m a warm
sky swarming with sparks of stars

a time prior to sleep’s invention in the hollows of an
archtop guitar trembling an A six chord thru the f-holes

a time prior to lilacs & the columbine petals’
violet gentle stare the white eye streaked purple

a glossolalia of crickets amongst holly
leaves in a Virginia backyard dusk August 1984

the cigarette smoke growing moths’ wings the
white web lawn chairs the green air asking for grief

the locus of sleep’s invention amidst a
flurry of spectral butterflies grazing the columbines’

eyes—I’m mostly awake—sparks of stars
scintillate thru crepe myrtles prior to meaning’s invention a

blue & green & gray chord plucked on an archtop
guitar in the purple void—a columbine’s eye

lidded in electric night—always sparks of stars al-
ways a time before time was a time after time


Jack Hayes
© 2010

Ghazal 5/16

waxing crescent afloat within a white nimbus—
nothing’s distinct—a tremoloed note on a

mandolin & the willow limbs’ gray resignation—an-
other night amongst visitations convinced I’m really there—

a Virginia cottage house on a street “that
really went no place”—a silence with eyes singing

hysterically & I said Let’s dance taking her hand &
she turned aside— another visitation across pages

of poems singing You must change your life—
a walk thru muttering streets thru a white fog—I

keep writing the same poem for how many
nights & years & mornings a streetlight’s white

nimbus beyond an electric typewriter’s midnight hum in a
Virginia cottage house—a tremoloed mandolin a hysterical

silence becoming a blurry nimbus the weeks & years
& hours of the same poem repeated a

visitation becoming dawn’s twilight a
tremolo on a mandolin this whitening morning


Jack Hayes
© 2010

Ghazal 5/11

the difference between frail pink quince petals & delicate yellow
pistil & an inability on the part of two young people to

speak their hearts’ desire is a breeze shifting the willow ‘s
delicate boughs on a spring morning when I’m 52 already my

beard streaked gray like a white-crowned sparrow—the
difference between rollicking whitecaps across Lake Champlain past

the causeway toward South Hero & the words in a young
heart saying “there will always be a time” is a yellow headed blackbird’s

harsh trill in cattails surrounding a pond reflecting an un-
clouded sky—the difference between grape vines embracing the cedar

posts in contorted gestures & two chairs in an apartment in a white
building beyond a red door in Burlington, VT is a

young peach tree’s pink blossoms beside a wrought-iron
glass-topped table reflecting blue haze—the difference be-

tween an inability for young quince petal lips to tell the entire story &
the call of sandhill cranes circling becomes a May forenoon scribbled with poems


Jack Hayes
© 2010

“what can we talk about that will take all night?”

footsteps descending a staircase a cello played pizzicato
a sense of anticipation within the ribs the

blue haze this morning the redwinged blackbirds’
chirp amongst the cherry blossoms an unsettling

silence in an amber apartment a skybluepink porcelain
Blessed Virgin on a knickknack shelf

there was always something left unsaid—
10 years prior footsteps coming down stairs in a blue

Vermont summer evening the damp air off the big lake the
Virginia air spring 1987 was a red rose blossom on a white

pergola an unsettling silence pulsing pizzicato around an em-
brace beside a staircase the unsettling skybluepink

laughter around an embrace the “thin whistled
notes” of white-crowned sparrows’ song within a cottonwood’s

boughs—columbine about to bloom—a room trembling with
anticipation within the ribs—a

sob in the hedge a laugh in the green green streetlamp’s light—
a sigh inside the ribs a mahogany mandocello’s low

C-string tremolo the continual thrill of birdsong in the
cottonwood this morning the echo of unsaid words


(quote from Kenneth Patchen’s Do The Dead Know What Time It Is?)


Jack Hayes
© 2010

“it is night and it is serious”

a full moon’s amber light in indigo void a homestead’s
sodium light floating ghostly against the lower

ridgeline—an amber light in a floor lamp a hard-
cover book laid open across a birdseye maple table the words

were buried—I remember we used to sit together & read—an
amber light upstairs in a restaurant a candlelight’s sharp

blonde gesture inside the larger light & ghost-green
floodlights along Interstate 95 north past Perth Amboy the

green Vermont light thru lace curtains all evening we
used to sit together & read—a petrified silence the printed

words’ black gestures in amber light the full moon in
indigo void a Virginia indigo evening in a hilarious restaurant the

hennaed manic laughter “like dice shook”—the tailights’ red
shift fading along Interstate 81 south thru purple shadows

& printed words in a full moon’s amber light in a void—
the Vermont living room’s pine paneling a hennaed

page a ride thru ghost green light & serious words
I remember we used to sit together & read


(quote from Kenneth Fearing’s Green)


Jack Hayes
© 2010

Ghazal 5/9

two green morning stars phosphoresce above Indian Mountain
5:30 a m & finches & sparrows’ staccato outcry in willows’

arms & gray sky melting to whiteness a two story white
house & two green morning stars phosphoresce in a once up-

on a time whitewashed morning July 1978 & gray white air beyond the
screen window beyond a blue green orange batik—it could have been a

river—there aren’t any poems about this there’s 1 photo snapped
sometime later—red door & six steps—two green morning stars phos-

phorescing in a once upon a time distance amongst deep green
leaves & pungent white morning I didn’t have words for this

phosphorescence & you had few enough we were green
morning stars phosphorescing this morning & distant beyond a

screen window & sparrows call greenly to mates re-
peated patterns thru the weeping willow’s yellow empty arms
Jack Hayes
© 2010

song my father taught me

a Vermont May dusk so gray it turned green a 
mallow leaf afloat on a black glass beaver pond

dad sank it a wrist-flick a gulp the stone gone
too amongst trilliums & ferns & jack-in-the-pulpit the

deep green & the grape vines gone native—a green
rowboat a caged white lightbulb dangling on a freight elevator in a

paper mill the dark air sinks more deeply in the light 
a metallic fish presence dad’s black lunchbox

dented & heavy he fished in black pools
where perch swirled yellow the sawdust’s choking sweetness

in his workshop under the bandsaw’s gray evening whirr a
Black Ghost fly trawled in black bitter glacier lakes for

rainbow trout a metallic fish presence I think a-
mongst the silver birches & black glassy rocks the birches

grasped in roots my dad’s ruined black glass memory a 
landscape without a definite article to its name

Jack Hayes
© 2010

“don’t think twice”

a yellow headed blackbird’s trilled caw a gaudy 
orange tritone atop a cottonwood tree—I used the

word plangent in a poem once—primary colors mingling to- 
ward orange green & purple is this all 1 big party—

what larks— a goldfinch dandelion riot across the lawn the 
honeybees mounting the yellow fringe an oval mirror

in a garden a peach blush daffodil it could be some-
body I once knew her dogwood petal flurry of adjectives in

rose-pink twilight her verbs meantime compulsed thru amber air
I want to sing something devastatingly simple not

do re mi in a C# labial frenzy—it’s just what happened—
it ain’t no use etc. a pink & blue porcelain Blessed

Virgin morning sky across the harmonic convergence a 
white sundress a yellow rose bouquet a secret passage a

yellow headed blackbird strutting in yellow sunlight pecking 
cracked corn a Nuestra Señora statue praying a faded

rainbow palette beside a well       an image I ought to 
transmit to someone I don’t recall the name


(title with apologies to Bob Dylan)
 
Jack Hayes
© 2010

Ghazal 5/4

an opera’s snowfall in a wooden music box 
a silhouette at a harpsichord pet-

rified between chords—white gloves caressing Easter 
weekend the Canadian bare silver birches 1982 a

north wind barging thru hopper windows the peri- 
winkle blue crocuses hold out their periwinkle blue

hands in the lemon Easter morning the daffodils spreading 
butter along the garden’s edge you can practically

see this in the oval mirror in a library an oval mirror
in an orange swoon the orange tulips the lipstick crimson

tulips after an evening of laughter & unbearable 
youth the trumpeter swans in the neighbor’s pasture

a landscape whitewashed in an opera’s snowfall—
white gloves folded across bare ground in a love act

the mourning doves on a power line cooing A minor nine 
while daybreak returns to the present


Jack Hayes
© 2010

Ghazal 5/3

everything as if in a picture the apple
tree budding in drizzle beside the barbed wire fence a dark

cornerpost bent backwards the tension of three wire strands
& cherry blossoms steeped in raindrops I’m strolling up-

hill thru the Haight in a mist dazzled by love I’m strolling
an aimless magnolia morning in Charlottesville white white

petals slick underfoot I have nowhere to go—a room
I can’t recall red sofa blue paisley curtains black

leather upholstered chairs a secret passage a 
library giving onto a garden seen in a mirror a

white magnolia bloom in the backyard & fleshy
holly I’m walking thru glass almost unscathed the Conservatory of

Flower’s glass dome on a gray spring morning purple 
dahlias rhododendrons’ lips the calla lilies gestures the

red roses brimming across a white pergola a white sun dress 
somewhere else—Virginia in spring white white magnolia

littering my mind amongst the clutter
in a fully furnished room in a mirror’s garden


Jack Hayes
© 2010

Ghazal 5/1

when stars flowered white & green & shattered to
constellations blooming over Indian Mountain as yet the summit

invisible in a sky that could be night tho it’s morning the
red roses brimming across a white pergola a white sun dress a

porcelain Blessed Virgin—the Joshua Trees’ white flowers
flowering thru shattered Owens Valley the

history of water in the city of angels etched into dry lakes the
stars’ petals unfurled along an invisible ridgeline—white roses for

innocence—hailstones pelting the driveway yesterday morning a
water glass smashed to constellations & orange

roses equal desire & lavender roses for love at
first sight Dante’s for instance—stars blossomed lavender white red a

Joshua Tree’s hunchbacked bouquets conferred whitely a
boarded-up diner’s windows shattered to constellations a pink gem-

stone rosary my father carried in wartime a porcelain Virgin—the
stars blooming white & yellow thru this sky’s

black waters tho it’s morning somewhere tho not here the
yellow stars shattered tho yellow roses say goodbye


Jack Hayes
© 2010

Ghazal 4/29

at 5:00 a m the stars are suspended raindrops thru the kitchen
window is there any sound in the smothered velvet air the

cascade of one semi southerly down the highway a huge exhalation a
transistor radio crackling a Red Sox game thru a

Rockingham VT hemlock green spring evening a screened-in porch in
1966 listening to balls & strikes with a man whose breathing was

labored—he did sit quiet in hemlock green air rising from the green
Connecticut River the house built into a hill it had hemlock green

trim—the new moon’s velvet dark this morning around the teardrop
constellations—a baseball scudding into leftfield at a park in

San Francisco a honeydew green spring morning 1996 the
memory of April air—the silence of baseball punctuated with the

report of a bat the silence of listening punctuated with a
wheeze a rale a cough—the stoic crying velvet morning sky

Jack Hayes

© 2010

“the rain is as classical as ever”

what else is like rain at 5 a m on the green tin roof a
marimba clucking a pentatonic scale under wool

mallets doesn’t cut it a clarinet in the backroom chirping
descending thirds doesn’t cut it an upright bass groaning chromatic

blues lines is not it—the coffee still steeping in the presspot
the mild embarrassment of dressing in the kitchen when only the

cows are lowing dark in dark pastures—so exposed
to no one with memories of the Greek alphabet carved in stone as the rain-

drops carve stones on the cliffs above Bodega Bay where the
gulls dip thru the mist & it’s last November & I could be

anywhere the rain drips on the green roof at 5 a m—
the tide pools awash in the surf off Lincoln City the

rain descending in sheets like extended chords
sounding crisp & without any sustain—a dish of

ravioli swimming in marinara a white tablecloth—
dressing in the dark as the coffee steeps ex-

posed a classical guitar left out on the
green tin roof in the rain & I could be singing

Jack Hayes

© 2010
(quote from Anne Waldman’s Holy City)

Distance Equals Rate Times Time

the distance between a grey stone diner in South Hero, VT &
this green salad day April 27th 2009—the unsettled sky

the goldfinches’ hollow whistle—the distance as
measured against the speed of light or any imagined constant—

I have nothing to say about the white cirrus clouds as they canoed
over the motley sky in a distant Vermont October—a Camel straight a plaid

scarf a cream turtleneck an instamatic camera the wind de-
scending thru Canadian silver birches their fall leaves in-

congruous lemons shaken in a grey breeze—the cattle across the
road grazing on new grass the prussian blue clouds waiting for birds to

measure the distance to & in fact my mind wandering—the
geese veering across the bosom of Sage Hill late last month

there isn’t any circumference there isn’t any
fixed center there isn’t any sky blue nothingness to fly back into


Jack Hayes
© 2010

"6 Impossible Things Before Breakfast"

blue dahlias a bass clarinet strewed thru golden gate park that mango
california forenoon you didn’t drop by for java & poems & smokes the

orange tulip rufous hummingbird dreams in this April’s new moon
perigee midnight amongst phosphorescent solar lights afloat in the dark-

ling garden—the hex sign sunrise emerging from Lake Erie a milk-paint
yellow horizon swabbing brushstrokes across the harmonic convergence a

vibraphone nestled amongst yellowed birch leaves last October the
leaves afloat in the Weiser River’s troubled glass—magenta

ice plants scattered across the Ocean Beach dunes that lime green
Saturday you couldn’t make it for bicycling & java the Blue Ridge

Virginia brick walkway dotted with dogwood petals those fractal
Petrarchan sonnets scattered by footsteps speaking in off-rhymes only


Jack Hayes
© 2010



(quote from Lewis Carrol’s Through the Looking Glass)
 

Ghazal 4/27

redwinged blackbirds trilling from willow
limb to willow limb as the morning unfolds most blue & yellow

a daffodil bouquet in a white & green vase almost gone past the
blooms slightly wrinkled & fatigued a consciousness

vanishing as it shrivels—a rest home in Florida the staff
puffing cigarettes by the walkway the morning light quiet thru

tall windows—not knowing the time or the day or the circumstance—a
boat in the grey Gulf of Mexico rolling across the swell the

cormorants the scarcity of things to say amongst the orange bouys &
white gulls an am radio tuned to the Ray Conniff Orchestra’s sharpened

strings in Vermont in a green July humming with grey wasps nests
suspended above the workshop’s screen windows, the tablesaw’s

dire hum the shellac's metallic fish presence a
summer evening grey in the garden amongst orange poppies

the pipe smoke’s choking sweetness dispelled thru the trellis this
Idaho morning shifting to grey above the blue blue hills


Jack Hayes
© 2010

Ghazal 4/25

a 1940s car chassis planted amongst trilliums & ferns &
jack-in-the-pulpit the deep green & the grape vines gone native

as helixes climbing the maples—a creamy orange light
swathed to the east & the prehistoric hills & mountains

insubstantial & blue gray as storm clouds falling into the horizon
there was a refrigerator without a door a white bulk amongst

underbrush—white & the tiny flowers of rust blossoming
‘round the hinges—a club house with 1 window & 1 bench en-

wrapping another maple & later swept away amidst logs & green
rowboats & brown trout in the flood the sky is white in the

pond right now the water glass the poplars along the creek reflected
vibrantly green the cows lowing & grazing the sparrows

& blackbirds busy in the willow’s supplely
gesticulating branches the fractious swell of the Saxtons River thru

a 1960s Vermont woodland we no longer have access
to—the static pond to the east out of reach & white this white morning


Jack Hayes
© 2010

Ghazal 4/24

the willow’s limbs fidget in an April breeze from the west
& the sun is nonetheless blind white in implacable blue

so I have to ask why the dead & the lost come to visit
as I wander the night away in an old house up a staircase

a maple bannister a light in a cut glass fixture a cold white
light—the bedsheets creased & wrinkled into alphabets &

so I have to ask why we have travelled so far from the white white
magnolia blooms of another April & the granite statue of Christ loom-

ing at Swannanoa lugubrious & floating on another wind rattling
with laughter “like dice shook” I said—the breeze agitating the willow

voicelessly—in a supermarket parking lot far over the hills & the
rolling gnarl of bitterbrush & the rudbeckia’s buttery eruption—

we were going our separate ways & there was eye contact
unsettling across the blue cigarette smoke years the curtains carried

across a street to a house as dark as spruce trees en-
circling a Vermont backyard in an August green

dusk—the lost & the dead come turning their faces into the
breeze—the sharp white ripples across the wind-stirred pond

Jack Hayes
© 2010