Thor, the Norse God of Thunder, had a hammer named Mjölnir. Mjölnir was considered a fierce weapon that could level mountains and summon lightning with every blow. In this poetry blog, every Thursday, (Thor’s Day), Mjölnir will forge only song - sing of the mysteries and beauties of the world.

Thursday, December 31, 2015

THE OTHER SIDE OF LISTENING

What will
it take

to open
the door

of belief?
Asking

the right
questions?

Or something
more basic?

A new kind
of listening,

perhaps?—
that, though

beyond you,
you inhabit

like the voice
of an ancestor.

Thursday, December 24, 2015

CARRERA

Don’t writhe and strain
against the weight
that is all around you.
Move through it like water.
Dance to the music
of mallet and chisel
‘til you find your contraposto pose.
Explode from the block, the rock.
Emerge into life, your life,
as sculptor from slave,
with all excess chipped away—
and your hands now free
to embrace what you’ve rescued,
what you’ve cut from Carrera.

Thursday, December 17, 2015

THE HINGE

Between
This and that
There is
An edge
A fringe
Where 
Because
Of proximity
Two things
Each unlike the other
Meet and mingle
Through extremities
Touch
And become
A third thing:
Resemblance.
And everything
In that place
And in that
Moment
Hangs
In the balance
Like a hinge.



Thursday, December 10, 2015

THE FENESTRATOR

When you least expect it,
God, the great fenestrator—
if you believe
in that sort of thing—
will install and open
a window.

All at once
you are a dwelling
the season
and bird song
enter
carrying the taste
of early morning
rain.


Thursday, December 3, 2015

THE JESTER

It takes a village
to make a village.
It takes many
to make a circle–
the Lover alone
can’t do the job,
nor can the Wise Man.
Invite Coyote in
and you’re half-way there,
half-way ‘round the mulberry bush,
well on your way to popping
the proverbial weasel.
A kingdom is nothing
without the mockery
and impunity of its Jester.
Just ask the Immortal Bard,
he’ll tell you:
that, measure for measure,
love’s labor’s not lost
as long as you look 
to the comedy of errors 
for your answers.



Thursday, November 26, 2015

THE SITTER*

Beauty…
It touches so deeply
it causes us to know something
about ourselves
we did not already know.
Beauty is a mirror held up before us.
We can see ourselves as sitters in it 
and the world as our painter.
Our lives are its pigment, 
pastose strokes, and canvased dance.
We are its portrait.
And, where Sargent might have seen
the animal in his Madame X,
what the world shows us,
if we are willing to see it,
is the human in the animal,
the man inside the finch, let’s say,
the tiny heartbeat behind
the fine feather and brittle bone of love.

*Inspired by Donna Tartt's 
Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Goldfinch

Thursday, November 19, 2015

IMMACULATE CONCEPTION AT THE CORNER LAUDROMAT

an ancient
head to toe
in white

had she not
been overwhelmed
by her work

—a mountain
of sheets she was
feverishly folding—

I would have sworn
she was the color
white incarnate

busy
conceiving itself
through creases