George Oppen said: “I would like, as you see, to convince myself that my pleasure in your response is not plain vanity but the pleasure of being heard, the pleasure of companionship, which seems more honorable.”

ERIC RENSBERGER is originally from Elkhart County in northern Indiana, but he has lived in southern Indiana since 1974, mainly in Bloomington. His work has been published in numerous journals and anthologies. His chapbooks include, amongst other titles, "Letters," "Standing Where Something Did," and "Blank of Blanks," and he has indulged in more fugitive forms of publication such as posting poems anonymously on public kiosks, streetlamp poles, and bulletin boards in restaurants. He is a convinced and persistent self-publisher. His collected works can be found at ericrensbergerpoetry.net, which is home to his major work, the ongoing chronological series "Account of My Days," at present consisting of more than 1,000 poems.

Welcome to the Poets Weave, I'm Romayne Rubinas Dorsey. Eric, what poems have you brought for us today?

PRAYER FOR THE LONG NIGHTS

look up: the form of the depths
is masked by stars

these nights grown outward
from their centers

a numb walk along a line of hours
cold and defenseless

I call myself lucky
to say only what I have heard

and to stop speaking when I hear nothing
even if it's in the middle

the long nights pricked with stars
are an expanse of fearful honesty

and from their interior
my prayer is launched


WRITING FOR NO ONE

is in a language so lost
no chisel has ever touched it

writing for no one is done in the dark
and will be read ditto

the peeps chirrs and scratching
heard in the background

are themselves an opaque literature
inspired by forgetfulness

at midnight the world closes
around itself

circle inside circle
writer disappears reader disappears

the zodiac is torn from its stories
and becomes geometrical proof

everything is gone but the purity
of the speechless world


LAZARUS LAUGHS

a fly has landed
on the back of his hand

it turns around and around
pulls back its head for a wider look

and stamps its feet
to test the flesh

is it death or life?
the fly is discomposed

and Lazarus laughs
he can't help himself

he is in spasms
the joke is on the fly


FLOWERS ON THE GRAVES OF THE OVERDOSED

the wind shifts through them
and they move shaking
their generosity of color
against the gray stone
where the name is fixed
like sorrow dancing before memory

the frail bones are packed in dirt
we visit them as though we could
still visit the person
but the bones are not the person
who was taken from us violently
I meant to say softly
by deception

the person is now in our minds only
invulnerable there...

the red flower of a living mouth
memory makes it bloom again
memory is like the clouds
hovering on the scene
continually recreated
seeming close but actually at a distance
not subject to harm
as is the easily torn
and prone to withering flesh
that makes up the form of flowers


TIME-SENSITIVE MATERIALS

my toes
my hair
my knees
my brain
my heart
my skin
everything


You've been listening to the poetry of Eric Rensberger on the Poets Weave, I'm Romayne Rubinas Dorsey.