Max Reif Poems

How is it such pure motion
can make a single, constant sound?

I close my eyes:
...

I wonder if he's even
alive today, the poet

a crazy megalomaniac I knew
...

like green trees in drought,
you must draw from the unseen —
send your roots down deep
...

Now I can hear the sound of lapping waves
beside this muddly inlet of the bay,
this beach of sorts — this narrow, dark-brown strip.
...

Cafe' of dreams,
are you my meditation hall,
where instead of in rows
on pillows, watching thoughts,
...

The flags have been drooping at half mast
for more than a week now,
and I don't read the papers enough to know
if we're still mourning Gerald Ford or James Brown,
...

This morning there is no place
waiting for me except where my feet take me
or where my car seems to go of its own accord.
...

I like the buzz of the coffeehouse,
soothing to the ears,
and the quiet, classical music,
and the coffee-grinder's gears.
...

There's a world when I rise
on a Saturday morning,
a dawning world stretched out
like an infinite ocean before me,
...

Again, in the middle
of the game
with no clue
how it's played,
...