Mark Irwin: California Poets Part 11, Five Poems

Mark Irwin

October 20th, 2026

California Poets: Part XI

Mark Irwin

Five Poems

The middle

It’s the middle that’s always intrigued me, that part

            we can’t seem to get to, the middle of life—yours or mine—

and if we did, what would we do there, floating on that now. Once,

somewhere near the beginning, I felt the middle was already

            starting, just an inkling that perhaps I would remember when

I got there. It was like glimpsing the face of someone familiar

but upon looking more closely, the autumn wind

            sent up a flurry of leaves. The middle lacks context, or

identifying markers. It’s a junction that’s hard to see, or get out of

like the middle of winter, or the middle class. In a big bowl

            I was separating the yolks from egg whites till all I had was

the opaque albumin, congealed all middle. In dream

I was walking down a long road with grass growing among

            the packed earth. In the distance I saw two trees and walked

between them. The first tree, half bare, was losing its ruddy

leaves in autumn while the second tree, fuzzy, was pushing

            forth new buds in a scrim of green. I stopped there in

a long dusk or early morning and felt everything but remembered nothing.

Variation on a phrase by B.B. King

The thrill is that it was, but

still is passing, pausing just

for you the thrill returns

a bit less thrilling but you

know what I mean, feeling is

like good whiskey you can’t

dilute it, but years spill into more

years there in the garden the ring

she puts on his left finger the bee

stings, it swells, the finger, the

ring too tight, a drunk man will

saw off in a vice, the solder mark

gone now, the girl into time’s maw but wait, it

all returns another bee mauling

an iris, sky torn, the air a bit

less but all of it all over.

Yes

Sometimes in the middle of each April

when the dandelions stare

through our sleep, when the cellophane, torn,

glints in the teeth of grass, and the squirrel lobs its orange fire

limb to limb, I am content to gaze into the air engraved

with sparrows and rain, into the wonderfully out-of-focus

green in all its flux. Then the word yes

finds all its creeks and rivers, then our cries

are urgent and palpable as gravel thrown

into water. Surprised we

blink and are taken. Then I remember

that my question, having something to do with light, has come

a long way, and now I would like to tell you

something else in the language of petals, something about winter

and the stones placed upon so many dead.

(From American Urn: Selected Poems (1987-2015)

The Irises

The irises were so beautiful I had trouble

leaving. One day, one day it will be lonely

when people go. I wanted to linger a bit

longer among irises. Some white, some purple,

some pale blue. What can one say among

irises? One’s speech grows dumb as they touch

the air. I wanted to linger a bit longer

among irises. The moment moves. Are you

ready? I think the body’s a mansion                              

with two doors, one luminescent and open,

one dark and closed. I wanted to linger

a bit longer among irises. I felt something

opening into the room among our tangled                 

arms. One day, one day it will be lonely. Petals,    

paper doors, walls, clouds. I wanted to,

you wanted to. That your desire may spill

into eternity, an impatience whose lingering is all.

(From American Urn: Selected Poems (1987-2015)

Elegy (with Advertisement) Struggling to Find

its Hero

It was a century in which we touched ourselves in mirrors

over and over. It was a decade of fast yet permanent

memories. The kaleidoscope of pain

some inflicted on others seemed inexhaustible

as the positions of sex, a term

whose meaning is as hybridized as the latest orchid. Terrorism

had reached a new peak, and we gradually

didn’t care which airline we got on, as long as the pilot

was sober, and the stash of pretzels, beer, and soft drinks

remained intact. On TV, a teenage idol has just crawled, dripping wet,

from the top of a giant Pepsi can, or maybe I imagined it,

flicking through channels where the panoply

of reality shows has begun to exorcise

the very notion of reality, for both the scrutinized actor

and the debilitated viewer who becomes confused and often reaches

into the pastel screen for his glass, while down Broadway

sirens provide a kind of glamorous chorus

for this script of history where everything is so neatly measured

in miles, pounds, or megabits. How nice it would be

to drowse in the immeasurable. How nice

it would be to escape.

And there’s a wobbly marble bench

beneath an out-of-focus tree on the Web

I like to occasion my body with.

How brief we’ve become in our speed

I think. How fast the eternal.

How desperately

we need a clearing, a place

beyond, but not necessarily

of nature. And the rain

was so deep the entire forest smelled of stone, then the sun

broke, burying the long shadows

in gold. And the wounded

king woke in a book long since closed, and the princess

came to in a bed so large

she could never leave. How desperately

we need a new legend, one with a hero, tired

though he may be. One who has used

business to give up

business, one who has bought

with his heart what we

sold with ours.

Author Bio:

Mark Irwin is the author of thirteen collections of poetry, including Once When Green (2025), Joyful Orphan (2023), Shimmer (2020), American Urn: Selected Poems (1987-2014), Tall If (2008), and Bright Hunger (2004). Recognition for his work includes The Nation/Discovery Award, two Colorado Book Awards, four Pushcart Prizes, the James Wright Poetry Award, the Philip Levine Prize for Poetry, The Juniper Prize for Poetry, and fellowships from the Fulbright, Lilly, and NEA. He has also translated three volumes of poetry and lives in Colorado and Los Angeles, where he teaches at the University of Southern California. Zanzibar: Selected Poems & Letters of Arthur Rimbaud (with an afterword by Alain Borer) will appear in February of 2027 from Unbound Editions.