James Schuyler, In January

"In January

After Ibn Sahl

The yard has sopped into its green-grizzled self its new year
        whiteness.

A dog stirs the noon-blue dark with a running shadow and dirt
        smells cold and doggy

As though the one thing never seen were its frozen coupling
        with the air that brings the flowers of grasses.

And a leafless beech stands wrinkled, gray and sexless–all bone
        and loosened sinew–in silver glory

And the sun falls all on one side of it in a running glance, a
        licking gaze, an eye-kiss

And ancient silver struck by gold emerges mossy, pinkly
        lichened where the sun fondles it

And starlings of anthracite march into the east with rapid jerky
        steps pecking at their shadows."

— James Schuyler, “In January”

James Schuyler, 1970 or '69 

He wrote poems for friends, to mark a day or morning, to say he was still alive. He wrote for himself, for Joe Brainard, for Frank O'Hara, for Joe and Jane Hazan, for a whole circle, school, the New York School. God bless James Schuyler.

a pugnacious James

The poems of Schuyler catch time as movement, as
fluid, graceful, beautiful —

and quick.

They don’t suggest much agency I guess.
I am not going to judge him.

--Poems by Ken Bolton 

What if we all decided in 2016 to catch time in our words, a line or two each day. Just to say Hi!