sometimes I wonder (revisited)
Sometimes I wonderif she ever existed.
—found poem
Sometimes I wonder
if she ever existed.
Only a smile now
a gesture
copper hair flashing
she fades even in dreams
artist in the supermarket
She stands in the aisle like reverse Stendhal:frozen, her hand extended over the mound of apples.
Apples push into her like the fists of a lover
knocking at a locked door, urgent, juicy, plump.
It's always like this: fruit overwhelms, vegetables
scream longing; fresh trout imagines a sizzling grill,
beef lounges in a marinade, ready to sear.
She wants to paint, to cook, to knead warm
transit
Night. City street after rain.Early autumn leaves cling to the pavement
like wet hair on a waiting face.
Amber and blue incandescence
lies in pools for walking entrances,
performances and exits,
as the occasional soloist mimes
man walking alone on the street
concert
engine idle just beyond theancient boathouse
river calm and waiting silent
to the weed beds
and the spaces vast, beyond
ease the throttle slowly forward
hear the engine twist
inside the music
The part I sing in our quartethovers above or below the melody;
often it sounds like the French horn.
The Lead's note sounds familiar;
the Bass is the solid foundation;
the Tenor lilts above all, thrillingly;
my part, the Bari, fills it all in.
cocoon
Inside the silk threadsis what will come:
beautiful wings,
gleaming reds, yellows, blues,
curves and strength,
the freedom of flight
instead of plodding,
gnawing eating.
lotus eaters
This is the first in a series I started a while back. I should write a few more on this . . .everyone on the street was
somewhere else
listening to music
words from another time
another place
after
She used to purr when she leaped onto the bed;I prefer to think of her arrivals.
I could read her expressions through the fur:
glad to see me (and usually was):
relaxed eyelids, fur sleek off the face;
impatient with my stupidity:
Mauve and Gold
If a god were eating strawberriesWhen that sunset happened,
I know he'd stop in mid-bite
With red sweet juice dribbling
Down his chin onto his toga
And just stare and do a god-thing:
driving home
The sun set just before we turned west onto the roadthat curved into the pure black landscape silhouetted
against the absolutely clear tangerine and indigo sky.
As our headlights revealed and dismissed the familiar
meanderings of this riverside route and its clusters of cottages
On being mistaken for myself
Photos never lieexcept when they must,
with a minimum of mendacity,
tell welting whoppers
about how egregiously old
the old codger has become.
I have studied photos
taken years ago
that make me look
what was left
First they took away the all moneypoured it into the government trough
and they fed the war in Afganistan
but still that wasn't enough
so they crucified the artists
and they stood around and laughed
salt
“We are the salt of the earth! — Sal terrae!
So they chanted, Trinity College students, all:
irreverent, daring — not the saintly Saints (we)
who dared not even drink in residence. Such were
the shallow fifties: young men in tweed jackets, neckties,
who would swallow every half-washed lie or agitprop
spread by politicians magically who knew better than
we how to twist and prettify the world they made.
What goons what loons what silly tune-believing rubes jejune!
The question is, of course, whether those salterranean beasties
from Trinity were wiser for their irreverence or just as silly as we.
I’d like to think they made their way prudently, cynically, in the wide world,
free of our narrow-eyed tunnel vision, able to tell a hawk from a handsaw.
One could do a lot worse than be salt, pillar or no.
any private act
water wood or steel or ancient stone
or foot or hand or lip can soon engage
or thought can take the soul so far away
that even wild conjecture soon outgrown
will fail to estimate the consequence
of seldom found or wanted solitude
that turns the heart from socially approved
towards contrary but wished for ends
and so we end with action all pretence
and so we come undone with fatal friends
and so our thoughts descend to places rude
and so misuse such simple solitude
that thus we end our days to sadness thrown
to wood or water, steel or ancient stone.
Snow song
the rhythmic treat no southern soul can know
is walking out in winter’s squeaky snow
when sky is steely blue and hard as glass
when simple air inhales as shards of brass
when silence reaches out to pale the sun
and woods are still and breath and heart are one
then snow the diamond harness of the north
drifts hangs sings floats deliberately roars
in music mortals see but seldom hear
so blind is heart so sweet enchanted, ear.
Changing of the Guard
Standing in water up to their thighs as always
father prying the log with a hunk of two by four
son trying to wrestle the stuck chain saw tongue
out of the oak kerf pinching it tight.
The old man got it up once but no more
they had to change places
stumbling on the bouldered bottom
young arms levered the old oak enough
against waves of nausea the old man wandered
the rest of the day into evening.
this was not the first but the worst.
More and more he seemed to be less and less.
waiting
Sun slopes low through
Boston ivy leaves festooning
the window where I wait.
Traffic drones, chatty radio
sputters in the kitchen:
North Korea’s A-bomb is the
indignation of the nation.
The blue berries on the ivy,
some relative of grape
ready themselves to be winter
larder for shivering birds.
I bring new stories to the
paintings here, every day.
Table lamps deliver globes of
warmth and literacy
to their respective corners.
In summer I look out at
the river and far horizons;
the rest of the year
horizons are pretty close by
winter’s weather wisdoms
are more reliant on
the gods of telegraphy.
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