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
E
An elephant
sitting: “E”.
A baby elephant
sitting
holding his trunk: “e”.
Except for a certain confusion with “3″
which had an affinity for “B”
“E” worked for me.
D
“D” puzzled me, almost
right from the start:
I was delighted when I discovered
“D” started my name and was therefore
mine;
but I was confused
that it seemed to be
a relative of “B”
who was nowhere in my name at all,
and more — confused
is not the right word —
intrigued
to discover that
the small print version
of “D” was backwards:
“d” — it curved the opposite way.
It was like a nasty little secret
sort of a black sheep in the family.
I think it might have been that
that made me a contrarian:
and from then on,
I found myself
at first secretly
but later on publically
on the opposite side
in just about everything.
Everybody played hockey
in our town;
I hated hockey
and on my own became a skier.
No matter what popular opinion was
I always looked for another way to see the issue.
That’s a good way to become a loner, by the way
but like Hester Prynne
my “D” has become sort of emblazoned by it.
Maybe that’s how characters are formed
at least, in my case.
Thank you, little “d”.
C
Cat was always my “C” letter:
when a cat sat, its back was a “C”;
but like a cat
“C” was ambiguous
sometimes hard,
sometimes soft:
“cease” had the soft “C”;
“crease” the hard “C”.
Then there was the confusion with “S”:
was it “defense” or “defence”?
and then C’s involvement with the whole
“I” before “E” except after “C” thing —
I felt betrayed.
“C” was a pretty slippery customer;
it taught me a lesson:
cats are all soft and purry and furry
but they also have flaws:
watch out for their teeth:
beware of their claws.
B
When I was a kid, “B” looked a lot like a bum
— although we called it “bottom” then —
which started with the plump curvy letter “B”
simultaneously focus of attraction and poo.
So much for the little smile that
used to play over my face
early in the alphabet.
A
I remember imagining
“A” as a high-pitched roof
with an elevated floor.
I remember thinking roof
and floor were somehow similar —
why the ‘ell would I think that?
That was in the fanciful time of grade one
when school was playtime
letters were shapes,
and I was just learning to “print”
and had no idea
what “print”ing was
or where it all would lead.
Of course, it led here:
to poetry —
something totally
different from “print”ing
but not so far from imagining.
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