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
Waiting for something else
So he’s down to less than half his usual weight:
can’t wait to see if I can see him; he’s a ghost
of his former self, a skinny old withered old guy
my brother in law, and I know he’s living of cancer
but he won’t admit it, nor will his wife.
Summers, years ago we used to sit with binocs
out front of the cottage Sundays and comment
on topless beauties passing on gleaming white boats;
God I miss those days when he and I would
sit on our asses, sipping on Labatt’s Blue
there in the sunlight under the trees and feeling
superior to anyone else and loving the life we had,
But we don’t have now.
Waiting for the curtain
My little son and I were waiting for the show to start.
“They’ll bring down the lights soon,” I said.
Then I realized he was trembling, looking up at
the great chandelier above us.
Some explanation solved that one,
but it made me realize that
we take a lot for granted.
Nobody has told me, has explained
the procedure for
bringing down the lights
that I expect too soon.
I look up at those lights in the night sky
and wish Father would
take me by the hand and explain it.
Waiting for the elephant
The evening falls dream slowly over the neighbourhood like
a fleece blanket lofted by a mother over her feverish child.
We sit, inhaling clatter of far off street traffic
through banks of tall maples crowding the edges of the back yard.
You wait for me to say more:
I am blank, hoping for declaration of some other catastrophe
to interrupt.
It is my turn to shrug, grasp at some hook in the sky,
some saving inspiration.
You stir the empty place on your plate with your fork’s tines.
Somebody a few yards over clears his throat.
A door opens, briefly spewing somebody’s private caramba!
A siren leaves the nearby firehall, tears down the street, fades.
I dig into my brain realizing that silence
is not the response I want to make:
it argues too much in your voice,
drowning all I could say.
Waiting at the CAT scan lab
Some wit asked me
if I was having my cat scanned,
and that kind of pissed me off
because he stole my line.
How does he know whether I have cats?
He goes in for his scan.
They give me a drink of iodine solution.
You always dislike in others
that which is most in yourself.
He comes out.
The woman across from me is afraid
I don’t like that fear in her, much;
oh, she’s nice enough,
but she is facing removal of a kidney
because of a benign tumor
that is taking over.
What’s benign about that?
I don’t know whether to be jealous that
she doesn’t have cancer
or to dislike her for her fear.
I am a charitable guy and decide on the fear.
Another draft of iodine.
They take me away to put a shunt into
the bulging vein in my inner elbow.
I have a jovial joshing contest with the nurse;
I am witty, fearless. I return to my cold chair.
Another guy, an ex-student,
sits and talks to me for half an hour
making his success in life clear to me—
he ignores his fear; I like him.
Twenty minutes along,
the technican steps into the waiting area
where the prisoners all sit freezing
in our hospital gowns and socks
and asks what he’s still doing here.
“I was enjoying the conversation,”
he says, and continues telling me stuff.
I like him. More people arrive, change
fearfully into their patient uniforms
(they must be patient, they lie folded on shelves
without complaint.) I hate them, jovially.
Now I know what my cats feel at the vet’s.
I smell the fear; I hate this place, too.
More iodine to drink. It used to be for cuts:
stung like bee-stings on a scraped knee.
I think of Socrates, having a swig of hemlock.
I like Socrates: my kind of guy.
They go in; they come out; my turn.
Waiting at Schnitzels
The same group more or less was sitting eating:
the quartet, Play It Again! and some Cornwall guys;
goulash and potato salad were worth repeating,
and so were the pizza and lamb we tried on for size.
And after the dinner, the quartet again sang sweetly,
and our waitress and several customers came around;
and Jim’s perfect voice changed the meaning of our meeting
to something more complex than a perfect sound.
For I was sitting listening to my pulse
and thinking of the CAT scan coming up;
the guy with the light has told me they found a swelling:
near my liver, a lymph node has given a strange result.
So I’m asking again; any answer will be enough:
except for the song, there’s no answer that anyone’s telling.
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