Photo: David Murphy.
Contents
An Afghan Epigram: Ineluctable Things
The Candle
A Cold, Snowy Road after Darkness
Common Heroes
The Dancer
A Deathless Aspect
Desert Revival
Downtown at Dusk
English & Cyrillic
A Genial Epigram
The Gold Miner’s Industry
The Great Motivator
The Heat
The Housefire
Looking through a Microscope at the Universe
The Luthier Alone in His Workshop
The Mountain
My Niece’s Mind
Old Charts
Old Natives
Our Hope Rises
Pioneering
Quotidian
Ranching
The Rope Fence of the Pastel Houses
Royalty
Salted
The Stars Above
Steady Winds and Blooming Flowers
Temporal Cinquain
Thinking on Thought
Time
Torture
Untimely Death
The Wedding Ring
What Happened by the Half-Light
When Your Back is to the Wall
An Afghan Epigram: Ineluctable Things
As we must leave to life uncertain chance and to fate its many jibes,
we must leave to death our final dance and to Afghanistan its tribes.
The Candle
A flame leaps on a taper’s end
like a child filled with joy
or when playing with his friend –
such warm, bright light in a boy.
A Cold, Snowy Road After Darkness
On a cold, snowy road after darkness
come headlights that draw the eyes
like a puppeteer’s wires. Then comes the car,
easing over pot holes and slick places.
One cannot see within it—if its driver is young,
old, middle-aged, man, or woman.
Perhaps it does not matter. The car is funereal,
though not a hearse, and not black.
A house curtain is drawn taut then released.
Footsteps sound through the brightly lit home.
They stop by the door to greet the driver, the bearer.
Nothing ever stays the same. People come and go.
Folk pass through this world
like a stream’s water coursing over a stone.
Love is found, nourished, and grows.
But justice is blind, fate is deaf,
and we must go on living,
long after the elegy’s last notes are played,
even while the heart languishes in sorrow.
Common Heroes
Life soon becomes what we chose:
More than what might be or could,
it’s how we quietly stood.
The world is full of common heroes.
The Dancer
The dancer turns elegantly:
her pivot light and feathery,
her eyes as brilliant as a wren’s,
her lithe form swanlike as she spins
in ceremonial artistry.
The dance is life, felicity,
and also deep despondency.
Away from falls, time and again,
the dancer turns.
The nimble dancer gracefully
moves to the places she should be:
past the stages where dreams end,
to the theaters that love attends
where with airy vitality
the dancer turns.
A Deathless Aspect
Delve antiquity with scholar’s mattock,
unearth grace in strata, modern and attic.
All that was lovely as an ancient’s prize
shall be as fair to eventual eyes.
Desert Revival
We once were all in desert dry:
scorched by sun, parched by thirst,
we’d thought that here we’d die.
But when the night came coolly
we felt we’d weathered the worst.
Our zest it quickened duly,
as life extended, untraversed.
Downtown at Dusk
In April when the crepe myrtles and cherry trees bloom,
city folk are reflected in the rain’s puddles,
by water that serves as mirrors for impressions.
Wind whips billowy clouds into an eastern gloom,
while on the shiny street, a wayfarer huddles
beneath the tall windows of lordly professions.
The sun leaves plum-shaded shadows beyond buildings
and beams wash walls in apricot and tangerine.
In this fine twilight, a black cat’s lime-gold eyes glint;
hazy rays catch rich institutions’ burnished gilding.
Night falls on folk fat and merry, lonely and lean.
The cat leaps. Windows glow with a lemony tint.
In the darkness, people’s reflections disappear;
edifices are shades of coal and emery.
By night, people’s luminous private lives appear,
while day’s brilliant impressions fade to memory.
English & Cyrillic
A… B… C… begins the lonely alphabet
and progresses, like digits in a limited set,
to a close decidedly sure and finite,
like the extent of clouds in weather systems.
Phonics and pronunciation mark lucidly
how we’ve arrived at our political geology:
by lighting the cities
till we cannot see the stars,
calling it poetry and lionizing warts—
There’s how we’ve arrived…
but what are we here for?
Do we need a mathematician
to know two plus two makes four?
II. Gepetto & Pinocchio
Liquids, solids, gases /=/ steel machinery
amongst the Eastern European wheat fields,
the Ukrainian granary, the formaldehyde,
the slow, slow, Latvian lathe. People, terrified,
build boats to escape across the cold sea
from tall television sets, satellites, & the Rhine,
from the iron hand that broke in 1989.
A lone man wishes vainly on the stars.
коммунистические звезды
Wheat fields in the dusk, east of the Baltic sea bed.
There.
For once, we spoke plainly enough, she said.
Acknowledging alchemy can’t create gold from lead,
acknowledging there’s little blood left
that hasn’t been bled.
A naked Estonian boy takes a cold bath.
His mother shapes clay upon a lathe.
Across the grain fields, past the swather,
from the west, speeds a new gasoline car;
a lone man’s wish cracks on a communist star.
A Genial Epigram
At the genesis of human relations primordial
are integrity, respect, and humor most cordial.
The Great Motivator
Life, that grand adventure,
is fraught with zestful noise
of kings, paupers, alloys
strange, shaky, and unsure,
and is hung o’er by death,
clammy and ominous:
the dark, repugnant bliss
that vitalizes breath.
The Gold Miner’s Industry
Under the naphtha torch’s light lie tailings of ore.
Shadows flicker on a collapsed mine shaft
which fell one night like a melancholy piano score
on men whose lungs tore each time they laughed.
And here the mercury man’s shop stands on mud.
His skin’s peeling off. His ankles are deathly thin.
He washes gold in a mercury-filled pan of wood
then sets that metal in fire to burn away its silver skin.
What will become of him?
He will work for little, until he dies.
He will lie, cold and grim,
amid the gold that draws our eyes.
The Heat
In this heat,
with the cicadas buzzing
like chainsaws
and the dogs panting
like lovers
there is nothing to do
but sweat
and sleep
sweat
and sleep
sweat
and sleep
until you wash yourself
in the warm ocean
until the rain falls
and turns the land green
until the moon rises
and the heat
like a cat
curls up for a nap.
And then, only then,
can you breathe.
The Housefire
She had skin
as smooth
as a watermelon’s
and eyes
as bright
as butterflies.
She stood,
frozen for a moment,
with her mouth open,
so that her round white teeth
and the tip of her pretty
pink tongue
were just visible.
Her arm was outstretched,
like a medusa
under a deep sea.
I could understand her.
I suppose that’s
how
I might stand too
if I came home,
and I, like her,
found my home
burning.
Looking through a Microscope at the Universe
Evidently, you have it backward.
The microscope is for the microscopic,
the telescope for those enraptured
by the awesome scope of the cosmic.
Clearly, you’ve made a mistake.
Yet in life’s surprising petri dish
lies a macrocosm of creation:
startling stuff that makes up bird and fish,
complex atoms that incite elation,
which look like stars in a great black lake.
The Luthier Alone in His Workshop
Amid vacuousness,
vagueness, silence
ear to horsehair strings
(pluck, pluck, twing)
The luthier: polar, hoary hair
rivuleted, waxen face
planes, calipers, chisels
ebony bench
Sigggggghhhhhhh…..
stands, nestles, adjusts, lifts
bow strikes strings
(saw, pling, pling)
tattoo of sound
exequy of hush
a roaring, a splendor!
a workshop suffused.
(pling, saw saw, rush, whine orble, fade, seern, seeOyurn)
(pluck, pluck) hearken (saw) hearken (pluck, pluck) tune
(saw, neeor, seeor, zhhhh)
inhale
exhale
inhale
exhale
J.S. Bach
Partita No. 3 in E Major, BWV 1006: VII.
Gigue.
Resonance, reverberation decamp
ultimate echo.
The Mountain
There stands the snow-capped mountain, grave and bleak.
At the mountain’s foot are crows, black as coal;
hard-won triumph awaits you at the peak.
The dawn of the trial holds its mystique:
a challenge to pioneers who are bold.
There stands the snow-capped mountain, grave and bleak.
The trailblazer starts with certain technique,
but must break himself to make himself whole:
hard-won triumph awaits you at the peak.
By dusk of the trial, the sun seems weak.
The long day has grown dark, starless, and cold.
There stands the snow-capped mountain, grave and bleak.
But fight on, through the pain, the doubt, and shrieks.
Fight on, through the dismantling of your soul.
Hard-won triumph awaits you at the peak.
Keep hope inside when you’re too tired to speak,
and pay with your spirit every steep toll.
There stands the snow-capped mountain, grave and bleak.
Hard-won triumph awaits you at the peak.
My Niece’s Mind
This child’s mind is full of nature and joy,
among her thoughts are rivers, leafy trees,
sweeping flocks of swallows, and scudding clouds:
a mind of unbridled imagining
that looks on beautiful and healthy things.
This girl has intelligence, unalloyed
and pure, as fresh as fragrant spring.
Such innocence sets her apart in crowds.
At two years old, this girl dances and sings
and brings sweet love like an angel with wings.
Old Charts
The tea leaves are muddled; the lies are twice-told.
A lot and very little have changed.
Folk are not called slaves but still they are sold,
and some marriages can still be arranged.
Still. Still: Ignorance, as before, is poor.
It thieves, robbing both the foolish and wise.
And still, honest work makes a cherished core;
Since before the Greeks, such work has been prized.
Some metaphors remain too: Hope, the bird—
whether caged or just a “thing with feathers”—
has, as its strong song, the uplifting word;
its wings fly one out of foulest weathers.
So, much is hard to parse: wild, chaotic.
But the human spirit remains so clear.
Amidst the coiling maelstrom psychotic
are love and care: old charts by which we steer.
Old Natives
Seas of grass
night skies of pinpricked fire
dusks with low suns
that backlight bison.
Lightning in wire
milennia before guns
and modernity.
Such atrocities, such starts.
Old natives, lost tongues.
Fire, wind, earth, water,
summer, autumn, winter, spring.
Lost ages, forgotten arts,
painted faces, muted songs,
eagle feathers, pelts of otter,
languid river, purling spring.
Past, past, past—
murmur it into the mirror,
three times, ten times.
Light a candle, burn incense.
Dance, smoke, scream.
Conjure the past, summon it—
it shall not come;
it is past.
The land, the earth, the wind, the sky:
none can remember
the old natives.
Our Hope Rises
Our hope rises like a strong wind,
buoying us as we ascend
from gloomy fogs we’re loathe to fly
into a clear and better sky,
one where fewer troubles attend.
From lonely walks with tragic ends
to crowded tracks among cold friends
where we’ve left our own dreams to die,
our hope rises.
Even as we misapprehend,
stumble, fail at making amends,
and live a self-evident lie,
still, if we but honor and try
to be noble before life ends
our hope rises.
Pioneering
New horizons yearned for,
and adored, like far shores
where rest the fertile stores
that learners oft explore.
The Poet
The able word-smithy
ought to be pithy
and must write well
for his clientele.
He should have felt sadness,
and had spells of madness,
yet still kept some humor
for his consumer—
because nothing beats levity
except, of course, brevity.
Quotidian
Again, again, and again the sun rises and sets
on this place without memory that never forgets.
It is baffling how in a town so slow
how very quickly the years do go.
Ranching
Past the plums and bushes of blueberries
then through the hollow’s fog, thick and heavy,
at dawn when the whippoorwill’s song carries,
I drive the rutted road in my old red Chevy.
I have not slept the night. I was out on the trail,
on my horse, driving cattle along the dark terrain,
the hours marked by distant whistlings of a locomotive on the rail,
the deepest night made cold and bitter by freezing rain.
The heater’s blowing ghostly hot air on my hands,
and the truck bumps slowly along the road to home.
I take a tired look at the good lands
that wear my flesh raw to work and roam.
The Rope Fence of the Pastel Houses
I pass a seashell of no significance
as I follow the curves of a whitewashed fence
and the uneven coastline of the sea.
The fence is jagged, hardly even,
somewhat ragged,
with braided rope in place of slats,
stretching further than I can see.
Above my head, squawking shrilly,
are hoary seagulls on the wing—
circling, circling, flitting, snatching,
snatching at a crust of bread
then aloft again to form a ring.
And in the distance, softly scratching
their stemmed backs upon the posts,
are coastal grasses, likely latching
their seeds upon white painted posts,
for the wind to blow and foster breeding.
To my left are pastel houses,
built on stilts with reading nooks,
with cozy crannies for the child that drowses,
and oriels for those with books
to put their backs to while they thumb
through poems of Charles Baudelaire.
While from a cattail, singing sweetly,
warbles warmly the gentle wren.
Brown and round and barred so drably
(yet still considered very fair),
the pleasant wren makes moving music
then takes flight upon the air.
While I continue on my road,
whistling with the wandering wind,
going just as quickly as those good folk
who have in mind no certain end,
and speaking with an amiable neighbor,
I’m kindly told a thing or two:
that when traveling over any distance,
it’s but common sense to enjoy the view.
Royalty
We are not kings and queens
but ordinary folk,
supporting in this joke
a crown of lucky genes.
Salted
There’s no place I’d rather be
than here by the sea
where the birds are singing all day.
All my worries and cares
drift away on sea airs,
and I’m left to do nothing but play.
The world may be burning,
and it’s certainly turning,
but here every day feels the same.
I wake and I write
from morning to night,
and at times I forget my own name.
The Stars Above
And when I to suit my fancy lie
beneath the tree and darkened sky
and watch with wondering eyes the stars
that glimmer through the night’s short hours
and find there the constellations bright
with Grecian myths of astral light,
I wonder if in the twinkling air
there might be other life up there.
For while I lay thinking on our great world,
one not much larger than a black pearl,
I send my thoughts to a far, empyrean shore
where no manmade craft has gone before.
And stretching out my hand and mind,
I hope to greet one of like kind:
one whose curiosity about space
extends beyond the limits of their race
and lets them dream of far-off lands
with quiescent oceans and rocky sands
where sentient beings far above
hopefully can think and dream and love.
Steady Winds and Blooming Flowers
To be convinced of the strength of far-off powers—
of deities and entities and potencies—
is to stick and wallow for wasted hours.
better to trust one’s own competency,
or to steady winds and blooming flowers.
Temporal Cinquain
At once
the life of joy
withstands the beating hands
and revels in
the lucky stroke
of time.
Thinking on Thought
An unhappy mind
makes the day unkind:
It ties our thoughts
in the strictest knots
and makes the soundest plots
come to noughts.
Time
Who knows thee, Time, but the living?
Who fears thee, but those who know you?
Thy ways, strict and unforgiving,
cripple and bow that which you grew,
and bury what you brought from earth.
With march and mien unpitying,
you bring sadness in place of mirth,
then, again, you make the old new.
Such baffling brew is all thy worth
that draws death from life, birth from dearth.
Torture
Listen! Listen. The voice was once tenor:
now, soprano.
Imagine—yes, and just consider—yesterday he was silent.
Our clips snap tightly, our pliers are handy,
our clamps are unforgiving, our machines
well greased.
Some things are working right around here.
We don’t even have to be too cautious.
As with all open secrets there is a
wink, a nudge to the vacillators, a cold
hard ethical argument to the protestors, and then
the show goes on.
The show must go on.
On the one hand we sit at a round table
and discuss the pros and morals of
torture. This, while people’s
worlds are being unraveled, a skein of
yarn held by a thread, dropped from a
tall building.
The demolition of a sturdy warm home:
tall, distinguished, memories in every cranny.
All that is left is the thread, the
foundation.
The skein, the home, the soul—deconstructed.
It is the metamorphosis of butterfly—
vividly colored, light—into caterpillar.
From caterpillar to cocoon. Cocoon to seed.
It is a human eclipse.
It is a vanishing.
Untimely Death
This wound no hand can stanch,
neither doctor’s nor family’s.
For it, no balm in homilies,
in truths, or olive branch.
The Wedding Ring
They say that marriage is a worthy thing,
and that may very well be!
But sometimes I want to take off this ring
and be on my own and free.
What Happened by the Half-Light
For but a short while has she lingered in the gloaming
standing careless by the blooming hyacinths
whose delicate petals sway in the easy wind by the door.
The filtered air and haze of autumn twilight
send warm zephyrs to churn the crinkling leaves
and rustle the golden wheat in the harvest store.
Her soul rests easy in the faltering marbled light,
as men and women make their labored ways slowly home
through clusters of fragrant lilacs and fields of ocher brome.
