Charles

We met in a small white room near the far end of existence.
He lay in bed with his head raised so he could watch the game
on a small TV that hung from the ceiling.

I thought at first he was sleeping
but after a moment his face turned
toward me and slowly his eyes found mine.

“I’m dying you know,” he told me.
“Yes,” I said. That’s why I came.

We shared a few reminiscences.
I covered the back of his hand with my palm.
He tired quickly. I rose to leave and asked, “Can I get you anything?”
“No,” he said, “I have everything I need.”

“Charles,” I asked finally, “What’s it like
to wake up in the morning knowing you are going to die?”
He thought a moment then said,
what’s it like for you to wake up in the morning
and pretend that you’re not.?”

Wooden Boat

I found adrift a wooden boat
water-logged among thickest weeds
bow submerged and stern afloat
abandoned without locks or oars.

Its paint once green is faded now
chipped and gouged where wear is found
broken seats with rotting boards
almost nothing of it sound.

I wondered who had given up
on this old and weathered hulk
how they’d decided on which day
this useless thing be cast away.

Tropic Of Capricorn

They were called the doldrums by some.
To others, for reasons I don’t even want to think about,
they were the horse latitudes.

At one time only sailors could get there
but now they come to me,
often on a Sunday afternoon.

They seem to perch beside me
on the arm of the couch
or on the back of a chair
that swivels and reclines.

At times they are so still
that I think I can hear the creak of the oak boards
of the quarterdeck as they shrink under the weight
of a heavy tropical sun just before I nod off
a few degrees south of the Tropic Of Capricorn.

A Thousand Years

We’re riding on this continental plate bound for the far east,
a slow ride punctuated by earthquakes, erupting volcanoes,
and geysers that spray like great gray whales
that sleep in deep wild flower valleys
where vapors and smoke entwine like snakes in courtship.

It’s a slow ride on the mountain-muscled back
of huffing, puffing, rumbling, grinding living liquid earth
bent on taking us wildly careening to a destination
we ourselves will never reach.
A slow ride despite all the jumping, thumping, pumping,
zigging, zagging, bumping that makes it hard for us to think.

Are we there yet? Are we there yet?
No we’re not there yet and by the time we are
Earth will have changed and we might be evolved
into something like stromatolites,
living beings that look like rocks.

Only we will be intelligent and wise
and we’ll recite one long poem
that we write word by word verse on verse
in the warm shallow sea where we live.
One perfect poem, a thousand years in the writing
and finally
finally there will be peace.

Keys

Lost in the garage (who knows how long ago)
a cigar box full of the other halves of things
that have never found their mates

along with a  mysterious ring of keys to things
once owned or perhaps owned still.
No one can say for sure.

There are large keys to unknown doors
who’s locks were changed
(I don’t remember which or why).

Small keys to luggage or padlocks
some of which may still live in the attic
or in a tool box in the basement.

There is one oddly shaped key
that may be to an old briefcase
or perhaps a garden tractor.

Keys are sacred things never to be thrown away
because they may open the corners of lives
long ago lost but never forgotten.

Dark And Light

I asked the question,
           ”when I turn on the light
                    where does the darkness go?”

The scientist said
           ”darkness is merely the absence of light.
                     You have only illuminated it.”

The philosopher said
          ” darkness is merely
                     the other side of light..”

The poet said,  ”yes,
           I understand perfectly
                     why you ask.”

A Small Plot Of Land

Here, on this small plot of land
at the edge of an anonymous
mid-western town,
lie the graves of four generations of my family
and most of the people they knew.

Their voices are muffled
under a layer of new silent snow,
but it doesn’t much matter.
They, having had so little to say in life,
have even less now.

Queen Anne’s Lace

Queen Anne’s lace lends her elegance to this field,
abandoned first by the lumbermen who cleared it,
then by the farmer who once grew a family here.

The foundation of the house is still visible
beneath a heritage of lilac and forsythia,
things a farm wife would want outside her back door.

But now everyone has gone.
Jet planes overhead write that story
in white vapor trails crossing bright autumn skies,

two for Chicago, one for Minneapolis.
Another for New York or Boston,
places Queen Anne’s lace wouldn’t be welcome

Most Of The Army Was Not Napoleon (And I Am Not Walt Whitman)

Most of the army was not Napoleon,
did not ride back to Paris in a carriage
beneath a pile of firs,
but froze to death along the road from Moscow
after climbing into the carcass of a horse for warmth,
or starved on the streets of Vilnius.

Most Romans were not Caesar
but sat below deck chained among rows of rowers
pulling, pulling on their oars
until the water of the Mediterranean,
rising around them,
brought a final and welcome end.

My great, great, great grandfather
was not a king or prince,
dug potatoes and turnips from rocky dirt,
ate a chicken once on Christmas Eve,
was dead of typhus at thirty-five,
and I am not Walt Whitman.

Ursae

Imagine the absolute surprise
of the man (or woman) who first noticed,
one clear and moonless night,
the outline of a bear in the northern sky.

“No, make that two bears,”
he might have thought out loud
if his language even had a word for two;
“a big one and a small one”.

And the next thing that came to him,
after the notion that tomorrow he might look for something
softer than the rock that pillowed his head,
was, “how ferocious the stars must be”.

I Only Wanted To Look Like A Poet

I did not start out wanting to write poetry.
I only wanted to look like a poet.
That would have been enough for me.

The dark clothing, the imported cigarettes,
all the espresso drinking,
a little spiral notebook that I carried everywhere,
my poet hat, a bit like a beret, but not an actual beret,
a copy of A Coney Island Of The Mind
jammed in my back pocket,
dogeared by the pretense of
being repeatedly pulled out,
thumbed through and read aloud.

Worn shoes, with or without socks,
eating of cheeses from Europe
I could not afford,
listening to music
I didn’t understand.

Yes, looking the part was all I ever intended;
then one day something happened.

Tristia

Little poem,
            you will go on into the world
                    without me.

Go untroubled and unashamed.
            Look around with a timid heart.
                    Find one who will pause over your words.

See that you do no harm
            at the world’s edge
                    where there is no hope of safety.

And to any who may ask how I fare,
           say that I lived.
                   Except for that, be silent.

Bluette

If I said blue
like the dress of the girl
in a painting by Cezanne
that he called Fillette

or blue like the strange
and wonderful melody of the tune
that Brubeck named Bluette

or blue like a sudden splash
caused by water birds taking off
from a pond on a clear morning

would that tell you enough
about how her eyes looked
on that last day? 

Dust Bowl

It’s the coming of the long dry,
the once clear horizon dark,
dust driven by an unforgiving wind.

It starts with a tingling sense,
a foreboding, an itch
that cannot be scratched.

A smell that fills flared nostrils,
leaves a taste at the tongue’s tip,
bitter metallic like verdigris copper.

It roils and boils,
fills the sky with panic
as black as any moonless night.
b
It coats every surface
blown through the narrow crack
under the door.

Fertile furrowed soil
dries and cracks
like the furrows of an ancient brow.

Loosened dirt fills the eyes,
burns like stinging insects,
is blown as far away as the ocean

A dampened kerchief covers my face.
but it does so little good
against the grains of blowing grit.

Coughing, choking breaths
find no oxygen in the growing
density of dust thickened air.

It’s the coming of the long dry,
an absence of fertility,
a dying end to all thought.