On a Clear Day

The sky spread cirrus clouds out today,

Chill racemes on feathery stalks. A moon,

The last quarter of the harvest moon,

Hung silvered behind them, the blue sky

White breasted, wore it as a daylight jewel.

                                                                          I Feel My Powers Returning

It was in New Mexico somewhere outside Santa Fe,

When my 10 year old son sat up and realized we would

Get home at last.  "I feel my powers returning," he said.

The magic of place in a young boy's heart. 

After a bout with Rhus radicans and a nameless bug,

I feel my own powers returning.  A joy to feel the body

Gain traction, ready to move no longer sluggish, weak.

Like the young boy, a year and a half old, paralyzed

By polio, unable to walk.  Then, with head burns, muscle

Aches, tears and toughness, this young boy felt his powers

Returning.  He learned to walk again, upright in the world.

                                                                                democracy

democracy should never get a capital.

A capitol, sure, a capital never.

democracy is lower case political theory.

The working typeface of governance

democracy illuminates no manuscripts

With florid letters and imaginary beasts.

democracy has enough to do with the real.

You know.  Poverty.  Injustice.  Race.

The capital offenses in fighting words,

Words an Oligarchist would gloss over

And a Monarch would suppress with a 

Lace hanky plucked from an elegant sleeve.

I sat down today with some democrats.

Just folks mad about the state of things,

In this case the United States of People

Uninsured.  Can you imagine?  In a

democracy people who can't see

A doctor when they're sick.  It's 

Enough to make a democrat want

To sit down and get organized.

                                                                             Age

Do we turn our backs to death, give up a forward look?

Count down our days and hours with our trousers rolled,

As Prufrock did?  Or, do we look death in the face,

Shake our fist and rage, rage against the dying of the light?

The heart knows it has limits, only so many beats, then

Rest.  Permanent rest.  Until that last beat, the final 

Paradiddle of our life, we can greet the future, hand

Out, eyes open, mouth curved up in a smile, for

What else is life, if not this?  To live until we die.

                                                                              State Fair

Dancing lights and popcorn, cotton candy.

Bulls and cows, boars and sows, 

Husbands and wives all show up at the fair.

Fish swim in the shallow pool, displaying

Themselves.  The fish know.  Display 

Is the fair in a word.  Teenage girls 

In the latest showgirl fashions and

Brand new combines and tractors 

Spruced up, in their best colors .

Politicians and Christians hand out tracts

To harassed mothers with strollers 

And farmers in John Deere hats.

Ceres and Persephone rule the fair,

And their bitter sweet life kisses the air.

As the harvest comes in, finishes, 

Fall breathes on the state, then winter

When fair Persephone returns to 

The underworld, no longer on display.

                                                                                   Incantations

The ritual common and domestic, but no less magical

Involves these ingredients:  a wife, a restaurant, 

A whisper to the waiter about celebrations. A wink.

Theatre tickets.  Up an escalator adequate for a DC 

Subway. Seats next to each other and players.

A few songs, an intermission.  Lights of the city

Shown off  against the river, three bridges, a bit

Of fog and mist, some rain.  A late night and that

Drive home.  The dogs go out.  Love summoned.

                                                                           A Son Faraway

Once, when my father still lived, I was a son faraway.

Today, high up peak 7 or is it peak 8, my son lives 

Faraway.  It is not the same, this distance.  I lived 

Distant from my father while still near home.

Joseph lives faraway, high up, but he is not far from

My heart.  He knows.  My father may have felt the

Same.  I do not know.  Distance, to the heart, is

Not measured in miles.  No, to the heart, the son

Faraway can live present to the father and the father

To the son.   

                                                                                 A Northern Summer

Heat comes blasting down filled with water.

Red oaks give up last year's leaves for green.

Virginia creeper and wild grape grasp another

Limb further up the elm and locust trees.

Flowers bloom as if they had only a few

Warm days.  Insects hatch, birds come

After them.  Scents fill the air, peppery

Purple petunias, delicate bushy clematis.

Colors rocket from pink to blue to yellow

To orange to blush to magenta to lavender.

Life rushes along spending its colors,

Its scents, even its young rabbits and

Squirrels.  Profligacy rules the summer.

That old miser winter has lost the battle.

                                                                                 Heavy, man.  Heavy.

Sometimes things weigh on my mind,

Other times, like now, on my body.

Eating is a hand to mouth action,

Voluntary movements, one hand, 

One mouth, one mind.  Then how

Does the hand move without will?

Where do these wretched pounds

Come from?  Is there a minor 

Devil in charge of adding a half

Pound here, another pound there?

Must be.  They come like dark

Magic.  As if cast by a spell.

                                                       The Day after the Day the Bomb Fell

It is not, nor can it ever be, the same.

Jinn are capricious creatures made of fire,

This Jinn,  released from its heavy metal

Bottle, must be the chief Ifrit, wild and free.

What would Rumi say, who spoke of the fire

In men's hearts?  A man intoxicated with the

Wine of divinity, he knew the flame inside.

But this bomb is all outside, all flash, all bang.

"Now, I am become death, destroyer of worlds."

Shiva invoked as metaphor and cloak for hubris.

How about a Manhattan, please.  So urbane.

Give one to the little boy and one to the fat man.

And, oh, by the way, could we run a tab?

                                                               Exurban Life

The homes along this street are little worlds,

Complete with their own orbits, each moving

Around different suns.  Sometimes I wonder

If we even have the same atomsphere.

These worlds get few visitors from outside their

Own solar systems.  On holidays the street

Looks silent, empty, as the worlds become

Even more self-contained.  

Lighted windows flicker with television glow.

Here a menorah appears in December.

There a purple and gold Vikings flag flies.

Across the way sits a small observatory.

Cars spill the neighbors out inside garages.

No walking by the house with milk or eggs.

The mail comes.  The newspaper.  Ace

Waste removal.  

Things come in, they go out.

                                                             Felling a Dead Elm

Not much for two-cycle engines or 4-cylinders.

One smoky, noisy contraption does have my heart,

The chainsaw.  It is loud.  Dangerous.  Effective.

Andrea, the forester, came to our property. 

These three elms have the disease.  Cut them down.

Sad to have the disease, happy to use the chainsaw.

Went out this morning. 

Imagined the tree falling, which way it had to go.

Pulled out the choke and fired up the saw.

On the second cut, to let loose the wedge

That guides the trunk down, my saw got stuck.

Not good for my lumberjack merit badge.

Back to the shed to pick up the axe.

Axe work builds bodies twelve ways.

The blade, not the saw, felled the tree.

The saw jumped out when the trunk

Released its weight as it fell.  The injured 

Saw, its chain bar bent, went to Dehn's.

Dehn's sold me a chain bar and a new

Saw blade.  More work tomorrow.

                                                      Poison Ivy

Rhus radicans.  A violent species within a kingdom

Noted for its pacifism and self-sacrifice.  Leaves

Of three we should let be, an incantation learned

Either in childhood or with pink lotion on itching

Lesions.  Planted terrorists, they wait among the 

Grape vines, hide beneath the Virginia creeper, 

Thrive among the oaks, along the shaded borders.

Think of the dainty beauties, the columbine and

The bleeding heart.  The hearty vegetables:

Asparagus, sugar snap peas, cucumbers, all

Plants ready to die that others may live.

Not Rhus radicans.  It lies in hiding, daring

The unwary to touch it, just touch it.

If there is a virulent fundamentalism in the 

Green world, poison ivy must be a founder.                                

On the wall here hangs a map of Lake Superior.

Lines for the prudent sailor crisscross its whiteness,

Numbers call the out the depths: 60, 87, 109.

Here the Lake is a gigantic fantasy.  This map has

No wave crash into its thin shoreline.  Here Black Bay

has no magic, no water filled with sails and pleasure

Boats.  Wawa does not make the cut, lying too far 

North.   Whitefish Bay seems calm, quiet.

It does not menace, holds no danger for ships 

Just out from the locks at Sault St. Marie.

Isle Royale, the Keeweenaw, Thunder Bay, 

Names on a piece of tan paper.  Grand Marais,

Duluth, Marquette, the Apostles have no ports,

No sandstone cliffs, no universities, no sailor's

Bars.     Even so, this map is still a

Memory game for those who love or work or

Have died upon her waters.  The sound of icy

November winds howl around me.  The long

Stretches of rock and pine, blue so wide

It disappears at the very curve of the earth 

Call to me.  Come home.  Come back.                       

                                                               Disorientation

Museums are often mausoleums where art goes after it dies.

No wonder, wrenched out of its time, thousands of miles 

From home, a lot of art dies of homesickness.

People wander by the jade scepter so important long ago,

And see nothing, an odd bent stick.  What could you use it for?

The tomb figures from the T'ang?  Strange action figures

Bleeding the famous tri-color glaze look like people just out 

Of a theatre.  Eyes wide, sightless, disoriented.

Then there's that room full of bronze vessels from the Shang.

Wine heating vessels, say, that poured warm wine to honor

Ancestors, relatives who now live in the spirit world.

Huge bells, two-tone bells, rung to raise the dead.

Here they have been laid quietly to rest. 

Epitaphs in museum quality prose.  Black on white.

                                                   The Dewpoint

Years it took for this brain to grasp dewpoint.

Somehow it got hazed up with humidity and

That other ornery water thing, relative humidity.

Yes, my eyes would mist up each time dewpoint

Entered the conversation.  At the dinner table

Someone might say, "Muggy.  Dewpoint's high."

I would reach for a handkerchief.  "Dewpoint

To rise tomorrow."  Fog, hail and tornadoes

Would flash through my mind.  Which one?

My wife, a sweet woman who understands science

Would say to me, "Don't worry your head about it."

Honor demanded at some point I understand

Dewpoint and daylight savings time.  That time

Is now.  The water has lifted from my eyes and

I can see clearly now.   Temperature = dewpoint,

Fog.  Dew. General Wetness.  And daylight

Savings time is Nixon's fault.  I'm sure of that.

Now if I could only get compound interest.

                                                On Reading in Front of a Skald

He sat there, hair a nimbus of silver, round head.

His wit and tough talk had not gone.  

Mostly, he said nothing, his presence, huge,

Did the speaking for him.

Poetry read to a poet noted for his performance

Puts at least a small crack in the egg shell of the Self.

This in the case of poetry written by someone else.

I read my own, simple pieces, not read on any stage,

At first my inner being trembled, awaiting a thunderclap,

Perhaps a lightning bolt of judgement.

It didn't happen.  I finished one poem and heartened,

Read another.  There, I had done it, read two of my 

Own with Robert Bly there, on the couch, not ten feet away.

                                                                     Twilight

Aurora dances the sun over the horizon.

Who brings the blanket of darkness?

Hecate perhaps.  Morpheus.  

It might be a chariot pulled by night owls.

Each evening the milky way might pour velvet

Across the sky to show its glittering wares.

The sun could turn its face away, the God

Who knows if we look on his face too long,

We will die.

Yes, the earth is the one turning her back,

I know.  She glances, at twilight, over her 

Shoulder at the setting sun.  She wonders,

Does he know about the moon with whom

I spend the other hours, the dark ones?

The change from day to night is the little apocalypse.

It foreshadows our own, a gentle reminder.

                                                                Numerology

Ancient men sliced open sheep

And read the entrails.

Others watched for birds, owls

Bring death and misfortune.

Some sought their future in the stars.

Alchemists brought together rare earths

In the alembic of their own soul.

Mystic Jews assigned numbers

To the letters of Hebrew.

God's word even more cryptic.

Check out counter books promise

Your soulmate.  Add up your birthday.

Subtract your bank balance.

Throw in the number of threads 

In your bed linen.

Then?  Then we can do without the sheep.

                                              Independence

Heat with blue sky.  Cumulus pile up and up.

Traffic slows except for boats.

Burnt flesh smells rise up on wood platforms,

Ritual centers for the festival.

Beer.  Corn.  Flags. Family.  Fireworks.

The relative who stays too long, drinks too much.

Mosquitoes dive as dusk falls, fireflies blink on,

Then off.

Sometime, between the steak and the rack track,

A memory.  A bandaged head, a drum.  Bare feet.

Paul Revere.  George Washington.  All those slaves.

What a time.

What a time.

                                  Decoration Day:  Back When My Faith Was Still Blind

I used to stand, tiny US flag in hand,

On Harrison Street.  The color guard

Marched by and I waved my tiny flag.

They carried flags thrust into leather

Holsters pushed out by too much beer.

Then the Alexandria High School 

Marching band with the baton twirlers.

The queen of something or other doing

That wave. You know the one.

Somewhere in the parade came the tanks,

The armored personnel carriers, the jeeps.

On those hot Decoration Days, as we 

Called it back then, the tank treads dug

Into the warm asphalt, a way to track 

These behemoths long after the holiday.

Alexandria is just a small town, one

Like so many others, but we did put

On a good parade.  A fine place for

A young boy to wave a tiny US flag.

A brother climbs the steps of his father's dream.

The Andes knife heaven, a perfect place for dreams.

That place where the gods come halfway,

Halfway to earth, men often fear to tread, 

This brother leaps up, with crazy drivers, wife 

And reaches the very pinnacle.  Did he greet

The god?  He didn't say.  What could he say?

Remember Moses, struck dumb at the flame.

Remember the climber who died on Everest,

After calling his wife on a cellphone.

Remember the Chinese Taoist hermits perched

High on cold mountain peaks.  One with the Tao.

I have been to the mountain top, he proclaimed,

Then silence blasted into him in a Memphis motel.

Mountains. Massive. Slow. Quiet. Dangerous.

The tulips and daffodils punch through early.

Their flowers, reds and yellows and orange

Lick the garden like a gentle flame.

Bleeding hearts hang many small purses,

Shaped like valentines, from their curved stems.

Maiden hair ferns, named delicate as the frond,

Stroke the air with tiny green arms, sway

Gently in the breeze beside the new hosta.

These early colors in the garden capture my eye

As those college years so long ago.  Fleeting,

Bright, hopeful.