Belated Words

Write On!

  • My bones

    Let my bones be better traveled after flesh has attended

    and hindered.

    Let them rattle on a string around the neck of creatures,

    bold and roaming,

    with beast hair, polished stones and a herbaceous plait;

    charms healing.

    Let my ribs protrude at a jaunty angle from plains, barren

    and desiccated;

    let them, though broken and hollowed, pick sonatas from hot

    meandering winds

    and with stealth and over-the-shoulder looks let the locals

    gather to listen.

    Let my femur be a gnaw bone for a she-wolf full bellied

    and contented;

    let her trot her bouncing-rear gait, muzzle lowered, wary

    eyes intent,

    to her suckling pups to share; accepting yelp-thanks with

    long tongue caresses.

    Let my skull be a prop held and caressed by sweaty hands

    by those possessed;

    let them hold my diminished, polished visage and declare,

    “Alas, poor poet..”

    and recite true the words of those aiming to discern order

    from disorder.

    Let a part of my bones be cast to burn and given to those

    that love me;

    let them with a final sigh of assent puff the dust leeward from

    cupped palms

    onto a receding tide to a current returning with no haste

    to tropical shores.

    Let me push my body bones up from this chair, away from

    this screen;

    let me walk across the room to the window and the scene

    passing unaware,

    and pressing against sun warmed panes leave hand prints;

    flesh intact.

    February 2002

  • Benediction in the doctor’s office

    They climbed the steps one behind the other:

    the mother in front clutching the rail,

    daughter behind watching her mother’s feet;

    easing each wary step by simple will.

    Similar print dresses passed the knees hid

    partially, overly muscular legs,

    but the plainness of their faces needed

    no paint; from pores and creases slandered as

     unsightly or crude, benevolence glowed,

     turning heads, almost in deference, drawn

    to look and nod….even the rude and vain.

    As the daughter signed her in, the mother

    with a glance choose me to sit beside.  Blessed;

    I followed her lead.   We talked of children

    and having cared for our mothers in need.

    Battered hand’s skin still tough, cracked, told of toil,

    perhaps by choice, likely by circumstance,

    but not one complaint against her life passed

    full, unadorned lips, only sweetness and

    praise of goodness and kindness of others.

    Her name was called and with daughters’ help she

    rose smiling, touching my hand in farewell.

    I had glimpsed in her full moon face answers

    for questions I could never even ask.

  • For Malala

    It seems they revel in being reviled;

    those who want to be hated will always

    relish the atrocious, seek our disgust.

    That is why they provoke us to attack;

    our outrage caresses their ecstasy.

    Some call them animals but the only

    creatures demeaned is the wolf and the fowl.

  • place

    Context can not exist without place
    but even an airless nothing is place
    humm…you would be dead in such a place.

    But you are still there, your remains, right?
    You can tell I don’t do philosophy
    my head’s not in the right place.

    When my wife berates a spider or fly
    for being in the same room as herself
    I proffer an ill-considered smirk

    “Everybody has got to be someplace”.
    She eyes me as the fool I am coolly
    commanding I kill the poor thing.

    Forced to choose between one or the other
    insecticide or disobedience
    puts me between a rock and a hard place.

    This is not going the way I had planned
    I had foreseen a gloriously drawn
    depiction of the natural world and

    of the need of awareness of man’s place
    in the flow of things toward perfection.
    (whether created by the roll of dice

    or by a divine is irrelevant)
    but no my muse has put me in my place.
    Perhaps another day another place.

  • The hummers are gone

    The hummers are gone; they left by moonlight.

    There was no need to sneak away; lodgings,

    food was free into perpetuity.

    Perhaps the anticipation was way

    too much for tiny drumming hearts to bare.

    Maybe, they could not sleep like us, as kids,

    wide-eyed with thoughts of sunny surf and sand.

    I would like to think they darted passed our

    window as they were going, peeping at

    our dreams as we re-imagined our own

    migrations; our reasoning’s back and forth,

    battered between the same locales, misgivings

    and some forgivings, the same trees for years.

    We have our instincts, too, craving the trees.

    They must have offered a chirpy goodbye

    because I woke knowing something was gone,

    lost or forgotten but unsure of what.

    Do they rendezvous with old friends and kin

    or do connections, commiserations

    languish….falter in pursuit of nectar?

    Costa Rica! If we could go on an

    Eco-tour, we might sip the same flowers

    and they might zip-up to us tweeting their

    apologies for leaving abruptly.

    They did not have to pack, just lift and leave.

    Wouldn’t it be great to rise in air

    feeling all weight dropping from rising feet

    not having to worry about the dogs

    or what you’re leaving in the frig to spoil

    or if the bills are all paid or if you

    show enough affection and concern?

    They left three days earlier than last year.

    I marked it on the calendar as I

    cross off every day anticipating

    ….or is it gloating over surviving?

    I’ve got to stop this crossing off of days.

  • 1972

    You will learn all about yourself when your

    freedom is severed, or better, surrendered

    in protest of perceived, unholy folly;

    putting your fate in the hands of The Man.

    “Hell no!  We won’t go!  Hell no!  We won’t go!

    No more war!  No more war!…” ad infinitum;

    chants do return “trippingly on the tongue.”

    •

    (more…)

  • Let me go…three times

    Haiku:

    Let me go gently,

    like a welcomed breeze at dusk;

    a graceful exit.

    Let me go..

    Let me go….

    Between pulses of pain,

    frozen in a paralytic millisecond of bliss;

    like a mammoth in ice,

    mouth immovable in mid syllable,

    forever

    about to say something memorable.

    Caregiver’s Lament:

    Let me go after you are gone

    if only for a little while;

    when you are gone I will revert,

    with little regret, even joy,

    to indulgences I postponed

    that I might be here to sooth you.

    “You are my reason for living.”

    a cliché so misunderstood,

    has more to do with love and sad

    obligation undertaken

     almost unnoticed ….but freely

    and that wears, tears and can break will.

    I crave to sniff, sip and savor

    my hot, old bliss, irregardless

    of how fleeting or injurious.

    I give you all the world I have:

    my true love without resentment;

    I have your gratitude and love….

    which barely suffices at times.

           

                

  • In other people’s hands

    We’re forced to place the ones we love

    in other people’s hands; we swear

    we love with our languid smile

    on lips drawn thin by telling haste.

    A fat-faced, name-tagged enigma

    led you away to join others

    for the help and time we can’t give.

    You went away clutching your purse,

    soon to be taken from your hands,

    held for safety reasons…. like you;

    held safe with all your delusions,

    memories, visions, conspiracies….

    and those demons that set that fire;

    those tiny gelatinous creatures

    that taunted you from your closet

    forcing you to toss a flaming

    match in…. to send them back to hell.

  • an anniversary

           In front of the liquor store…

    Rain darts in jagged shots across the glass

    between weary swipes of squeaking, tired blades.

    The defroster stifles….but I leave it;

    let it fight the haze.  Maybe, it can sweat out

    this demon locked to my melancholy,

    my known genetic predisposition;

    this twinned self–tarred skin of me, entwined tight

    within and steeped in remembrance of bliss

    now forsaken.  For what….a longer life

    to be reminded of a craving want;

    of my own sad winter of discontent?

    This meninges, membranous bag for

    every muscle and bone and nerve and cell,

    every spark of thought, every common urge

    of me is immune to time’s cheap cure.

    Time is not a healer for everything.

    My eyes in the rearview beseech themselves

    and, stared down, blink a hard resolve….today,

    to pass on the easy and drive away.

  • September

    The chickadee does his cling and swing around

    the cones of timely opening bracts, the nuthatch

    his deliberate descent down the chunky barked pine,

    the arrogant jay loudly struts and flits about,

    as in a panic, as if to say, “Something is coming,

    something is coming!” But, that’s just his way.

    Three days of rain washed heated, thicken air

    to leave a cooled exhalation; an air thinner,

    more amiable than summers overly sweet cordial.

    A cathartic breeze rippled leaves, still green,

    exciting them with anticipation of float flight,

    of modeling the new season’s gaudy plumage,

    of wind scurries that will tumble and rasp them

    across their kin scrapping cellulose flesh away

    to dry fragility…..each to its veined identity.