Belated Words

Write On!

  • Earth: In the Beginning

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    Happy Earth Day! Keep the faith.

    In the beginning…
    not really the beginning,
    but a beginning almost comprehensible,
    a malleable mass twirling on the blowers pipe,
    Earth was cast from Heaven, thrown down
    spinning from the warmth of all she knew
    to cold and darkness thick with the roar
    of her passing and smells of her burning.

    She flew from birth light
    growing dimmer
    and colder to a sadness unfathomable.
    Could she weep for herself? Surely.
    Of all the lights distant but bright
    In their congruity, none tuned to watch
    Or cast a glance toward her hurling fate.
    Did she moan as she was flung

    To her perceived oblivion? Surely.
    Yes, we could have heard her cries
    And her gaseous guts rumbling,
    Crying for a savior for herself
    And for all that could be…crying
    For a hot, brilliant hand to capture her
    And roll her around in his golden palm.

  • Vulture

    Most conspicuous soarer of Georgia skies
    floats for eons circling till I grit my teeth
    in expectancy and finally he, snagging

    a hot air lift, shoots up straight, ascending
    like Jesus, wings stiff with ecstasy,
    blood stained beak thrown open to sing

    hosannas, but not for my ears. Then more
    eons and satiated or fearful of God-light or
    despairing still of Paradise lost, a minute

    wing-tip-dip spirals him in delirium down
    to vanish behind pine’s dark façade;
    shade veiled refuge for his grotesquerie.

  • I should have trekked more

    I should have trekked more;
    risked unmapped excursions; not
    Vegas, Turkey or New Guinea,
    those lauded, exotic locals; no.

    I should have taken LSD or
    chewed some shrooms and
    luxuriated in my own colors,
    sniffed the illusive waft of wild,

    instead:
    I’ve traipsed these bland locals;
    wary of running aground,
    of taking a hike in flip-flops,
    of eating forbidden fruit.

  • A Poem I’ll Write Someday

    I crossed the line without noticing;
    stepped over it as I missed my turn
    or as I mumbled execrations at the
    4-way stop, unsure of when to go.

    Yesterday I heard a guy mumbling,
    reading the words I carry on my back
    as he overtook me huffing hard,
    “Old man! Old man! Old man!”

  • Time

                           

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    “But Time, which Nature doth despise……makes Hope a fool..”
    Sir Walter Raleigh

     

    Sir Raleigh cursed god Time without respite,
    For Time in his depravity promised
    Only a drying up; fragility
    Of dust; the loss of wit and lust’s sweet rut.
    At least, he thought.   But Hope implies a wish.
    What was your wish Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir?
    A youth eternal? “Yes! Get real old man!

    Why would Nature despise old Time,
    who in his laxity and joy, allows her
    her endless creations and enjoyments,
    savoring of the exotic you yourself sought.
    Time in his laxity allowed you to be,
    as he did the tree and myths of gold
    and, yes that executioner’s ax, too.
    “Strike, man strike!”

    What was that careening zing that passed my ear?
    Could it be an atom repurposed from your spilt blood,
    (when they took your head) now an invisible speck
    in a mote of dust (your despised dust) whirling in air?
    Though not in your preferred form, you still exist
    in physicality as well as in histories memories.
    What more could you have wished, Sir Walter, Sir?

  • Lumbricidae guiltos uniquitous

    Nothing is hidden, buried perhaps;
    dozed over by heavy machinery
    or a synapses misalignment sends
    the thing astray or it sits waiting, but
    it is not unknown and, unlike you and I,
    reeks of patience till revelation.

    There’s a creature, little known and blind,
    that eats its wandering way about;
    much like, in appearance, Lumbricidae
    and without judgment devours the gist
    of us, leaving a trail of detritus to be
    burned in heaven’s fire on that final day.

  • SPRINGPLACE

    Moravian Mission Spring 

    It’s not a familiar idyllic spring;

    not in shadowed woods, nor trickling,

    from ferny, mossed banks, mumblings

    of soothing myths……no.

    ·

    I regularly pass the washed out sign

    tilting on this shoulderless street,

    steep banked and crowned with iris &

    Cherokee rose caressing white porches

    aslant, dozing under ancient Oak spells;

    my shortcut to CVS, Ingles and Ace.

    “Moravian Mission Spring” it reads

    with the obligatory arrow pointing to

    a thin, discreet lane and bar gate

    that, though open, screams privacy,

    usually deterring my diffident nature’s curiosity.

    ·

    But, today, braving the chance of trespass,

    I enter under canopying trees emerging

    into opened pastured space replete with

    picnic shed, “Available for Reservations”

    with two reunion dates posted already.

    To the left, the spring in sun, in a slight depression,

    lies silently within its well-kept stone surround.

    ·

    I stand, wondering what epoch created

    this pool, what quantities and qualities of men

    and beast and gods have sipped its cold sanctity.

    Ghosts-grams of time tick up, bubbling

    from the shallow face; no numerals or hands

    or heralding sounds order their approach

    in ether globes in the unceasing flow

    from the past of this place, this Gaia eye.

    Through silent aquifers of space-time,

    tiny as fingers, large as centuries,

    they emerge into the bright, enormous

    air of this place and time to speak,

    not as or of me, but as another, unknown as I:

    ·

    An earth-toned Cherokee child, sweet coffee

    eyes gleaming, flings flurries of cold water

    and sand with broad bare feet and hands

    wetting others only he can see and tease.

    He straightens, jumping from the spring

    as if caught, but, unafraid, speaks into my eyes:

    ·

     “I am Adahy, Lives in forest, known here as John.

    My father sent me here to learn,

    not your facts and sums, your customs:

    If we could take up your ways he thought

    we might remain, but your greed and hate were

    too strong, too blind, too fleet to endure.

    You invoked a “God” that I still can’t see,

    or touch, even now, who hides above in a far place

    removed from his children and this creation.

    Why would he not crave to walk with you?

    ·

    ·

    This is where I grew in strength and first

    knew awareness of our fate—-our scattering.

    My bones, covered with stones on a red-earth hill

    along the trail following the sun, never

    knew arrival.  My spirit remains, dwells here.

    My bones tear the air with screams of leaving, still.”

    ·

    Blinking his sweet coffee eyes from pain to glee,

    he leaps back into the ancient speaking spring,

    splashing and taunting others only he can see.

  • The Tether

    The tether is broken; the frayed end

    fades into nothingness, detectable only

    to great-grandparents, severing me

    from those that were the first to come.

    ·

    Records were lost or never made

    by those chosing to inter their pasts,

    to cherish their second/chance lives.

    Were there no offices held,

    ·

    were there no fortunes earned,

    no martyred selves, no gloat,

    no consuming greed, no illicit loves?

    Were lives too sordid or too slight to claim?

    ·

    Were there no poems sung?

  • In Memory of George

    George

    You looked like a clay/mockup you,

    a rough portrait study bust devoid

    of hair and beard, lying in that coffin,

    swaddled in unfamiliar satin and suit.

    •

    Without hair, your nose stood out,

    pitted, more bulbous than I recalled,

    scarred where the dog bull-baited

    you while you, on all fours, earned

    a hard day’s wage laying carpet.

    •

    You were hardly you, even discounting death,

    without your ginger hair and beard;

    a small Sasquatch some have joked;

    some with affection; others cruelly.

    Your soul mirrored only the gentlest

    of beast to me.  At  M’s graduation

    in a too small jacket & wrinkled tie,

    slicked red hair and beard awry you

    drew looks even in our red-neck town.

    I remember you above all others;

    you blessed our hearts by being there.

    •

    The preacher couldn’t help but mention

    your “troubled life” as if perfection was just

    a matter of choice and our duty was to judge.

    He seemed to care little of your nature;

    if only he had recalled your soft mumbling

    voice, strangely soothing to my ears,

    or your eyes’ sparkle hidden now behind

    sealed lids, or your generous heart and smile.

    •

    We, the ones that love you, gathered

    to stand and wave as you took one last

    glance at this often cruel world with an

    over-the-shoulder smile and slipped

    into the welcoming, singing trees.

    ♥

  • Spirea: Burning Bush

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    Scattered Spirea blaze reddish/gold,

    flaming space-heater globes, warming

    my brown garden iced by lethargic air.

    If I lie naked among them could I thaw,

    and seep to meld with nourished root

    capillaries spiraling to a fruitful place

    of spring stirrings and glorious blooms?

    ∞

    Could I, in late March break ground,

    a green sliver twisting to light only,

    sated with discernment of all things,

    yet ordained by the flow only to flow;

    a Buddha sitting under The Tree of Life,

    hands cupped, not in prayer, but empathy?