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.
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!”
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.
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?
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.
♥
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?
poor:
The word itself appears dried up,
too scantily clad to survive,
too striped of bone, devoid of desire;
no evident, attendant Bling!
bling: a none-existent word back then
all through the slow, long years of youth
when we said fancy-stuff, as in,
“Who really wants that fancy stuff?”
licking our lips in blusterous denial.
I don’t remember being poor or “pour”
as I would have said back then….and still do.
Daddy always worked long, hard hours,
burnt dark pumping gas…fixing flats.
We always had a rust-free, used car
staunchly devoid of Bling! except
that ’59 Chevy with fender-skirts
and air and re-upholstered seats!
We always had a house; tiny but clean,
clapboarded, rural rentals with,
in my earliest years, an outhouse,
but in my room, in the darkest spot,
a child’s white enameled pot with
a red-rimed lid was kept for me;
I did have a pot to piss in.
I did not feel so different
because of that….I did not know
the reason I felt singular.
I remember first grade school bus
and being called sunk-eyes; me,
the poster kid for sickly-child
with breath pilfering asthma,
a snot-rag dampening my pocket
during the glories of Spring and Fall
and being alone, balled-up,
in a paint-peeled Adirondack
built from scrap and hope by dad
in a rented yard in brilliant sun,
and wondering if pollen had
attacked my heart as it had
my nose and lungs and eyes
and infected hope, stolen joy
and would I ever unclasp my knees
and unfurl my wheezing mind.
having read Stevens
It could be about skink and his blue sacrificial tail.
It could be about bliss of basking in sacred sun.
It could be about cat’s eyes marking prey.
·
It could be about felinity of stillness.
It could be about claws pinning a wriggling lure.
It could be about one image or millions.
.
I can see without eyes, frame by frame,
infinite loops of inimitable holograms:
The skink losing his tail ceaselessly and never at all.
·
It’s not about skink, cat, deceit or stillness;
It’s all about me; only me, in the Realm of Thought.
It’s about me basking in the bliss of possibilities.
This place; this wooded piedmont flowing gently down
amid ancient mountains compacting to their demise;
this place on this planet, in this solar system, in this memory
is my place of birth and ending. This place will eat my flesh; my bones.
This place; these stones, these trees, this red clay, these streams,
these gentle days will savor my taste and, without naming me,
compose an epitaph in rain and wind and blistering sun.
They are known, the techniques, the rules
gleaned by trial and error over centuries
from diverse cultures by millions of craftsmen.
But, this time, I could not mar this flow of grain
gifted from a giant red oak stricken down;
could not deface streaks of red hues
of stomata streams painting the truth
of ice and fire, abundance and deprivation;
of hard times and good of a hundred years.
I could not chop it up
into stiles
and rails
and panels:
narrow boards arranged
in alternating cups
and glued
and clamped
and sanded
and sealed;
just to obtain a stillness;
an entity that could never twist and breathe.
I lay the boards, in their order,
to picture a whole, a life lived;
a chance to speak after death.
In summer when I suck the humidity away
to cool and condition air for my comfort,
the doors move; warp a bit, opening a crack,
emitting the dark which whispers tales.
They cup, creeping to complete the circle
from which they was sawn,
seeking the completion every creature knows.
Belated Words 