Big Rain, No Power
Apples and candles:
a still life to shape
some words around.
The apples become cores,
the candles burn low.
Not a voice nor a sound
but runoff rain
rivering hill to sea
past a burst dam
past a fallen tree
past each bend and turn
to break this shut-in sojourn.
The Singer of Tales
How strange to live and never see your true
love’s face nor dawn’s warm rosy fingered glow,
and sail the wine-dark seas and sing your songs
of heroes warring for a stolen queen.
How odd to live by ear and voice alone
out on the open road, a vagabond,
and make your bed in heaps of olive leaves,
and clutch your harp close to your dreams.
How sad to grope your way to center stage
when called upon to sing for wealthy men,
whose fathers far outshone them, or be led
by little boys upon the closing of the feast.
But when you plucked the strings and raised your voice,
wiser than a thousand fighting ships of eyes,
men of every lineage marvelled at your blindness,
and nothing could explain your gift except
that it was all the doing of some god
or you were bastard son of king unknown.
How foul to be proclaimed the second best
poet of your day because the king and judge
dismissed the people’s choice as witless taste,
decreeing farming fitter theme for poems
than love or war or misadventures of the gods.
How strange to think you never wrote a word
and never sang your song the same way twice
and fit your words to suit the time and place
as if you knew the dreams of those who listened.
Your people said call no man blessed until
you know his mortal end here in this life.
You died perplexed by riddles posed by lice
ridden boys, your innards ruptured after
slipping in the mud a long, long way from home.
Yet from your ancient day down to our own
where men have trod upon the mythic moon,
none have topped the naked ordered clarity
of your brave songs that burn like life itself
as when a man with cancer takes his fate
as chance to let his children care for him,
where in their youth he’d proudly cared for them,
determined that his last and best to give
is leave unfathomable life with hope…
Laugh At Them
Laugh at them
for sparing cows
to starve their children.
Laugh at ourselves
for felling forests
to wipe our butts.
Men sprawl
upon the land
onto the seas
up in the winds
come paradise
or ice deserts.
Is it in the stars
or in the garden
where our future
will win out
against our past?
The greatest wizard of all fantasy
once claimed that when you break a thing in hopes
to understand it you have left the path
of wisdom. We are bold apprentices
of nature, smashing bits to tease a truth
from mysteries exploding out of clouds.
But if you were a stranger to this world
and never knew the grace of music played
and walked the blackened streets of lonely night
recording every strange new lovely sound,
you’d never guess the grand piano pushed
from high up on a roof by vandals could,
just from the crash below, make music sweet
as Bach rejoicing in a prayer to God.
Salmon Creek Falls
Something got left behind out on that walk.
The road clung like a snake trespassing cliffs,
a flyway high above the sky-sized sea
through crumbling stone and stubborn chaparral.
Just past last chance, and steeper than amusement,
it terminated at a horseshoe bend.
We parked our cars and gathered, listening for
the surf below, the waterfall above.
The trailhead opened where the Indian Paintbrush parted
and led through lurking patches of Poison Oak.
We eyed each jagged leaf as friend or foe
amid wildflowers and strawberry vines.
Up deeper in the cooling shade, the trail
meandered giant boulders shot with jade
and crusty lichen, and we braved haphazard caves
that stuck our shoes with thick black mud.
Down where the water ran full of the sun,
a grove of laurels lined the broken banks.
We took and bruised a leaf between our thumb
and forefinger, and offered its rich scent
for each to breathe like joy of life.
We gathered at the rock bound pool
and watched the water fall in spiral braids
as icy ripples lapped our tired feet
and spray caught rainbows out of sweet thin air.
The background crashing water filled the dale
with unity that made us huddle close
to talk, but mostly, we just sat and looked
and pointed to a rare, endangered flight
of condors spiraling against sea breezes,
praying they would find a way to last.
November 2, 2008
In Memorium
I
Birds sing through gray soft misty morn.
The baker frees warm smell of bread.
The earth can’t feel the loss it’s borne.
It’s I, alone, who cries she’s dead.
II
Word dreams by chance fall as a poem
As seas of ink on paper splash
Like tracks in sand where seagulls roam
Before the waves of flood tide crash.
III
Eternity, memory, now.
With single heart, I edge along
A misty cliff and wonder how
I lost the home where I belong.
IV
The sea of water you can drain.
The sky of stars you can sweep clear.
You gone, my heart’s so full of pain
It never will run dry, my dear.
V
Dreams more clear than reality
Wish on mind’s stage lost love so true.
At haunts of our sweet used-to-be
I have to close my eyes to see you.
VI
This life gives one last hope to soothe me
Now that your earthly race is run.
The rarest flowers blossom only
With the setting of the sun.
VII
Older than our language, a tree,
A world complete, fell to the saw.
Out of the stump, green sprouts break free
Reborn past death’s unhappy law.
Irrepressible
Man has a long history
on this earth
as hunter and hunted.
It was easy
for him to fancy himself
as falling into the belly
of a whale.
Today some say
it’s like walking
into whirling propeller
that makes you
dust in the wind.
Some argue
that the faithless
don’t even know
their own hearts and minds,
for all they can follow
is their own noses.
But in no human
who ever lived,
did hope not come
unbidden to his or her mind,
whether embraced fondly
or crushed rationally,
it came.
Life is no such fool
to feed you falsely,
for you have been selected.
Maybe life knows
your own mind
better than you do.
While understanding
might not be possible,
hope is an eternal chance
that cannot be repressed any more
than ever returning hunger.
Where hunger compels
humans to hunt,
hope is our best eyes and ears.
Monster
I am a beast of many stolen parts
stitched higgley-piggley fingers, toes and head
into a mockery, and jolted out
of several rest by anxious genius.
I am a war of grieving souls denied
the freedom death bequeaths of peace,
to prove the fundamental unity
of teeming dirt, and fallen lightning bolts.
Though I am kin to all, I’m love of none.
Men drive me off into the friendless wild
because my looks unhinge their customed minds.
I live cut off, but craving human ties.
Lonely rage disjoints all joy, and so, I bear,
in lieu of warm embrace, a blood-stained claw.
To Forget You
I’ve tried to do all I could to forget you.
You turn up down each new path that I start.
Fever might scorch the plague from my body.
Your absence can’t burn the love from my heart.
The Graveyard of the Dying Winds
The graveyard of the dying winds
cannot be found with compasses and maps.
A blind man is as good as anyone to scout the path
and lead the way for those who trail behind,
but really, loneliness is more reliable.
It seems at first that any landmark out
on the horizon is a worthy beacon but
with every step you take, your choices narrow if
you’d find the fable at the heart of everything.
You learn to laugh along the way because
a kindness can be twisted into murder
and betrayal germinate a noble good for all.
The oneness of all journeys makes
all men all one family, rooted in confusion,
boggled by infinities both small and big,
laughing, lying, loving, crying and above
all else, surprised upon arrival there.
