Saying Goodby

The poem below was written more than two years ago. The copy of The Aurorean in which it was published arrive in my mail Thursday, May 2nd. Vicki drew her last breath about 9 AM Monday, April 29th as I sat by her bed,  holding her hand.

In Lieu of Flowers

I didn't read Sunday obituaries

beyond a glance for names,

avoiding the ages of demise

but the eyes stray. 

The phrase "In lieu of flowers" 

being frequent, pleases: 

positivity facing the 

ultimate negativity.

Suddenly the question intrudes: 

what would I say at 

the loss of my partner 

of sixty-six years?

In lieu of flowers — let them grow.

If you find a bug 

carry it carefully outside 

and let it go — 

as she often did:

that's what I'd say.

MARCHING INTO APRIL

Hydrogeological Cycle: Easter, 2013

Luck of a north wind brings

rain from formless clouds higher

than our common air, un-prophaned

by breath of machine or man,

or so it seems, unless you

analyze rain drops for unseen 

nitrites, sulfates etc and so on  

as my curiosity has done. Is 

it force of falling that forms

them or their mutual fear calling

them inward to communal spheres?

Until, through no fault of their

own, they strike stick slide down

the window panes. Misshapen

tear drops until they slip drip

run in trickles, becoming water

here on earth again to later rise

in their certain resurrection,

achieve by chance and being what

they are what faith dreams of.

Visiting For Possible Revision

Leafing through stacks of old poems, most not published, I find some so well forgotten and, now not understood, I wonder...

Just A Cigar

Hairy Haw-Mouth swallowed Freud's cigar hoping

there would be fire where there'd been only smoke

at least something more than pink bubble gum

but waking found the dream unraveling to bare

a breast then another leaving tangled wool from

too many sheep to count and rose quickly to

write the dream's meaning on his slate the screech

of cheap school room chalk stopped him so he wound

the tangled yarn into two neat pink balls

tied them together and went back to bed

AN ALOMST NEW YEAR

(almsot on time this time)

JANUARY THAW

The pond, earth's eye, does not open

in this early January thaw, the pond's eye

that closed more than a month ago. Which,

for months before, appraised the sky

effortlessly, reflectively, in calm or storm, 

by night or day. It may stir now, as an 

uneasy sleeper, but we can't see and what

we hear may be it's bowels rumbling —

do not even know: Does it deeply sleep 

or only (how much greater could an only

be) meditate so profoundly it shames 

distracted human kinds in their most

intent imitation.  I know silver salmon 

sleekly swim silently, invisibly below

as my thoughts swim unseen by you.

Are they the neurons in the pond's Oh

so liquid mind? Or thoughts, memories 

the pond may not remember when it wakes

in April?  Are those rumbles peans, for 

the pond's own reasons, this new-moon night, 

as the pond is stirred from meditation

by winter's warmth, warmth the silent 

salmon of my mind anticipate as well  ?

Jan. 13, '13

The Sun Slept Late

Unreasonably

unseasonably

the feathery

coverlet of fog

the sky descending

to the ground

seems to warm me

although the sheets

of snow and ice

in Nature's bed

remind me

it's winter still

but the fog's confusing

invisibility

does warm me

even as ice-fishermen

suddenly return

with ghostly reality

From the Thoreau Project

Apology To Henry

Your were, you claim, born in the very

 nick of time. Time being what it is,

my distant friend, your proposition will

be difficult to defend. What clues did

Past give you that marked Time's passing ribbon,

so you'd know this was your day, July, twelfth,

eighteen seventeen? What had you heard beyond

your mother's heart beat, family voices, organ

music muffled by her flesh? What had you felt

beside your mother's warmth, the womb, your first home,

that had convinced you Concord would be

the most estimable place in all the world?

In retrospect you could renounce past events

through which you would not have to suffer but

those I fear don't count, nor events to be

for you'd not claim to foresee nor control

the Future. But I'll accept what you said

this same day. Friends! Society! I have

an abundance of that I rejoice in 

and men too that I never speak to, and since

what most call bareness and poverty 

you would say is to me simplicity

you'd ignore what you could and with the rest 

"make do", so any nick would do. But for place,

if city bound, I think you would have moved soon.

And I add to this a few lines young friend, Edward Emerson, gave us at the end of his book of remembrances: lines from "your early prayer".

Great God I ask no meaner pelf

Than that I may not disappoint myself;

That in my action I may soar as high

As I can now discern with this clear eye,

And next in value which thy kindness lends

That I may — greatly — disappoint my friends

Howe're they think or hope that it may be

They may not dream how thou'st distinguished me.

ABOUT READY TO GIVE UP ON BLOG STUFF

I visit so seldom I have trouble even entering my own blog and just entered three poems then wiped them out, apparently, trying to preview them. I'll do it once more. Hope Google doesn't keep changing its system!

Answering Reznikoff

Yes, I know it's true

the mower's no poet

who deflects his scythe

to save the flowers for

he knows they all are.

Yes, it was after years

somewhere else some other time

post-me/post mortem

when I read those lines — and yet

Reznikoff knew

about John Baker and I how we'd

manned a most improbable

aircraft observation station

in a vacant field

in a Maine town with nothing

anyone would bomb.

Where the only enemy planes

were on a wall poster

just a year before John even with

a metal plate in his hip

in the infantry lay open-eyed

having seen

his first German planes. I write

after long years but

there is no forgetting — although

long years may turn

forget to accept. Where planes

like meteorites 

flown by men like John and I

still fall 

from the innocent sky. Fall to earth

where all flowers die.

Inadequate Portent

Suddenly for no reason beyond

the molecular fire that burned

in my brain in that moment more

than sixty years ago I recall

the first time I saw even a picture

of what was called in earlier days

a woman's private parts on

the inside of a locker door

in our barracks in Fairbanks

facing me legs drawn back

spread knees up the lips of

that vertical mouth the names

of which I'd eventually learn

bare but not smiling in that

sudden patch of pubic hair

the school-yard expressions 

of pussy and muff-diving

not understood suddenly

having palpable substance

as the locker door slammed 

the whole affair no longer

than it takes to read a line

of this and I was twenty yet

I remember this sixty-seven

years later so it must have been

a hot little glucose brain-blaze

and I should have started then

to learn more not waited till now 

to know lips can show soft

curves that say I'll smile soon. 

BELATED SEASON VISIT TO MY NEGLECTED BLOG

Well, someone reminded me , again, that I have a blog. I've been busy scribbling on the new project, a  MS to combine poems I've written with references to or influenced by Thoreau — combining them with autobiographical entries in prose. To let you know (you faithful few) that I'm still here, here are two poems which have nothing to do with that project. They're just poems recently written or revised. Seasonal: autumn's end a distant hope of spring.



Free Fall

Every snowflake is unique, we're told by
those who can not possibly know — "every"
being an infinite term. But a perfectly
safe contention since error guarantees
results will vary even in repeated measure
of the same, the real shape the average of
repeated mistakes.
But lets leave knit-picks aside
for, on this mid-October, sunless, windless
morning there is as yet no snow, I stand
and watch oak leaves fall. Each leaf, bent, stiff,
in dying, falls uniquely to a common fate —
well, a singular end — and each seems free
to fall its own way: glide, twist, tumble, spiral .
Each pathway of descent, inscribed, would add
another fiber to a random woven screen
to shield us from regrets of the season's
passing.
  I turn to science and propose my
hypothesis: that, as no two snowflakes
share the same shape, no two oak leaves ever
follow the same path in falling —  and my excuse
for standing here is testing my hypothesis.
My paper will be titled Free Will Falling.



Maple Syrup Season

"What's worth more — or was it less? — Uncle George
would ask, "a fart in a wind storm, or a
piss hole in the snow?". It's odd what's recalled
when it might be just as well forgotten.

For several days of maple tapping weather
I've stepped outside at dawn. The sun has inched
its way north to clear the notch in the eastern
hills across the frozen pond by dawn which

makes us think of spring despite the snow
piled along the walk where I stand in robe
and slippers near the wood pile. The sun's light
gives only light as I watch the piss hole grow,

remembering today how unaccountably
we recall some silly childhood phrase or joke
like the title of an imaginary book,
The Yellow Stream: the author, I .P. Freely.

What is worth more, the certainty I assign
the sun's slow ascension. the will with which I
act out the ritual of seasons, or the
lemon-custard yellow flowering on snow?

And why just these random, seeming useless
memories? Why indeed, to paraphrase
Thoreau, should these things make up my world
as I stand here, glad the wind's not blowing?