Still Fishing

I'm not a fisherman. My hands
never smelled of ponds,
never glinted with the odd scale
stuck from a fast knife-scrape.

I was a fool with hooks,
never found a decent balance
in a rocked boat's belly,
fell and knocked the oars askew.

My crude, left-handed casts
left bobbers in bushes,
wrapped line in tree-limbs,
flung worms to owls.

"It's not everything, fishing.
You'll be good at something."
The boats sit on the water
like.... boats on the water.

Pulp Romance

On the cover a sky blooms
with heavy weather,
a woman's eyes gaze black
and wide at a boat

on water too blue
to be believed, or a flotilla
of swans. The gazebo
behind them, having already

been attained, loses relevance
in milky pastels; ivy
crawls through washed out
lattice-work.

Her head tilts, at her ear
the groomed mustache,
the cleft of a moneyed
mouth flushed and fed.

Aunt Mary opens the book,
opens the floodgates,
grows old with eyes ticking
in a wreath of light.

Lamentations (A Haunting)

  When I put on my gown
to shed my grief in linen
that softest hands once smoothed
and folded, in this wide
    and desolate bed
  I fly from eiderdown

  to rows of hills that lie
under the vault of stars
among the scent of flowers
that blossomed far away,
    where few find rest,
  and few go willingly.

  She waits, my slender love.
I dare to stroke a cheek
as bloodless as old lace,
proffer a touch she fends
    and steal a kiss
  she now is chary of.

  Beneath her tattered dress
a fluttering has stopped:
a still bird with still wings;
and yet she moves and breathes,
    and static tears
  shine on her tintless face.

  Why am I taken with
the hands that smell of earth,
the absence in the breast?
When far winds in her voice
    moan, when I hear
  the winter in her breath?

Harvest

You slide through steam and softly hum among
the hiss of boiling, bite and purse your lips
over a stew of scents, your hands at whisks
and spoons, a sullied blouse. Your slender hips

cock at engaging angles, bones in cotton
knob sharply; fabric shows what it conceals:
covers your bottom like an oil, and thins
to nearly nothing when you bend, reveals

a tender absence in the midst of plenty,
the shadow of a furrow fine but fallow;
a vessel prized the more for being empty,
cup more coveted for being hollow.

To an Aging Dancer

Though angles
gain degrees,
curves loosen

and relax,
you are ever
the mirror's mistress.

Go and provoke that
still, smooth silver,
unsettle its

blank peace
with pivots
and pirouettes.

A Desert Vision

I lay down on a sandy hill
and this was something that I saw:
a young man came to work His will
and moved a people into awe.

He mastered an astounding range
of clever tricks and sleight of hand;
a thing to something else He'd change;
He spoke, but few could understand.

And there was something in His face,
a hint beneath that smooth aplomb,
of something other than the grace
that made the wind and waters calm.

And then some thought of subterfuge,
or some conniving trickery:
Him part and parcel of a huge
and sinister conspiracy.

And so they took Him to a hill
and bled Him from his hands and feet,
but people talk about Him still
and hawk His magic in the street.



 - I wrote this when I was calling myself an atheist. Interesting that now, when I am calling myself a Christian, a follower of Christ, that I made scant edits: to capitalize the pronouns referring to my Lord, to italicize the word 'some', meaning not all, to capitalize 'Grace', and to make a few grammatical changes, which may or may not be correct. This paragraph, and the aforementioned edits inside the poem, was added on 11.15.13, @ 4:19 PM.

On Edge on President's Day (2002)

I woke this morning to the baleful sound
of five explosions, sounding in rapid succession,
and the ringing of the telephone. Startled
and shaken from sleep, I parted the blinds,
and squinted into azure. No clouds flowered,

and no one scrambled in panic; nothing moved.
Trying to still my frenzied heart I tapped
the television on. No newsmen droned; ads flashed
their quick rhetoric. I pushed through the numbers,
thumb calmed by each assuring nudge. No bombs.

The unanswered caller left her mundane message.
I let the mystery linger, unapproached,
and left for work. No one had an anecdote.
Later I learned a pyrotechnic crew
had pissed away five novas in broad daylight.

Tryku

Under white
boughs cold thorns crack
grouse beats skyward

Paranoia

The shape of your breast
in pendant silhouette
torments barren hands.

The weight my palm has lifted
pulls toward the ground
and curves to rest,

coveted by eyes
that tick
in famished sockets.

Badge

I.

Yellow-jackets hidden in mud
in swamps, by still waters,
rose invisibly, hummed
around our knees, caked with mud,

when we went looking for frogs
that mated in murky ponds,
croaking in chorus. Our hands
smelled later of frogs:

we snatched their tacky bodies
and turned them over
to look at their white bellies,
whiter than our bodies.


II.

Boys are drawn to water
like zealous acolytes
to temples, anointed
by dark water

that stands too long, thick
with mucky green moss,
lichen, slippery stones
coated with slime as thick

as phlegm: freckled boys,
cowlicked, dressed in bold
striped pull-overs, mad
with the longing of boys

for dirt and tattered knees,
for the cloying benediction
of dirt and water. We wore
our wonder at the knees.

Blinds

What if I said that among your crowning virtues
are the shape of your mouth pronouncing spoon,
the bend of your neck, and the suggestive arc
of your brown and furrowed forehead when
you fasten a sandal buckle? You would level
your serious eyes no doubt, and your Latin tongue
would gather its quick strength and call it drivel.

You stand at the window, where the poolside palms
flicker through old cracked blinds, half-closed,
and men are tossing pruned fronds in a truck,
grunting in beery gutturals, their sculpted
brawn sheened with sweat. Now, should I complain,
you'd say, "they're butchering the trees", or, "Christ,
that noise", and squeeze the light out with the chain.

Christmas

The chime of distant churchbells weaves
through wintered woods where branches ache,
dressed in the last-remaining leaves
this stealing season's yet to take.

I hold that far, faint hint of bells
a paradigm of melody
until a bird in sonorous trills
sings from a spare and crooked tree.

"It's Always About You"

Never drive angry is something
you heard once. Your foot gets heavy,
tearing down back roads.

Pull over. It's warm enough to sleep here.
And quiet, though her voice keeps screaming.

See the rise of the eyeless moon:
indifferent silver, tangled in cloud.
Realize it was never a face
that could watch or follow you.

The deer in the field lift their heads,
then suddenly bound away,
their white tails wave like
kerchiefs over a ship's rail.

It's important to understand
they were not saying goodbye.

When I Think of Leaving

I see you with our son
in the crook of your arm,

your stern sidelong gaze
that begs for nothing;

and the boy is waving,
his small pink palm

empty, his smile
saying hello.

Moving

The car runs smoothly, tires hum
on tarmac preserved
by dry weather, infrequent traffic.

The radio blares in Spanish,
broken by static,
Latin polkas, frenetic accordians.

At a steady seventy, low hills
flecked with sagebrush
slide below an azure backdrop.

Dashes join in the distance:
behind me the road
gradually regains its curve.

I nudge the pedal, lean back
in the surge,
almost sure I'm moving.

Motels

These squat travelers' limbos
mark outskirts,
thinning city limits.

In winter, pools are holes,
cracked basins
ashened by chlorine.

Neon repeats its dull pulse,
blinks its characters:
the gaps are custom ry.

Rifle the room for gifts,
wafers of soap,
sealed plastic cups, prod

the bolted-down remote
for the benediction
of television, news from

faces of strangers. Sleep,
dream unhaunted.
No one ever lived here.

Relics

On the glamorless outskirts
Of Vegas I catch sunset's
flash off derelict cars
between two shanties.

Weeds overtake the grills,
fill in the shattered headlamps
of relics rifled and stripped
like steel cadavers.

Two days later I pass
again, east-bound.
The ancient heaps are
opened, their gutted

insides cluttered
with rows of ragged children
jostling for a turn
behind the wheels.

A Regret

He trundles sidelong like a drunken crab,
his cap skewed at a fetching angle, feet
fat from his mother's milk, and rose and white,
push-pull along the carpet; fingers grab
the walker's tray for balance, arms splayed wide.

The saddle that he rises out of keeps
him from calamity, from the collapse
of limbs that slacken quickly, unafraid.

He bumps and knocks until he swings the door,
then whines until I can't write; wounded eyes
make their appeal through tears until I rise
and nudge him back into the corridor,
for which he wails. His cries are genuine.

Dad pushed him out, who should have pulled him in.


Note: This poem is about my beloved and precious boy, Jordan. This edited in 11.15.13

Castaway

Your tender petals never furled in earth
although you trace your heritage to seed.
A husband's touch may bring their fragrance forth
and balm the air as rich as wine or mead.
They gloss and salve the cupping palm with oil
and slide between a thumb and index, slip
a grasp as cunning as a moth and foil
a suit, with one coy turning of a hip.

Anointed with your sea-salt, tinct with spray
no ocean birthed, my hand's disconsolate,
my brow is ruddy, and my mouth is wet.
I cannot sleep with you so far away,
your shoulder like an island cold and gray,
and me so weathered, and so desolate.



(written 2001 or 2002)


I want you back, my beloved wife, whom I did not honor enough...(11.1.2012)

Making

To make love: it sounds
as if something
should be there,
like a clay pot

baked, cooling, but there
is nothing. I catch
my breath like a man
boarding a train, and think,

that's what it's like:
a stunned tempering
of the knees, a warm,
unbalanced arrival.*




* Or, departure? As usual with me, this poem has something backwards about it. Edited in 11.15.13. Also, dropped the dangling 'of' in line 10 to the beginning of line 11. This was suggested by a critter at PFFA a long time ago which I think I adopted in the thread at the time but for some reason failed to carry over to this version. That error is now fixed. If and when I recall said critter's username, I'll edit that information in.

Mourning

We found the rabbit dying in the drive,
half of her body crushed. She had nearly made
her way to the cover of a hedge,
drawn by its arc of shadow. Blood in the gravel

marked her slow, deliberate passage,
now dry and pale in the sun. We crouched
in grief and whispered, not daring to touch
a thing so small at so bleak a threshold.

My sister went to the house and carried back
a plate of greens, as if that quiet
and far too well-composed mouth would open.

It didn't; but we saw the nostrils move
with one last twitch of reflex, and the eyes
rolled wide, in terror or astonishment.

Nesting

At last this chill; and yet
trees stay alive to fret
thin shadows through the blinds
and grid your fussy hands
that rifle a cabinet.

You kneel and rearrange
my things and make them strange.
The trees outside will bear
This slightly colder air,
accustomed to the change.

Spaghetti

The stranger at the gate stops,
adjusts his wilting hat brim,
not posing but composed: a

still-life, red complected,
hands hard, worn like boot-
heels. Smoke from a cheroot

rises, narrowing his vision,
but the eyes are like capers
black and dead as a doll's,

bottomless, unfathomed. The
dull thud of casement windows
coming to on cracked sills

heralds him, the small clicks
of cocked guns, curtains drawn.
The gate yawns. A jangle of spurs.

Para Mi Esposa

You kneel and faintly move
your cloying scent,
not cinnamon or clove,
Nor burning mint,

but earthen, like the dust,
or pungent brine;
or like the rain, or rust,
or musk of pine.

I cup my lips and quench
a parching thirst
while from your throat I wrench
a gasping burst

of Spanish expletives
that shock my wits;
and yet your grace survives
such aspirates.

The Interlopers

Above the open jars of condiments
Flies hum and hover, filthy little things
That swoop and carom on their gauzy wings.
These clumsy, buzzing interlopers fence
With swatting hands that threaten violence
But strike in vain: for each Quixote swings
A blink too late, and flashing wedding rings
Clack on the wooden bench in impotence.

These scavengers will make the most from least,
Are not averse to perching on a tear,
Or in the whorl of an unguarded ear.
I'll stay indoors, sequestered as a priest,
And all alone enjoy my holiday feast,
Apart from flies and inlaws, and warm beer.

It is Twice Blest

Now like the moon among a crowd of stars
or a naiad from water set upon by lilies
I'll have you rise from sleep, for the night adores
the flowering of all brighter presences,
imagines flames from any subtle spark
that burns in deepest cold. Should you awake
and light a cigarette at the foot of the bed,
let Fancy fashion how the wisps of smoke
might wind like ribbons around your lovely head.

Give me but leave to wonder, in my night,
how you pass yours. I will not have your hands
folded like unblown roses, out of light,
but in full flower, bewildering as wands;
and in the darkness should you think how sweet
is love and pity my cracked and foolish heart,
then, far from you, feeling a little peace,
it may well come to mend and gentlier beat
while I tell myself you are not merciless.

For Fashion's Sake

All morning long before her mirror
a girl with many colored combs
sat laboring at her yellow hair
and picked at breakfast's tea and crumbs.

The birds that by the window sang
furnished the somber boughs of trees
with gaiety enough to ring
a little louder than the breeze.

Now gold the leaves that fell to ground,
and now cascades of brittle red,
all put down gently by the wind
upon their kindred's wonted bed.

While earth, appareled like a girl,
at peace addressed the sun that day,
another, for an errant curl,
a wayward tress, could not be gay.
1986

Spiritual Fire

The silver-tongued seduction
has never been my trade,
nor plying suit that's braver
than what with eyes is made,

nor will I offer roses,
nor flatter overmuch,
however fine the feature,
to win a woman's touch.

Let Patience, then, sustain me,
O Muse, or move my station
a little nearer Pieria
where to intoxication

I'll tipple holy water
and drown the rat, Desire,
and let my heart burn only
with spiritual fire.

On an Electric Bug Zapper

I heard the laughter of a moth
as he alighted on my wrist
(he was as unafraid of death
as any blonde evangelist):

What is the benefit of age?
There is an end to every road.
I terminate my pilgrimage
kissing the warm blue face of God.

Talismans

Gamboling bombadils in
lathered boots cross acres
of marsh and wet woodland,
thin and goose-throated

they boast of ancient lineage
and croak in mad dactyls.
Crack-pated mermen dream
naked on green stones

of girls leaning gold braids
from high turret windows
with coronets for eyes
and breasts like white birds.

The basilisk collects our
tendered coins of passage.
We cross the bridge and march
into havens and kingdoms.