MARYLAND WEATHER

  

In the course of your visit

To our Hall of Records,

You will see that for the most part

Our Public Searchroom depends

Upon solar illumination.

 

In the course of a day,

There will be many changes

In its moods and your perceptions,

Like epiphenomena born

Of the ever-evolving brain.

 

But as they say here in Maryland

Concerning the weather,

“If you don’t like it, wait a minute,

And it will change.”

 

For instance, in the full sun

The three-story room seems youthful,

Full of possibilities--

Like Terrae Mariae herself,

In the days of old John Ogilby,

Whose map of the colony swelled to a mural

That leans over the mezzanine

Like an imperious, visiting Queen

Contemplating patrons

Too self-absorbed to notice her.

 

Suddenly, a cloud passes before the sun,

And Terrae Mariae recedes into the shadowy past.

 

The Searchroom grows smaller,

Gnarled out of shape like an old man

Who shuffles and complains

All the way from the indexes to the Reference Desk,

Clutching yellowed notebooks of illegible scrawl,

Hunchbacked with the burden of his ancestry,

Consciousness flickering

Like a guttering candle’s flame.

 

But if this apparition

Casts a pall upon your visit,

You will do well to remember

What we say about the weather.

 LIVE FREE OR DIE

 

The Old Man of the Mountain--

Is he what Daniel Webster

Chose to call a Real man?

He stares across the notch,

Past the peregrine cliffs,

And into the blind vistas

Of his own granite eyes.

 

It is we who attribute

To the crag his Persona,

Derived from the images

We cast upon our storm-blasted

Aggregates of Clinging.

 

Trembling with this vision,

Like mountaineers we sway

From the stakes and the cables

We drive into the Rushmores

We have not yet conquered,

Yet scale in our presumption.

 

When Jefferson looked up

At the Old Man of the Mountain,

The Old Man looked down

and laughed a mocking laugh

that echoes from the White Mountains’

jagged slopes, even to this day.

 

APRIL IS HER NAME

  

Across the patio

wheel eddies of white blossoms

from the Bradford Pears.

 

Hunched in the vinca

by the wind-shaken flagpole,

the female duck nests.

 

The petals’ fragrance

reeks like some decaying mole

a dog finds lovely.

 

The noon hour drifts

before the door in fragments

fallen from the sun.

 

            NATURAL HISTORY

  

The Horseshoe Crab has really been misnamed,

According to the experts, who should know;

But common sense forbids us to be shown

That ticks and mites must somehow share it’s fame.

We find these crabs in copulative chains

On inland beaches at the full moon’s rise,

In late spring at the thrust of evening’s tide;

To us it seems that lust has made them slaves.

Sometimes one lies upon its carapace,

And waves its spiny tail and crawly legs;

You flip it over, so that it can drag

Its skeleton where tracks cannot be traced.

Three hundred million years without a change!

The Trilobite once spawned within its range. 

 

                        THE ANGER OF GOD

 

     “Hellish fire or love comes from the same source

     as heavenly fire or love—from heaven’s sun, or the

     Lord. However, it is made hellish by the people who

     receive it.” Heaven And Hell, section 569.

 

Why does the Body Electric

Cease to flow with the urge—

Bursting into cinders

With an uncontrollable surge?

 

Look at the Good Grey Poet,

Paralyzed in a wheelchair--

Paraded around the country

Like an idol they prepared.

 

What glamour deludes them

That Freedom has no consequence?

Still searching for that Promised Land,

They stare out in a trance—

 

Consumed with lust and greed,

Strip-mining purple mountains

And smothering the prairies

With flesh of butchered bison.

 

Whose Name do they call upon,

Kneeling to their false desires?

Damnation cleaves the sky

With pyrotechnic fire.

 

Their separate selves they sing,

Yet utter the word Democracy—

In virtual wastelands condemned

To wander and grope blindly.

 

Have the flames of Heavenly Love

Turned hellish in their breasts,

Casting them into the furnace

Of their own self-righteousness?

 

UNWANTED OFFER

 

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrg

The phone rang

The telephone solicitor

Wanted a contribution to charity

 

I said

I am a very wealthy man

I have hundreds of poems to offer

Give me your name and address

And Ill send them all to you

 

No no

He said

That’s not what we’re after

Your financial support

Would be greatly appreciated

 

Au contraire

I replied

I could not give you straw

When I have gold to offer

Now, your address?

 

He hung up on me

 

   NO MATTER

  

Oh, who will trust a poet—

No matter how he pleads

That his poetic musings

Are just what you may need?

 

You trust the man of science,

For he can show the way

That flies can walk on water

And ride upon the waves.

 

We all can trust our bankers,

As long as our accounts

Are yielding compound interest—

No room for any doubt.

 

A doctor writes prescriptions

When illness takes its toll.

Pick up your bed and walk now—

Your faith has made you whole.

 

But who can trust a hoodlum

Who serves the Fascist side

As lawman for the lawless?

Yes, everyone must hide

 

From one who follows orders

To terrorize or kill

Without a qualm or question,

Without a pang of guilt.

 

All people who resist him

Will stagger from his gun,

No matter what they stand for—

No matter if they run.

 

And should you disbelieve this,

And trust him to do right

No matter what the wrong is,

Why not step in his sights?