SOUTH WIND, CLEAR SKY 

 

Red hot Mama,

She’s an active volcano,

Though not likely to erupt, so they say—

Long thin white clouds wisping on the south wind,

Looking like the ghosts of pods and their peas,

Little white peas just peeping over the edge of their canoes.

She’s molten red, with her white veins bulging from her neck,

Far above what’s below, far below what’s above,

Green, blue, everything in between.

Will she blow? Who knows?

Until then she’s serene:

South wind, clear sky,

Myriads of ghost peas in ghost pods passing by.

 

     BUSYBODY

  

The snow is falling like nobody’s business—

So why am I writing about it?

 

It pirouettes beyond control,

Insistently whispering against my window pane:

 

Why don’t you just leave well enough alone?

Why can’t you just let snow be snow?

 

FLY PAPER, METAPHORICALLY

          “For art not thou

          A man like me,

          And am I not

          A fly like thee?”

               --William Blake

 

I brought my poems into your bookstore,

But didn’t know there was a secret code

Of manners in the game you’d have me play:

Monopoly. So I did not pass Go,

And walked away without two hundred bucks.

You blew me off as though I were a fly

Disquieting Le Dejeuner sur l'Herbe.

Though they who have the gold can make the rules,

The men of vision understand a Fly

To be not necessarily the pest

That it may seem, but Human through and through—

A golden Fly! You should have swatted me

When I was in your range. You’ve lost the chance,

Now that I’ve buzzed off from your demesne.

 

     ARACHNOPHILIA

  

The black and yellow garden spider hangs

Upon her stabilimentum of silk,

From which her universe irradiates

As she awaits her flying insect prey.

At length the male bestirs himself for her;

She only bides her time for when he comes.

He builds a small web next to hers and then

Begins his mute romantic serenade,

Plucking on the filaments of her web.

But when at last he takes initiative

And climbs the fateful trembling airy stair,

He drops a safety line behind close by,

In the event that his beloved attacks

Before he gets a chance to mate with her:

For only when that deed is consummate,

He slowly yields his spidery will to live—

And then his faithful mate devours him.

 

She lays her eggs at night upon her bed,

A fabric woven from her writhing bowels,

And wraps them in a silky winding sheet,

And rolls the sheet into a silken ball,

A thousand or more eggs therein to guard,

Hung safely in the center of her web.

And as the weather cools, she waxes weak;

And when the first hard frost breathes out on her,

She dies suspended in her tapestry.

Her children leave the sac in hopeful Spring,

So tiny that they look like motes of dust,

All sprinkled on a trembling silken mesh.

We muse as each exudes its filament

Of silk that stretches on the longing breeze

And carries off the myriad spiderlings

To weave in time their webs of destiny.

 

THOU SHALT NOT COVET

  

Clematis clambers

Passionately over the fence

Onto the neighbor’s tool shed

 

The rotting floor sags

Beneath the roof that drips down

Melting snow and summer rain

 

Rusted and unused

The garden hoe and rake lie

Jumbled with an unwound hose

 

The window panes peer

Into the distance obscured

With cataracts of neglect

 

Would he even care

If I let in the daylight

Through the broken unlocked door

 

If I washed the glass

Sharpened the shears swept the floor

And put his house in order

 

Would it be a sin

If I offered back to him

Those implements neglected

 

Leafstalks twist and curl

The dead wood returns to life

Adorned with purple flowers

 

 

 

TO A VIRGINIA BLUEBELL

  

You nod to me across the trail

That runs before my garden seat.

With clustered bells of blue you greet

My visit with a subtle peal.

 

You wave your frolic fans of green

So gaily, as if you had met

Some kinsman or awaited yet

A long lost friend to grace the scene.

 

A friend indeed this scene has graced,

Projecting in his mental sight

A sphere within which Nature’s face

Beams out as with a mirror’s light.

 

Long lost no more, now recognized,

My roots beside yours in the earth,

Together we unite in mirth—

While botanists but classify.

 

Some people blow that way and this,

Whichever way the wind doth blow:

Some people fly like April snow,

And say you have no consciousness—

 

Unlike themselves, whose knowledge glues

Each specimen with abstract frame.

They see things but as things are named:

Myself, I share one Mind with you.

 

And I to you must nod my head,

Assenting with the voice of Spring

That tinkles from my bells and sings

Blue music in our flower bed!

 

            IMPERIAL MOTH

  

Within an earthen chamber they pupate,

Then crawl toward the light in their next phase

As horned and dotted caterpillars, lured

By sunshine beckoning them to leaves and warmth--

To die again one day, having stretched out

Their speckled yellow wings marked purple gray,

When still they are attracted to the Sun

Though born to be nocturnal.

                                               They are fooled

Not by the simple daylight, but by signs

Illuminated by man’s artifice: 

Street lights and floods that stay on through the day.

 

I saw a moth one sunny afternoon

Upon the wall of a convenience store,

Where driven by the glare of gaudy bulbs

He’d flapped his five inch wingspan through the dark

And worshipped there well past the break of dawn.

Displayed so well in all his panoply,

Did he become the morsel of some crow?

For I have read that where such sleepless light

As lured him is abundant, his species

Has fast become a rare phenomenon.

 

SANS CAFFEINE

  

All I do is sit

with my head in my hands,

unable to think. And I stare

out the window at myself,

as I squat on the curb

like a blind beggar, holding out

my empty cup

to the agitated

passers-by: those who have had

their fix of morning coffee.

 

I keep falling asleep

in the middle of my work,

with fitful dreams

that are not

Wish-fulfilling Gems.

 

How many days

will I languish here,

like a marionette

hung up by its strings

in the dead master’s attic?

Perhaps the wind

will blow in through

these shattered glass panes--

enough to make me dance

and swing in mid-air;

enough to dispel

these wistful

and abortive

dreams.

 

CHRISTBUDDHAMAS

 

Strip down to the bare essentials

That’s what it’s all about

Be born for the last time

Lay yourself down in a feeding trough

Or at the foot of a Bo tree

And the world will come round to you

Let there be only this sight

Hear only this Word

Taste only this bread and wine

Smell only this incense

Touch only the deathless with this body

 

AT THE OLD WATERHOLE

  

While I was sitting

on a rock beside the pond,

contemplating my image

in an iridescent oil slick,

I overheard a pigeon

speaking “pigeonese”

to another as they sipped

that same water, daintily:

 

“I had no idea

they were so intelligent!”

said pigeon number one.

“They actually have an alphabet,

and are able to have ideas!

Why, I do believe

they communicate together—

have their own civilization,

if you can believe such a thing.”

 

“Who would have thought?”

exclaimed pigeon number two.

“They seem so oblivious,

like huge, blundering dreams!

“Now, if they only had wings to fly,

they’d see everything

from up in the sky,

in perspective, as we do!”

 THE OUTER BANKS

 

 By the Graveyard of the Atlantic

The children hunt for sand crabs,

And a man flies a child’s kite

That the twilight veils with a shadow.

 

Yesterday somebody dug a big hole,

And heaped sand around it into a wall.

The children climb out of it, then back in—

Around and around it, squealing with glee.

 

It seems that they play without ceasing,

While the sky lowers with windy rain clouds;

And the kite is a vague recollection

Attached by a string to the ocean of night.

 

          EMMA EAMES

 

“I will sing unto the Lord, because he hath

      dealt bountifully with me.”  Psalms 13:6

 

Her long dead voice, when the computer mouse

Clicked on the aria upon the screen,

Rose from the speakers to my ears, careened

Through the cochlea of time. Laid in a house

By absent hands interred, her shrunken corpse

Lay dreamless underneath a slab of stone,

Two miles away. I listened, and the tones

Evoked for me her image dim and close.

 

The plot was girdled with a wrought iron fence,

The marble chiseled with a cypress tree

Set in a circle under a verse from Psalms

That spelled her gratitude to ages hence.

The flora stirred with springtime mild and calm.

All times and places were as one to me.

 

 

Oak Grove Cemetery

Bath, Maine

 

THERE IS NO FUTURE IN YOUR EYES

  

There is no future in your eyes,

The gaze I scan with fond desire.

I cannot read them or surmise

The ardor of their seeming fire—

What warmth below their surface lies.

 

No present in your eyes appears,

No look but mine betrays itself.

I fail to pierce beyond your stare

And seize the vague, elusive elf

That lures me with my hopes and cares.

 

Within your eyes no past is found,

No witness to my memories.

I look away and look around,

And nothing but your eyes I see—

The eyes that blind me and confound.