Poems
Birdhouse
Boy teetering on tiptoe, head tilted down,
his aquiline nose shadowed by the v-shaped roof.
Just enough height to glimpse them
through the little hole,
their only source of light.
Boy to man: ‘They look like little dinosaurs.’
Man to boy: ‘they’re related.’
Boy’s elated.
But to the man, the frantic movements
of the five gaping beaks,
necks strained as if gasping for air,
unsettles.
Birds teetering on tips of claws, heads tilted up,
their aquiline beaks shadowed by the v-shaped roof.
Just enough light to glimpse him -
the boy’s glistening eye
almost filling the aperture
through which they will be fed tonight.
The sum of their lifespans but a breath of geological time,
connected for an instant
in the dying light of early night.
Man to boy: ‘it’s time for bed.’
Lost voice
Last seen in field far from here.
Chip on shoulder. Spot on ear.
Heart on sleeve. No tag. Quite light.
Responds when called and will not bite.
The early night’s his hiding space.
If seen, approach, but please don’t chase.
Less sensitive to sense than sound.
We miss him so.
Reward if found.
Pirouette
How long ago she managed to hold
herself on toe, and twirl, and twirl
with grace and charm, bold
as the little ballerina girl
who stares at her tonight,
the sad ceramic leg now chipped
and immobile. ‘Sleep tight’
she says ‘sleep tight my love’ light lipped.
The little mirrors have lost their sheen
a cloudy eye confirms,
tracing leg line flecked with tourmaline.
So these are nature’s terms,
So these are nature’s terms.
Bones
Your skin
has finally given in
to your restless bones’ demands.
Even the knuckles are on the attack
whining for a little slack.
Bones are stubborn,
will not bend.
They spread about the body, distend
without consulting the soft bits
which puts proportions
out of whack.
Clack, crack, clack, your gangly stilts
can barely bear your height.
Balance is off
and your upper half
has yet to catch up to the legs
that just don’t step
right.
Obstinate, crafty bones!
You’ve been crawling under his skin
for weeks.
He just can’t keep
still
The bones are bulging at the knee
How odd his frame’s
topography.
My little boy
who’s leaving me.
Thursday Morning
Fog.
Rain-pecked leaves glisten
in the fat morning light.
Clusters of umbre la la las
bobbing in soft unison.
The incessant rocking
of the clockwork arms is maddening,
and comforting.
My Love
You are the itch
Between my inner ear and tongue
The woman I would choose
If I had to share a lung
Your kisses send me out to sea
Like a dandelion’s kite
You are my tree, solid as wood
Against the starless night
Peonies
It’s been three months
since you planted the peonies.
The weeds are marshaling their forces
and planning their attack.
I think they know
they are in for the long haul.
The neighbors now pass on food
and stand a little too long
at the door asking after you – ‘but, six months?’
sneaking glances over my shoulder
to confirm cleanliness, order.
Has it been a year
since you planted the peonies?
You’ll be happy to hear the weeds
have declared a truce
and are now in retreat.
You would think after two years
the neighbors would lose interest
in us, but they won’t let up –
‘You must cut those oily mops
of hair, clean their pants and fingernails
and buy them a new pair of shoes’ –
I haven’t heard much from the kids
over these last ten years.
The neighbors no longer meddle.
The garden is thriving. I think the peonies
will be in bloom for your return
in the spring.
Omoshi
You will find it dozing on the third shelf
of the rust ridden dilapidated shed
under a clot of oily rags.
Wrench it loose.
Feel its heft in your hand.
Nothing you have held of equal size
is as heavy as this timeworn clump of iron.
Wrench your boys from the weightless world
of the screens to share
a moment in the rain drenched garden air.
Toss it to them
and see if they do not catch it with
a flash of joy in their eyes.
I Want This Poem to Sound Like Andy Warhol's Shoes
Cute as a pie crust.
Lazy as these pens I can’t throw away.
As light as this day
hiding from night
Quick as a bell.
Shy as a hallmark hug.
As supple and smug as this earlobe I tug.
I want this poem to sound like Andy’s Warhol’s shoes.
Soft as a star.
Quiet as a buttonhole.
Gay as her pink cloud of candy floss fluttering
in the breeze.
Aloft
I put them on a boat and sent them out to sea
To eradicate from memory
Spouting vitriolic
And bombastic bile embolic
No fathoming these figureheads
We’ve been jib rigged fore and aft
The Russian at the stern
The Brazilian at the wheel
The continental cads roped and hooked about the heel
And as ballast or’ the bulkheads
The American I did furl
No fathoming these figureheads
We’ve been jib rigged fore and aft
Aloft!
Dreadnought we fear their leeward tack
Windward wake and worried
The five will feature knotted true
Skull as lonely seamen do
No fathoming these figureheads
We’ve been jib rigged fore and aft
Salt Breathes Life
Gentle sound of clams purging sand
As ice cracks in early spring registered only by tiny attentive ears
Sensitive to sound with time in life to listen
No need for extraneous ornamentation
With richness of line, pattern, shade of shell together
Forming mosaic rivaling sand mandalas
Salt as balm stirring life
Salt as evil stifling it
Take your pick
But either way, as mandalas are brushed away
Something terrifying about last gentle movement
Before boiled death
Fall
From that impossible height
Taught ropes
Allowing tranquil sweep
Through ancient terraced canyon walls
Eons deep
Youth and yearning soft as liquid light
How Odd That Daring Dash
Seven of them floating in a five-line poem.
A little bit fanatical,
being ungrammatical.
By such audacity you engage
our curiosity.
Some called it a substitute for the devil –
Why the period had to die
is a riddle we can’t solve.
Nor need we bother. For we do sense
that cessation serves to
arouse our pleasure and imagination
drawing attention to the life
you lived through; your caesura,
retained for posterity in lead,
traced on paper, the weight
of your hand revealing such intimacy.
One has to wonder what is lost
in print, dash lengths analyzed
by the scholars who standardized
those mysterious marks.
How odd that the daring dance of your dashes
through its cryptic will, moves us still
teetering and tottering
robbing time its ebb, and through its flow –
we hear your spirit sing.
Observing Hope
The massive boulders tilt obliquely
like sunken tombstones
in the churchyard
where a boy had gazed in wonder
at a dragonfly resting impossibly
on the tip of his finger
for an instant
before leaving him and weaving its way
lazily to the edge of the garden
in no more time than it took
for the blanket of stone
to fall.
I Learned a Lot from Larkin
Simply said with light and limpid touch
A finely chiseled phrase works wonders
Nudged to the left but not too much
When register is right
Form and content quit the fight
Images held for just enough time
Jog the soul gently midst dull daily grind
While riding on the train
To help us feel with heart and mind
The shape of glass in rain
Rhyming couplets now might seem a little quaint
A British thing perhaps, that conservative constraint
Halcyon and soothing
Formal play to ponder pain
How to leave a word alone, alone out in the rain
Relinquishing the grandiose allows one to convey
Such depth in lithe and sylphlike forms
One seldom sees today
Let the little words hold weight
Cut the fat, truncate, truncate!
My little ode to you now done I’ll pass it on to everyone
And when my friends come round to chat
I’ll tell them Larkin’s where it’s at
Gone for over thirty years and yet
Fresh images, still now, beget
A Norman Rockwell Morning
Waved with a smile to the postman
Even got a nod from the brittle woman walking that yappy dog
My little garden bugs basking in sun of bird blue sky, satiated
Reclining on lacy half-eaten leaves, soft breeze caressing
Tiny legs and eggs of littler ones to come
My legs limber too, stretched and warm
Lungs alert champing at bit for early morning mountain air
Happily shared with all in this wondrous world in fall
Trailblaziing
I slowly traced the great network of interlacing trails
You made with your hands through the sand
On your knees in the park
Your last kingdom
This raw play of imagination
Moving your body through endless space
Now that the screens have claimed your attention
I miss cleaning the dirt from your knees
Smelling the fresh grass stains
And wonder what is lost in this forging of new trails
Through vast electronic fields
With you, immobile, staring into flat space
I've heard the cyber prophets say
Bodily play is falling away
With ever more to explore far from where we are
I’ll remember your face, utterly absorbed
Fulfilling innate earthly desire
Trailblazing
My garden creatures
hobble
tipsy towards heat ripened fruit
to copulate.
Their limber legged couplings
at dusk
dazzle the children
who arrogate
dominion over this compost kingdom
like little Roman emperors,
decreeing to each and every bug
its pleasure,
its fate.
C'est Mon Plaisir
Some
Give people their kids
When they feel that parenting’s
Not really their thing
This is sad
And makes caregivers mad
But on days
When the children are terribly bad
They too, wish they were free
To frolic
And sing and dance
And eat olives sans kids
In a garden in France
Grand Gran
A visit with you then
Was like lunch with the queen
British and lavender clean
A twinkle in your eye, cig in hand
Everything regal and grand
I’d listen to your stories
Of Shanghai shops and of the war
Of British ships and glories
Of the colonies and all that fell before
The lovely liners brought you
To this gentle western shore
Where you could scan the sea
Driving scooter on the quay
Through sand salt woven windswept land
Shopping list in wrinkled hand
To buy the dainty doilies
For Royal Albert cups of tea
We’d drink with scones and butter tarts
Or Yorkshire puds and pie
Before I’d say goodbye
And kiss you on the cheek
In reddening room of crimson sky
At end of dying day
And wave to you from the road outside
Where they say you passed away
Who has time
to follow the gentle sway
of my pedicles and umbellets
but the children,
their birdy eyes and fragile fingers
delighting in my decay
in the breeze that tilts
these fourteen crests of seed,
my progenies survival
held in these handsome stilts
soon to be tossed as weed
or set in suspended animation
preserved in liquid amber jars
for my limonene and manganese
my seedling's tiny stars
my fronds a sheer chemise
my last and lonely sexy dance,
a little strip and tease.
Butterfly
I catch a glimpse of you at dusk
joggling the bamboo fronds
bumping bravely
into things that are not there
reminding me of the fate
of the poor words in my poems
netted, pressed and pinned
in end rhyme for display,
hoodwinked by the rules
I forced them to obey.
Waiting
It’s cold and damp and gray
And we are waiting
Waiting for the bell to ring
The fly is banging on the glass
And the quiet boy’s brain
Is not working right today
It’s faint and far away
And we are waiting
Waiting for the child to sing
That song we learned so long ago
And the fluorescent light
Is not shining right today
It’s something held at bay
And we are waiting
Waiting for the bee to cling
But the stamens have withered
And the dry wind
Is not blowing right today
It’s what we heard them say
And we are waiting
Waiting for the sting
Of what their words will bring
But the stream of words
Is not flowing right today
It’s our final hour of youthful play
And we are waiting
Waiting for that long-lost thing
That’s worth remembering
And the quiet boy’s brain
Is not working right today
Circles and Stones
(for Len)
Only one left
You at Lake Louise
Faded black and white
Your rugged face
Tufts of white hair answering
The bite of glacial air
Those bony fingers
Cradling binoculars
The hand I shook long ago
Before your mind ebbed away
No photo of the skipping stone circles
Before their untroubled return
To the surface.
On the Edge of Stravinski’s Cup
The old fly
has a spot on his tie.
His wings are crooked and frail.
He waits on the saucer
for morning tea
and erudite camaraderie.
When the master comes
he'll be offered the crumbs
and a dollop of Devonshire cream
On the tip of Schoenberg’s pen.
The old fly
peruses the score pensively
from the tip of Schoenberg’s pen.
Twelve seconds pass
before the hint of foie gras
draws him to the plate.
Alas, the music is impenetrable, arcane.
But the pate, recherché –
'I shall visit here again.'
Home
How nice of you to come today, anyways
You must be busy with the kids
Just put it over there
Next to the flowers from Jenny
You must be busy with the kids
Yes, I think I still have some
Next to the flowers from Jenny
No, I’ve no need of that anymore
Yes, I think I still have some
Oh look! you can see the little bird from here
No, I’ve no need of that anymore
Did the kids pass their exams?
Oh look! you can see the little bird from here
They raise the blinds at 8:00
Did the kids pass their exams?
It’s Jen and David, right?
They raise the blinds at 8:00
I can see the children playing in the park
It’s Dave and Jenny, right?
When can I go home?
I can see the children playing in the park
Cindy here takes good care of me
When can I go home?
You look like my son
Cindy here takes good care of me
She brings me water when I ring
You look like my son
Who are you?
She brings me water when I ring
Just put it over there
Who are you?
How nice of you to come today, anyways