—Poems by Tom Goff, Carmichael, CA
—Photos of the Busy, Post-Winter American River
—Photos of the Busy, Post-Winter American River
by Caschwa, Sacramento, CA
FOR A FRIEND, ON HER UNAVOIDABLE ABSENCE
FROM A POETRY READING
The clouds again, this rainiest of springs.
Clouds dense with dark ripe wetness should inspire,
this day I help lead a full-singing choir
of poets aiming words, not drones, with wings.
Rain, yes: we need each solitary inch
to stave away the coming time of fire,
yet tree-crown flame will come, sure as desire
feeds, fuels, ignites all carnal gristle singe-
and-flare. I flared with hope that you’d make one
of our band, we poetic brigands hot
to pillage the campus, lay waste all that’s not
humane, environmental green and young.
This Irish pearl cloud-mass would appeal to Bax,
but you cannot read with us today; such racks
of cloud are Shakespeare’s hate. I’ll miss your voice.
Such times, verse seems an almost regrettable choice.
AT POINT MUGU
All are born to nature; some love nature,
some have nature thrust upon them. And time:
my trumpet friend Victor, piccolo trumpet feature,
playing an Easter “sunrise” service. Time
change (spring forward); outdoors, Point Mugu.
Dark, heavy sea-fog; somehow, an organ’s there.
Cold, freezing cold and dark; yet in chill air,
murder to trumpet chops, it’s you-know-who,
mastering lip and mouthpiece fog-and-frost.
Sheet music unreadable without brash light
of sluggish sun or rounded moon; a flashlight
in Jeanne’s hand is all the needed torch
(good thing it’s electric, not igneous: no porch
to screen real flame against the raw wind gusts)…
Clergy’s not got word of the time change out;
thin congregation shivers to Victor’s notes.
He’s wrapped up his performance, nothing lost
on whoever’s happenstanced and heard—near-ghosts
dissolving by fog-degree separations. The rout
—latecomers in streams of cars toward Point Mugu—
arrives just as Victor’s departing with Jeanne, all stops out
—it’s Easter, sunrise now, one more gig to get to.
THE BLESSED CLARE
In Santa Clara town a tall
tall woman cast in bronze commands
a key square where De Anza’s bands
still rove, each man a ready sword-
blade her slim quiet countermands.
The Word rays from her, no song, no words;
to abstract Modern silences
her linen’s green-patina folds
rise, parallels cut in sharp uplift.
Caresses, no: no bids, no scolds.
In somber ecstasy her gift
self-emanates. She is the Cross:
her horizontal crossbeam, all
she owns—one lily—balances
on open hands. Note: slightly drooping.
The blossom tilt, the floral Fall
must replicate her Doppler call
in me, as I perceive the loss
of you—most temporarily,
I do beseech St. Clare—for you,
not ever a nun, still radiate
that glow that splits the clouded gate,
transpiercing the sundown sad and late
in sunbeams, heaven’s residue:
as Saules Maita’s language does.
At poolside where Clare’s island lies
your lost one muses, languishes.
May life rejoin less warily
than has our recent time ordained.
Reunion: let it cleanse the stained
ghost in me till I’m fit to view
my standing saint, my tall and true.
I’ll look my fill on the inturned Saint
till levitation takes her up,
bronze Abbess, into the Lord’s blue cup,
lofts her above the raincloud taint.
Subtly desolate, this her lily,
or is it sickly, deathly drooping?
This maybe-plentiful lily bell
suspends ripe sky-fruit in some spell,
then spills; its horn blares All will be well.
A woman, a man, could stand regrouping,
consolidating, at this pool,
their best selves in that clairvoyance wound
I hope to come home having found.
Let no one declare, at Clare’s own pool,
this holy one a Holy Fool.
Saint Clare: statue by Anne van Kleeck near Santa
Clara University, cast through the ancient lost wax
process, transported from Italy to California
around Cape Horn (1965)
THE MARRIAGE OF DRY TO LIQUESCENT
I love that you change thoughts as air does clouds,
that if you’re sun—and you are—each ray’s bright liquid,
all flowing caprice, rains your gleam on the crowds
of birch leaves: parchment-paper in their insipid
chartreuse yet sere translucence. They’re so dry,
those branch-twig citizens remind me of me,
in April as if aping the stiff or “spry”
quite ersatz youth whose glow you hold in fee.
You, though, are the ever so young radiance
who takes her essential fluid shape from wind,
from gardens’ abrupt-sprung impulse blossoming
and flagons of vernal mead’s most needed sting
poured into one incandescent skin and mind,
all adaptation, rapid-shifting stance:
your shapely refusal to stay pinned down in form
softens your dry admirer to each new norm.
Today’s LittleNip:
Words are things and a small drop of ink, falling like dew upon a thought, produces that which make thousands, perhaps millions, think.
—Lord Byron
__________________
—Medusa, thanking Tom Goff and Caschwa (Carl Schwartz) for today’s fine offerings!
—Anonymous
Celebrate poetry!
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