Foolish Questions

Angel with Roses, Middletown Cemetery

—Photo by Cynthia Linville, Sacramento

ROSES, LATE SUMMER


—Mary Oliver

What happens


to the leaves after


they turn red and golden and fall


away? What happens

to the singing birds


when they can't sing


any longer? What happens


to their quick wings?

Do you think there is any


personal heaven


for any of us?


Do you think anyone,

the other side of that darkness,


will call to us, meaning us?


Beyond the trees


the foxes keep teaching their children

to live in the valley,

so they never seem to vanish, they are always there


in the blossom of the light


that stands up every morning

in the dark sky.


And over one more set of hills,


along the sea,


the last roses have opened their factories of sweetness

and are giving it back to the world.


If I had another life


I would want to spend it all on some


unstinting happiness.

I would be a fox, or a tree


full of waving branches.


I wouldn't mind being a rose


in a field full of roses.

Fear has not yet occurred to them, nor ambition.


Reason they have not yet thought of.


Neither do they ask how long they must be roses, and then what.


Or any other foolish question.

_____________________

—Medusa, reminding you to check out Medusa's Facebook page for two new photo albums: POETS SHINE AT THE SHINE by Michelle Kunert, and IT'S APPLE TIME! by Katy Brown.

Look At The Ends

Fungus

—Poems and Photos by D.R. Wagner, Locke

PASTORAL

The sun finds silly places to look
For things, across a cat’s fur
While it walks across the gravel
Just as evening is repairing itself
For its show.

It got mixed up with the garden.
I look down on it from my second-
Story window and watch it move
In and out of trees, showing secret
Places in them for a few precious
Seconds.

This evening the breeze
Will have nothing
To do with anything.

It has found something to do
Elsewhere.
“Later,” it says, "When it starts to get dark,
Just before the moon comes up.”

Maybe, but it usually lies
About important things like this.

_____________________

CROSSING YOUR FACE OUT

Every line I make here I cross your face out
At the end of it.  I can see the incoming rockets.
They are not hitting farm fields and blowing
Holes in rows of corn and beans.  They have hit
My houses and my head is bleeding profusely.
I am having trouble moving my arm.
Look at these damn lines, seven of them now
And I’m still crossing your face out at the end
Of each one.  It’s like you don’t believe me.

Let’s try this.  Rip this entire page out of the manuscript
And light it on fire.  Burn it to a crisp.  I can’t stand to find
You anywhere in the fucking poem.  I can barely speak
Out loud.  Burn the damn thing up.  Look, do this for me:
Print a copy of these words then hit them with a lighter.
Hold onto it as long as you are able.  Look at the ends
Of every line.  Your face is crossed out.

I can’t believe I love you enough to do this but I do.
It’s scraping my muscles off my bones and using them
For tinder at the end of each line of this rant.  The only
Way to end this is to say Fuck You.  I love you so much.
I cannot stand with these words any longer.  Burn me down.
 

Portrait

I AWAKE IN A RED ROOM

I awake in a red room.
It is packed to the walls
With Schumann’s Opus 15*.
I could not stop crying.
My mouth was still very sore.
I had nothing left to remember.

I could see the drawers
Where it was all kept.
I could see my friends looking
Through the drawers, but was unable
To make a sound, except, maybe,
That of a field of crickets
Under a full moon.

When I broke, I swore
I would never write another poem.
This is the one after that promise.

I will look for something to put
Me back to sleep that does
Not include your face, your hands,
Your eyes, your smile, anything about you.

A flight of fighter jets begin to perform
Acrobatics just above my bed.


(*Scenes From Childhood)

_______________________

CHASING DEMONS

I threw a lantern full of fireflies
Toward her and she disappeared
Into what might have been
A forest, if this hadn’t been a dream.

I rose above the rooftops.
Still the demons came.
They clawed to catch my clothing.
They fought to speak my name,
But there was nothing left around them.

They knew not from where they came.
The labyrinth itself was a mirror
And all the images were drained
Except for fire
And I myself burst into flame.

I tried to speak of this before,
But I still cannot make your name
In my mouth, the forest too, aflame.

Greetings

WISTERIA

“He was a man who looks
at the wisteria like a man
who knows how wisteria
should be looked at.”
               —Italo Calvino


I was washing myself with grief.
The spangles that remained
In my heart were no more than tarnished
Chemistry.  I could no longer imagine
What I came to tell you.

Everything got lost when the madness
Came to eat.  It ate everything
And beat my body up and smashed
My possessions and cursed everything
I said and did or stood for
Or loved and my shoes filled up
With blood and it became
Difficult to walk.

That was love?  I felt
More like I’d been hit by a car
And then blamed for being
In its way.  I was on the sidewalk.
It was traveling at the speed of light.

___________________

TATTOO

I told you I would keep you here
And had your name tattooed directly
Over my heart.

But now you are gone.
It’s not like I can open a door
And let you out.

You are in my blood.
In the middle of the night
I can smell you on my body.

Ghosts have come to know
My name.  I have seen
Where they walk.
Some of them will follow you
Right up the mountain.

From here, I can see
Their lights flickering.
I can feel your footsteps
Right where I had them
Put that tattoo.

 Roy's Dogs

THE DOOR WAS LEFT OPEN

I could see children playing inside
A room.  The sounds were very dry.
I am sure this happened today.
If not, history would not exist as history.

Silence was floating in the air
For such a long time it became
Particles drifting in the room.

The month lay heavy upon the room.
I felt I was being assailed by memories
Rather than sliding into a narrow reality
Bounded only by gaps in my imagination.

There were elevators across from the room.
I never noticed them previously, but dogs
Began to use them.  Then again, everything
Can change its appearance.  One must know
The exact point from which one is looking.

I find myself not knowing what to express
About these children playing.  Perhaps it was
Their clothing or the fragments of the songs
I could hear them singing in the room.

Mystery sometimes comes only to consume
What we may think we know about anything.
I have tried so hard to guide you across
The threshold of this place, but here we remain
Locked in a space that, as Murakami says,
“Smells like the palm of your hand.”

Let us watch the wind.  I will throw all these words
Into its open mouth and we can see which way
They blow.  Look, there is morning just ahead
Of us.  It too seems as confused as we are.

 Pansy

WINDSONG HEARD AT AN OPEN WINDOW

Out near the edge of land,
A brilliant flash of light
Above a meadow yellow-bright
With flowers exclaiming Spring.

We walked there.  Oh yes, we did.
Every day of our loving one another.
And still this singular thing
Occurs.  Oh yes, it does.

So loving, so the sea, so the light,
The flowers, Our walking, The love,
Oh yes, the loving, our loving, so much like spring.

_____________________

Today's LittleNip:

FROST

And what of dying...
What of those faces...
Children in the late rain.

_____________________

Our thanks to D.R. Wagner for today's tasty Kitchen fare! D.R. will be reading with many other poets at the Sacramento Anthology extravaganza Sept. 27 (it'll be a huge, hours-and-hours reading to celebrate Sac. Anthology II; watch for more about that) and he will also be one of the lecturers in the Art and Poetry series presented by the Sac. Poetry Center on Thursday nights during October.

Speaking of workshops, be sure to check the green box at the right of this for news of workshops and submission opportunities as we roll into the busy season of Fall. I see Jannie Dresser, a Bay Area poet, has another of her poem-a-day opportunities going, too; see the "Need More SOWs?" section.

____________________

—Medusa

Giraffe

Heroic Tenors

Daydream

—Poems and Photos by Robert Lee Haycock, Antioch

ON A PHOTOGRAPH OF BUSTER KEATON

He was I
And I am he
Not a question if I wanna be
Bounce me
Break me
Let me fade to black
I am dying
But I won't tell
I was beautiful
Did you notice?

 Light Bearer and Brother Sun

SO WHAT

What was that you said?
The wind carried your words away
Before my ears could taste them.
What did you see?
I need your eyes for mine
Are rusty with too many tears.
What meant you?
I meant to mean the world to you
So busy living beyond my means.
And what of your dreams?
I would be your heroic tenor
But I fear I only number among the supernumeraries.

 Things You Do For Love

MUSIC

My grandmother's guitar hangs next to my bed
A wedding present from my grandfather to her
The label inside says 'Orpheus'
Orpheus and Gammy and Papa long dead but still singing
Next to a photograph I surprised out of Mayme
A smile by the lake in Paradise
I tried to teach myself to tease music from those strings
So many summery lifetimes ago
Bloody fingers for all my fumblings
How I wish you were here
To kiss away that pain and this

 Things You Do For Love, II

EMBROIDERED

And those things dimly known
That will not brook elucidation
Do they hide from the light
Or are they mere and merely invisible?
Hold it in your hands
This deliciousness of silk and hemp
Belying amplification
Defying expansion
Make it big as a wall if you will
But what then of holy intimacy?

 Everything Old is New Again

WHERE I COME FROM

Eveningshade
Arkansas
My grandmother was born there
Great grandmother too
They never met Burt Reynolds
Not that they ever mentioned
But Gammy might have had
A subscription to Playgirl
She was always full of surprises

_______________________

Today's LittleNip:

Delicious Autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.

—George Eliot

_______________________

—Medusa

Pieces of My Day

Tom-Toms in the Night

—Poems by Donal Mahoney, St. Louis, MO
—Photos by Caschwa, Sacramento

NORMAN DOESN'T GO TO FERGUSON, MISSOURI

Not far from Ferguson aflame
are quiet leafy neighborhoods
Norman Rockwell might have painted
when subdivisions first appeared.

These neighborhoods are beautiful
because Norman still comes back
four times a year, some say,
for touch-up work here and there

during the changing of the seasons.
He paints russets on the leaves in fall,
crystals on the snow in winter,
yellow on the daffodils in spring,

red and pink on roses in the summer.
But Norman doesn't paint in Ferguson 
because Ferguson he says is Watts
raging down the road to resurrection.

TWIN GIRLS, 1948

Beth was always different
marching as she did
to an armless drummer.

Her sister Kate marched
to another drummer,
one with arms on certain days

but never with a drum
that caught the sticks Kate
kept in the air flailing.

When the girls were young
their mom and dad took them out
for walks on Sunday

afternoons in summer.
The girls waved to butterflies
but never to anyone else.

It was hard for other kids
peering from porches
to understand the problem.

When the twins were small
they didn't call it autism.
It had no name on my block.

Now the illness has a name
and different medications
that sometimes temper

but never cure.
The girls are women now
old and living in a big home

with others in a small band,
some still playing instruments
no one else can see.

THE PARISH CARNIVAL

That's Bernie's wife on the carousel
laughing and waving her arms.
Once again she won't get off
even though Bernie is yelling
next to the concession stand
jumping around in his wheel chair.
He's finished his cotton candy
and wants to go home.
He probably has to pee.
He never goes anywhere
except to the parish carnival.
He loves the cotton candy.
He says it's the same as when
he was a kid years ago
before he fell out of the tree.
He needs Stella more than ever now
to push his wheel chair and she does
except when she comes to the carnival
and gives old Bernie a big plume
of cotton candy and hops on the carousel
laughing and waving her arms
once a summer every year.

NEW YORK TO CHICAGO: AN EMAIL ALERT

By email I ask her
what color panty
what color bra.

Red, she replies.
Silk. Lace.
Saks.

Stockings
or panty hose?

Stockings, she says.
Very high.
Seams.

Flats or heels?

Stilettos
in my suitcase,
she says.
Small shop
off Broadway.

Take a cab
from the airport,
I tell her.
I'll pay

if the pilot
won't land in
our yard.
 

THE DROUGHT

You drive down
the same country road
every day at dawn

and see through
plumes of dust
this tall thin woman

straight as a scarecrow
in front of a field of corn
holding a hoe like a flag

tugging at a straw hat
and staring at the corn
till she goes in the house

and sits at the table
looks through the window
past ancient curtains

and prays for the deluge
she and Elmer will need
for the slightest harvest

PINEAPPLE UPSIDE DOWN CAKE

Nothing is anywhere anymore,
Dad shouts over the phone.
His reveille again at 4 a.m.
Will I come over and find it?

What's missing, Dad, I ask.
It's midnight and I'm in bed.
It'll take awhile to get there.

Your mother went to make
pineapple upside down cake
hours ago and still no cake.
She's nowhere to be found.
I called the neighbors.
They won't come over.
It's just me and the dog
and he's asleep.
Son, I need your help.

Mom died 10 years ago, Dad.
You and I went to the funeral.
We buried her at St. Anthony's.
Remember all the rain?
And then the rainbow shining?

Son, you're right again.
Sorry I woke you but where's
the pineapple upside down cake?
I've been waiting for hours.
A little snack and I'll turn in.

SO YOU COME BACK TOMORROW, HEAR?

The next morning the lady says
take me out for breakfast
someplace I have never been
someplace I will never see again
unless you come back
and take me there again
an empty diner where the grill man
gives us sausage, bacon, eggs,
pours more coffee in our mugs.
That's the place I want to go forever.
So you come back tomorrow, hear?
and take me there again.

Tonight's LittleNip:

TOM-TOMS IN THE NIGHT

When he walks behind her
so many years his wife

up the staircase laughing
off to bed this night

he can hear the tom-toms
in the jungle of his night

and so he whispers softly
let's try for twins tonight.

________________________

—Medusa

Eldrich

 Separation

—Photo by Taylor Graham

SEPARATE
—Taylor Graham, Placerville

The first I knew was the old ewe
stampeding terror in a burst of dust past
the window. How could I not
have heard the oak fall? Half of the oak,
as if husband of a tree-pair linked
for life; his bride still standing. Batik
of leaves vibrant green against sky dyed
September-blue. For how many years
had the two live oak halves
drawn water from underground, twining
roots together, reaching upward
to lift their canopy for birds.
Now a crow passes over
the new gap like mandatory black
in the pattern. The fallen half blocks
our drive. Just so, a knife-slice.
The sheep have gathered to feast
on leaves so suddenly within
their reach. This leafy curved twig,
a teacup handle. Small details
of a greater fabric-weave.

_________________________

ATTIC ELDRICH
—Taylor Graham

You jimmy the lid and start examining what’s
in the trunk. A fire to last the night. Mindless
distances singing the labyrinths of an uncle’s
wanderings. A designer-studio white vase
painted with what looks like blueberry jam.
A tiny city created inside a vertical crevice.
Winter and summer both mixed together in one
box, their roots intertwining. A nagging miracle.
Enough yearning to catalyze a conversion.
More of the same stuff your father’s brother
was always collecting. What puzzles you
is how he wrestled the old trunk
up the folding ladder and into the attic,
granted he had no fear of heights or angels,
dry-rot, or mysterious ways.

_________________________

WILD
—Taylor Graham

These are the night watches, summer
into winter. The cat, black cougar
in domestic mask, assumes his Crescent
Moon pose of subtle transitions,
a motionless dance. You hardly notice
how he segues into Extended Sphinx:
claws retracted, unknown energy.
Never mistake it for giving up
the more than possible. And the dog,
who’s journeyed with you farther
from the wild, lies down before the cat
who radiates indifference, a mime
of Consciousness Exhaust. Palms open,
reaching, Dog touches fingertips
with Cat. Quiet. Do you dare lie down
with them, speak to them as friends?
you with your load of expectations
in a language they don’t share.  

 Tree Down

—Photo by Taylor Graham

A POEM TO THE ONE
(you know who you are)
—Richard Hansen, Sacramento

Love
You know where
From who
To whom
There used to be a Why from the outside
that
Made Where so important
But Love progressed farther from that
The Why is internalized
the Where incidental
But a lot of fun
when
Permanent Friends we see each other

_____________________

FUCK THAT "AWW SHUCKS" SHIT
—Richard Hansen

Johnny B was distraught
and
a fan of crappy rap music
Loud
while driving with no license
crashed his Brand New Car
I tell yah
those wheels were squealing
off an embankment into
The Clam Room Bar and Bistro becoming
an inconvenience to Sheila
planning her wedding
and drinking with Father O'Shay
sitting by the window
he was killed instantly

 Drawing from Sacramento's Chalk It Up, August, 2014

—Photo by Michelle Kunert

IF ONLY
—Caschwa, Sacramento

They arrived in a box
Packed closely together
Like the cheapest clothes
From the sweatshop they so
Desperately sought to escape

One among them had heard
A rumor that a visiting museum
Exhibit from their own country
Was greeted here with much
Adulation and respect

Surely the people in this land
With all their high ideals
And worthwhile programs
Would welcome real people
At least as warmly as exhibits

If only they had been born
Relics of tyrants, a goblet
Or even a senseless bauble
Instead of human baggage
Overpopulating their own country

 

Chalk It Up

—Photo by Michelle Kunert

‪In my dreams my grandma is alive again‬
‪She probably couldn’t stand to live in the 21st century anyway—

‪she had lived through the majority of the last century ‬
‪and complained she already had enough with “modern” times‬
‪At least I dream of Grandma in the condition when she was in during her 70’s‬
‪and not frail, ill and bedridden like when she died at 92 ‬
‪In my dreams Grandma in her 70’s is along with me—‬
‪she is riding with me in my car going someplace she wants‬
‪and sometimes she meets some of my friends‬
‪or tells me things like how she still doesn’t like the music I listen to‬
‪Once I dreamed she was with me at some musical play ‬
‪she got annoyed and bored and wanted to leave‬
‪and wanted instead to hear me play the piano ‬
‪I worry though if this is how being in “heaven" with her will be like‬
‪when I hope she’ll be like a young woman again, the one I saw in her pictures‬

—Michelle Kunert, Sacramento

_______________________

My parents' neighbors who got rid of most of their front lawn to grow veggies   

have a sign posted about being on the Arden Park Garden Tour   

My retiree parents see so many stopping by to chat with their neighbors that

they’ve even gotten jealous

I told them they could have done the same

—Michelle Kunert

Chalk It Up

—Photo by Michelle Kunert

Today's LittleNip:

THE TRUNK IN THE ATTIC
—Kevin Jones, Elk Grove

There’s Aunt Irene’s Dominican
Nun habit, Aunt Agnes’ manuscript
Of her unfinished novel,
My grandfather’s calligraphy
Set, the keys to my father’s
Store.  None of it of any use
To anyone any more. Maybe.

____________________

—Medusa, reminding you to check out the blue box at the right (under the green box) for some 'way cool readings tonight and tomorrow!

Chalk It Up

—Photo by Michelle Kunert

Grey Threads of Dream-Fragments

—Poems and Photos by Joyce Odam, Sacramento

MORNING SOUNDS AND COLORS

Mauve-gray
of pre-dawn
just after night’s blue rain.

Winds of no color
break through the night,
sending the dark green trees
and leaves into a flurry.

Even so,
small chirping sounds
of softest yellow
burst here and there.

A squirrel scampers
along a frail board fence
outside the listening window.

I hear all this through
a slow, reluctant waking,
gray threads
of dream-fragments tearing away.

Then comes
the soft gray blue
of morning : 6:00 a.m.
Just like the clock dial said.

FLOCK MEMBER

One audacious crow stands in the middle of the
street—his back to me—head turned to one side,
and glistens in the day’s cold light, and listens
while I talk to him: Hello, Crow, softly, while I
walk my slow walk out to the mailbox at the curb.
I get half-a-street near him and he does not fly—
just listens there—while I keep talking to him:
Hello, Big-Bird, Big-Bird. Hello, and edge my
way back to the house while he stands there, close-
up large, his feathers sharply shining in the
December sunlight. Does he know I am the one
who threw out the stale bread this morning? The
other crows mark their nervous places with short
bursts of movement—from ground—to fence-post—
to tree—to ground again. But this one crow just
stands in the middle of the street and I do not
swoop my arms, or shout my ownership of anything,
but rather like the way he has no fear of me when I
get so close to him.

MOCKINGBIRDS
(after “Mockingbirds” by Mary Oliver)

The brilliant way they claim the air
with the complexity of their sing-

ing—sudden and wonderful—
almost as rare as joy in its sad

purity—whatever I am doing,
I can arrest,   and listen,   and feel

the burst of song in my abstract be-
ing—myself an echo of them.

_____________________

POEM FOR LAURA, DISAPPROVED OF
BY HER FATHER

It will be all right;
I have had this premonition
in a burst of bird song
on a bright day
which had been overcast
a moment before
and no bird had been visible
or heard all season.

You may approach your father
as your self;
he will approve now;
he will be changed,
and you can love him again.
He will say,
“Bless you, bless you.”
It will be okay.

DISEMBODIMENT
(after Back Cover Art: "Ascension" by Monty Wanamaker
in Spoon River Poetry Review, Summer 2003)

Gray body, caught in gray swirl of dark light
flaming outwards from evolving center,

how lyrical you become : a gracefulness of lines
flowing in the same directional source—

the rim at the edge holding its form, as if
to control what you are to yourself : a burst

of energy—duplicating—until you are entire :
a fusion of life-force, death-force, mind-force.

OF AMBITI0N              

this bright !     this dark !
this cool circle of moonlight
you standing there,

singing your love song,
i standing at the rim
composing my applause

i admire you,   shining,   singing,    
aware of my admiration,
unaware of me.

i would burst my hands
for you
making stars of applause

for you to see.
how dare I
call such envy love . .


(first pub. in Albany Review)  

______________________

Today's LittleNip:

DEAR LITTLE SONGBIRD,

this morning you
gave me one small note
to capture my attention

I stopped
and the day stopped
and I listened—

imagine
holding time like that
in a tiny burst of singing

______________________

—Medusa, thanking Joyce for today's tasty tidbits, and noting that our new Seed of the Week is Trunk in the Attic. Send poetry, photos and artwork about that or any other subject to kathykieth@hotmail.com/. (No deadline on SOWs.)

Sea Shadows

—Poems by B.Z. Niditch, Brookline, MA
—Photos by Denise Flanigan

THIRTIETH OF AUGUST

Wishing
to listen
to silence,
scattering
solitude
among shells
and stone
in reverie;
at the beach
sunshine
brushes dunes
by the edge
of the shore,
washing
wild roses
and our first
dead leaves.

AUG. 30, SATURDAY

the muted library
thirtieth of august
the sea shadows
sunday by the sea
weekend by the road
consolation
remembrances
sleeping late
 

DISAPPEARING ACT

Suddenly the runaway
was put in a brown van
his squirrel eyes wrinkled up
like crows' feet in the mirror
on Route 66
yet luckily he snaps open
the door and escapes
as he finds a used bicycle
yet suddenly
his sense of adventure
is lost for a while
all his thrilling
comic book words
the T.V. interrogation
of superman wonder
kite gliding,
ice skating,
and the reality of innocence
mingle in sweaty palms,
even an unclassified excitement
in the annual school play,
his dream plan of traveling
up in outer space to the moon,
his whistles, recitals, marbles
put aside for now,
with friendly names signed
over fractures from ball games,
the crossword puzzles
left on the dining table
under the grandfather clock
which stopped at 4 A.M.
all his rankings of sports
figures by team and league,
the cosmic and cosmetic ads
and scenes from his household
visionary books of knowledge
in his optic memory,
wishes of visiting the sunshine
at Malibu beach
with its huge Fall waves
after this school vacation
his wish to visit polar bears
at the San Diego zoo
and his desire to be a poet
or play cowboy and outlaw
and meet the Hollywood stars
with uncle at the Bowl
or swim in a water bed
is smothered now in whispers
even of learning the passages
from the Odyssey
Canterbury Tales,
Pilgrim's Progress,
Treasure Island
as crows overreach the sky
and a blue beret falls off
his shaking head.

A TOTAL EXPERIENCE

To render
the day a refuge
for honor
as a circle of crows
on the Cape rises above me
in my outline
between sky and earth
the foliage turning out
before me
in red and yellow coats
on this Pigeon Cove shore
this Beat poet
puts himself out
in the rain
by a luncheon patio
on the shadowed waterfront
thumbing his hand out
at his loneliness
as I'm asked to judge
a swimming contest
at the Argentine Club.

AT A NEW WORLD

Columbus orders a meal
from Native Americans
on the New World menu,
Walt Whitman returns
on T.V. reruns
riding a rosebud rodeo horse,
Lorca refuses to get a pass
for the Factory,
Nathaniel West coughs up
his lines on an anonymous
graffiti wall near the stars
on a Hollywood and Vine
locust ceiling,
Night robs Man Ray
of his lipstick portrait
by the Daughters
of Zion National Park in Utah,
as we remember Virgil
in Latin class
where he loses us
in many Roman passages,
Hockney posters his heaven
by Billie Holiday
in the Harlem renaissance,
we hear the sea lilacs
of Tiresias' singing
over the Brooklyn Bridge
we spy Hart Crane,
the headlines turning us
out of Babylon, New York,
yet art hangs out
in a flashback camera
as late morning crows flee
with Hitchcock's birds
from any acid rain fallout
enveloping Nevada
drifting over the nation's
climate-changed supermarket
to the new world.

THE MUTED LIBRARY

An echo of volumes
an open book
of Emerson
and Hawthorne
vibrates from
easy eyes
of fourth glances
from chapters
in remembrance
of Proust
and Baudelaire
in belles lettres
garnished aside
James and Wharton
who thrive
in margins
sustaining memory
of effaced shadows.

SUNDAY BY THE SEA

Even within
the Georgian tea cup
by this half-empty corner
my memory
of these mirrors is clear
under a marbled-eyed ceiling
in this lighted cafe
unlike the scratched graffiti
we noticed
near the old walled ruins
of another era
spaced along countryside,
getting out of my car
by the bell-tolling church
keeping a quiet vigil
along tall landscaped dunes
along the transparent sea
overlooking an ancient bridge
under puffy gray clouds
on an August Sunday
an exhaling young swimmer
in an orange towel dances
with a radio sounding rap
by children along the sand
over a wizened road.

WEEKEND ON THE ROAD

On the road
drinking in first light
three days
into the season
and in a rushed flurry
of holiday traffic
when my heart
suddenly beats me up
and raises the pitch
of traveling noise
by a huge moving jam
filling each lane
near the toll booth
as neon lights
kick me off the highway
running into car trouble
yet I'm still playing sax
in a Van Gogh daydream
safe in a field of sunflowers
when totally refreshed
yet famished
near an all-night diner
and gas station
under green apple trees
as my tire is fixed
by the dirt side road
of a wide strip.
 

CONSOLATION

No grief group
or shining language
will efface secrets
in undelivered letters
or your once-repented chance
meeting last year,
you surmise
that your fate was set
in a mirage of fallen flesh
now spirited away
by a series of mum voices,
yet your daydream recurs
and spills over a coverlet
of blank verse
from proverbial winds
which will not leave you
by the windowpane
filled with a dying pulse
of a short-lived
morning glory,
yet you need to exchange
a bent inclination
to surprise your own words
of all faux pas of speech
and get over
a lover's third glance
toward your inscribed
unsettled body language
on similar shapeless days.

REMEMBRANCES

Is it not time
to let go
the backyard
dead leaves
as fallen ashes
by the last summer mum
of the rock garden
you remember at a glance
the knowing eyes
of the mourning dove
now grown pale
once wildly forsaken
on the oak branches
under the slate roof
of our attic windows
by frosted gleams
of green sand birds
who will be back soon
in the ruddy sunlight.

SLEEPING LATE

Sleeping late
in your sweatshirt
hearing quarter notes
from woodwinds
smarten up rhythms
near your music stand
yet wanting to hang out
in quiet flat holds
and smooth moves
of your alto clarinet
until tonight's recital
at the island's gig.
 

BLAISE CENDRARS
(1887-1927)

An astonishment
of surrealism
in your pacifism
a longing gesture
as you traveled the globe
with quest of radiance
in your good nature
with poetic ideas
for sister and brotherhood
that is yours and mine,
in your nomenclature
discreet yet divine.
 

Today's LittleNip:

THE SEA SHADOWS

The sea shadows
the two of us
bracing our bodies
for the ocean air
my oars tremble
from a starting sound
moving in the high tide
as crew contestants
wave to nearby surfers
on a dawn of first light
round the Pacific Coast
harboring green waters.

_______________________

—Medusa