Rock On

Ordinary happiness

   

He rocked on the porch and said sure,

a cold one would be cool in this heat.

It loosened him up, and he seemed grateful

for company. The dog at his feet,

her jaw on her paws, opened her eyes

from time to time:



                        * * *


In the Sixties I was full of fiery sympathies.

I missed the bus to Selma from The Quad,

the Freedom Riders had my sympathies,

but I didn't do enough.


I grew my hair

and sat in the middle of Fifth Avenue,

stopped the trolleys and ran from the police

who caught my friend and made him bleed,

left me shaking with adrenalin in the Towers,

but I didn't do enough.


I dressed in military surplus,

not the fashion of the time,

and listened to Woody Guthrie

and the apocalyptic Stones,

wore an SDS button on my peacoat,

argued with my father, cursed Chicago's mayor,

threw marshmallows at Hubert Humphrey,

wailed when King then another Kennedy were killed,

and raged against the Birchers,

but I didn't do enough.


I smoked herb, tried pills,

lived on pizza crusts and unsold hamburgers

bagged in the alley at closing time,

friends came back from Vietnam,

most with wounds that didn't show,

and I didn't do enough.


My girlfriend ironed her hair

and read my poetry

to her student-teaching class.

I loved her, but she graduated on time

and left me floundering on Oakland streets

as fires were set around me,

and still I didn't do enough.


And now again it feels like 1968.

I read the Times, I watch MSNBC,

I vent on facebook to my "friends except"—

we joke to keep our sanity.

We're all a living fiction now,

ever seen The Truman Show?


Monthly money shows up in the bank—

good program, FDR,

but I don't feel socially secure

in this country of money,

in this great country of money,

because it's not enough.


I drag a chair onto the grass

and watch the sun.

I fill a vase with zinnias.

I steam my garden vegetables.

I ride that old bike over these green hills,

smelling corn in tassel, marveling at sunsets,

sometimes even happy in a crisis.


At night above me, only black,

a shawl of sky

glittering with the promise of eternity.

Oh, brave and righteous people

in the streets, I know it's not enough.

Forgive me.


                        * * *


The bottle empty, he rocked on.

The dog yipped softly in a dream.

One Umbrella

Pont Neuf

     

It was night and raining

in a city known for lovers

under one umbrella

on a famous bridge

above a famous river

lights afloat on onyx

the rain upon your cheek

and in your hair

your heat against my own

in the ancient chilling breeze.


It was you and

it was me and

how could it ever last ?

Time Travel

c. 1974

She will lead a happy life

as a normal, healthy young woman,

the neurosurgeons said.


"Am I going to die, Dad?"

she asked me from her bed.

No, dear child, I said.


I 'm not sure she believed me,

born smarter than her father.

I've found this picture in her desk.


Once more I'm 29, showing her my world,

as decades later she would show me hers,

neither of us ever really home again.

After the Storm

The storm has ended,

hail and lightning

passing to the north,

rain ticking in the earth.


The valley brimming

with the breath of the creek,

ziggurats of cloud

going pink in the east.

Belief alone is not enough

 to make the good exist.

Doubt alone is not enough

to make the truth a lie. 

Blessed with free will

and the faith of a friend,

I choose to believe

in the light.


Sun in the west,

doves on the wire,

deer in the corn,

man on a bike.

Vade Mecum

Looking for answers in the 21st Century

--Word Press photo by Stan Myer

   

Because I was twice near death

You asked, my wounded, distant friend,

What's on the other side?


I wish I had better news.


I wish I could tell you of aurochs and angels,

Of music in major keys and rose-colored light,

Of joy everlasting among those we love,


But all I saw was nothing,


Gray as an old TV with a bright point vanishing,

Not even a test pattern, if you remember.

I wish for us both I saw something more,


No balm for our hearts when we've both lost a child.


My daughter, near the end, stared toward the ceiling, aghast,

At what? Her focus far beyond Manhattan,

Perhaps it was the fentanyl, perhaps she saw the truth,


But in the same spiral decades earlier, I saw nothing.


First there was the fear of the dark,

                    then there was the darkness.

First there was purgatory imagined,

                    then there was the end of imagination.

First hallucination,

                    then the blank screen.


Their souls have departed.

Thinking, alone with our thoughts,

The poverty of waking life, here where it nears the eternal.


You who are apart, I who am apart,


We have suffered enough to fool ourselves with happiness,

Nothing, but happiness,

As vulnerable as the dread from which it comes.

for D.C.

—with four lines by Caroline Forsche.

In Our Dry and Brittle Land

   

The spirits have abandoned us

This ungodly summer,

Left us standing at the gate

In the field that fences in the living,


We watched them go, our blooded dead,

Through ten thousand waist-high plumes

Of stunted corn, blades curled up by drought,

Down through the thirsting woods,


Into the valley where the creek moves

Low and warm, tattered veils of morning

Lifting from the hollows buoying vultures

As they turn beneath the blinding sun,


Galaxies spinning overhead unseen,

But we know they're there above us,

And we believe the spirits will return

With the next good democratic rain,

Soaking all alike, faith enough in rain

And blood and in each other

To be rescued by the rain.

Diorama Sometimes

Sometimes too much time

Thinking about what maybe I shouldn't

I tried too late

Did all you could friends had said

Perhaps for the best they consoled

I don't know

I don't know


Twelve years away it's July

Thunderheads build in the south

A diorama of threat and of promise

We could use more rain

Whoever we is

The doves saying you you you

The hawk circles off against billow


Sometimes too much time

Sometimes I'm certain she knew

Speech lost when she lost her left side

Squeezing my hand with her right

My daughter's compassionate smile

They tied up her jaw with white gauze

A bow on the top of her head


Sometimes too much time

Sometimes I think

Time has high value

Sometimes I do

Far away thunder

Local wind

Untitled

   

Because i spend my days alone

I walk with those

Who never left.

The woods are filled with mists.

Under the Surface in Fives and Sevens

The surface at evening is lovely and calm 

   

I.

The Idea of Mosquito


Soon the mosquito will come

Strumming its zither

Thirsting for mammal

Genetically traced

Out of the smoking forest.



II.

Fear of Fracking


Coffee and cognac

Easing the panic

Waiting for derecks to rise

Chainslap and nightflares

Too fewer wear red.

III.

Blade in the Tub


He wrote so cleanly

His was the broom and the pan

In the suicide parade

Following the elephants

With the tap open.

Biograph

Miles past where the road ends

 

     

The trouble gene is calling you

necessary the critics say

to go full poet, and you have



A leaning long evident

come to fruition

a focus of purpose


A voluntary solitude

a reduction of need

a welcome destitution


Troubled and profitless

and never good enough

riddled with doubt


But working, working

in a cone of silence

on the brink of poetry


Alive in a lyric of whispers

sharing your secrets with those

who bend low enough to hear


A few decent poems

the most you can hope for

in the years that remain


Finding yourself

miles up the beach

from where the road ends


A nor'easter is blowing

the trouble gene calling

no other way home.

Dry Spell

   

The day the day to use the hollow day

to make what's not been made before

words of the colonizers gobsmacked together

vivifying original unforgettable

but it's hot and i'm sad and lack the talent

to do much more than hoe the beans

and drop my sweat into the dirt

and listen to the crows griping in the woods

beyond the tan dust drifting

over the briars from yet another weekend

ATV throttled over gravel

and wonder where you are and tell myself

i'm here today be here tomorrow waiting

for a cooler evening a cooler sun

my breathing a chant for rain and caring.

From a Hill in a Dream of Waves

Calmed by morning

Sunlight in the volunteers

Silled in a pottery

Shaped by loving hands.

Yes I miss the sea.

Calmed by simple things

On this gentle inland hill

A wooden spoon

A butternut shell.

I hear the surf

Its running sighs

The gulls.

Calmed enough

In this green wind

On paths I mow

To only say the truth.

I think of you

More than I should

Less than I did

Ebbing tide with trees.