The
Beard Brushes the Stones
Our
gardener, unimaginably old to a child loved the two blonds, my sister and me. We,
if we were literal, parroted we were in the Occupation Army in Japan. From infancy
to four years, I was not much of a
soldier. Yet, our ancient gardener made us feel lordly. While hoary old, he was
child short. He was bonsai lean too, but his beard…Yes, his beard plays on my
brainpan inner screen seven decades later. His whiskers wispy and long enough to
stroke the paving stones in the garden he so skilfully tended. On seeing the
blonds, his thin lips crinkled on the edges in a warm smile. “Ohayō Gozaimasu,”
he chanted each day, slowly, seeming to savour each tone in the phrase for “Good
Morning.” He seemed to find joy in greeting us. Pleasing children pleases old
men. I never ceased my joy at watching his long, long grey beard brush the
walk.
Faith
in Fasteners
Marvels of machinery — autos, planes,
Hardware, software, and wetware, lift and thrust,
Wonders of biology — bodies, brains.
Train us to depend on them and to trust.
You digested soothing Apple poison.
You now have much faith and demand little…
merely that all systems act by reason.
For what is inside, don’t give a tittle.
You expect your life like machines to go.
Your cold and warm servants must simply run.
Your Camry, like your MacBook, does its do
every damned day…till it is undone.
Each may suddenly sputter and relent
(a machine’s stroke or
cardiac event).
The actual miracle is each part
runs, just runs, until something fails to start.
Elegance of complexity brings ease.
With the trust of the very young or old,
We carry on in simple-minded peace.
Our plane lifts off. We hope that the bolts hold.
Exorcism
By Furniture
Sliding sadness and shame
to the street.
La-Z-Boy chair and then
queen mattress
Suddenly at the curb
trash day eve.
They are a clear personal
message
As plain as the MISSING
CAT flyer.
A running joke for curbed
furniture
Is FREE: MATTRESS AND
CHAIR. FREE BED BUGS.
If I could I surely would
have curbed
My 170 pound insect.
Who used to sleep in my
bed…my bed.
I bought that La-Z-Boy
chair for him
Only for him to melt into
it.
Video games, Showtime all the time.
He pegged scary bad guys
on the screen
Instead of pegging me
when he could.
He was my spirit’s benign
tumour.
I believed I had
exorcised him
But I had only ordered
him out.
Then I could no longer
stand the sight
Or scent of the chair and
the mattress.
The demon is not yet
truly gone.
Public Works takes your
special requests
To pick up dead PC
monitors.
Thee is no space on the
request page
For picking up useless
ex-lovers.
I hope neighbours on every
side.
Notice my furniture
ritual,
The exorcism on the
sidewalk
I am eager to answer
queries.
If one asks me, “Where’s
your boyfriend?,”
I’ll say, “In my happier
future.”
The Fatal Kindness
You need not rise to open your door
So that death can come into your room
Or into your life, although it stopped
For Emily and will visit you.
A marvel of physics, death passes
Like cosmic rays through your plastered
walls,
Your locked door and your shuttered
windows.
And goes where it chooses and it must.
Your personal version of a death
May arrive loudly, violently
On the sudden point of a knife, or
Agony of exploding heart, or
It
may visit like the dew at dawn —
Moist, cold, soft smothering and silent.
You may bliss out with yogic OM or
Weep at ultimate unfairness, or
Rage your panicked need for long life, or
Make guttural sounds of the drowning.
You may strike an atheist’s bargain,
(In your mind; Death is indifferent.)
Death accommodates you in your end.
Braying while grasping a cocktail stem,
Unable to rise from your wheelchair,
Working anxiously at your keyboard,
Vivid dreaming one last time beneath
Your comforter. Death accommodates.
You need not rise. Death will come to you.
Surcease is death’s only specialty.
In the end was the word, and the word
Was with death and death was the last word.
Yesteryear’s Bowl
Astor Place, a linen-and-candles joint,
Placed a wide bowl of mussels before
her.
Blue-black shells against whitest
porcelain,
framed the beige fleshy fish and she
exclaimed,
(loudly in candor and naïve crassness)
“These look just like little cunts!”
And they did.
Only one as beautiful could shout that,
then bask in other diners’ amused
smiles.
Somewhere on this dark winter evening
an aged eater retrieves this memory.
She holds a steam-splayed mussel shell
aloft
and dines out again on this simple
tale.
Oak Traitor
Betrayed by an acorn,
let us mourn its
ingratitude.
Scooping ripe and brown
bunches
of quercus oak nuts off
the ground
does not often lead to
baby trees.
Brainless fruits in
cupules
require much and offer no
thanks.
They germinate best after
overwintering
and being well washed by
many rains.
Legless, still and
vulnerable
acorns are prey for
squirrels, ‘possums,
birds and wild pigs
(where available).
Planting them in pots and
tending the soil
surely deserve a reward.
From a tiny acorn…
In their ingratitude and
lack of
self-preservation,
humble oak nuts differ
little from humans.
Acorns have more excuse.
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