When I Leave
You
When I leave you,
It won’t be out
of anger,
It won’t be out
of jealousy.
It won’t be for
another woman,
And it won’t be
for freedom.
When I leave
you,
It won’t be
with grace—
It will be
hard, hard to do.
I could try to
fight it—
But with what
power?
Taken quick or
slowly,
I’ll still be
taken
Out of this
world,
Out of your
life.
Never out of
your heart,
I know—I’m
planted there,
A Gibraltar
till time’s end.
Yet…yet
I fear for the
weight,
The heaviness
on you:
All the times
you’ll need
A touch, or
miss my breath
On the nape of
your neck.
When the stars
weep,
When songbirds
die,
Then, only then
Will my love be
left
By your lonely
side.
Do I yet know
how
Much I love
you?
Will my soul
chant
In mourning for
you?
Will it long
for this world
Of night and
day only
Because you are
still in it?
Memories Travel Without The Weight Of Time
I'm five: lying in bed in the attic room I share
With big
brother (though 4 years older, he won't
Climb the
creaky stairs at night unless I go first—
His fear of the
dark gives me a secret thrill).
Before leaving
for sleepland, I like to watch
The shadows
flickering across the ceiling, a kind
Of magic made
by the reflected headlights
Of the cars
passing in the street 3 stories below.
At seventeen
I'm making out with my first girl
On the plush
sofa in her house while her mom
Sleeps upstairs. We are both virgins, both clothed
And naïve.
Suddenly, as I lay her down, I come—
My first orgasm
as, strangely, I had never jerked off
(a mystery I
still cannot fathom), but oh, wondrous
It was to leave
my body and step briefly into heaven.
First came the
girls, then the women, in droves,
For I was tall
and fair and good with words, but most
Of all, I could
make them laugh. And I loved them all,
in my way, and
I could love none of them—for I was
afraid of the
binding, the fastness that love demands.
It hollowed me
out, this fear, and I could not see the
Utter blackness
it led me to—and pain beyond pain.
At 24 I was
reborn that moment I wept for the loves,
And love I had
lost. I was not a new man, nor a good man,
But I was a
beginning man, my soul taking baby steps
Towards God and
the glorious love infused Universe.
In my 32nd year I stood in the nave of the little Anglo-
Saxon church,
waiting as my bride came down the aisle.
She began
crying, I began smiling—my happiest day.
Now 40 years
later, it is still my happiest day….
In My Grandmother’s Day
Nana told me once
How
she and Pop-pop
Went
courting in a
Horse
and buggy.
How
quaint I thought,
And
was just a bit
Amazed
how far we
Humans
have gone—
From
a smelly plodding
Horse
to crossing a vast
Ocean
in an afternoon
While
six miles high.
Then
Grandma told me
Something
shocking:
She
said they went out
In
that carriage to make
Love!
Nana! I gasped to
Myself,
until I saw she
Meant
the words literally.
My
grandparents went
Courting
to make the
Love
that would hold
Them
together for
Sixty-three
years…
And
I am here
Because
two young
People
took long
Buggy
rides behind a
Tired, smelly horse.
An Aging Wife
I look at her and I can see
A woman
approaching slowly
The land of old
age, her
Night-black
hair invaded by
Lonely grey
strands, stragglers
Of an
approaching army, a
Relentless
force built over
Sixty years,
stealing bits of her
Beauty,
loosening her skin,
Lightening her
bones.
I now can
easily see the old woman
She will
become, and while I miss her
Light-stepping,
insouciant youth
Which pulled
both body and heart,
At last I can
hear love's secret sound
As she draws my
soul ever closer….
A Child And Eternity
When I was a
child
Eternity scared
me—
I was terrified
when
I thought of
it—a long
Line never
ending,
On and on and
on
It went till my
mind
Felt like taffy
being
Pulled through
space.
Somehow I knew
it
Was real,
Eternity, so I
Lacked the
mercy of
Doubt to ease
me,
To lessen my
fear of
That endless
road—
(And now I know
some
Grown-ups see
it so, an
Unending line
of time…)
But now I think
time is
More like a
ball, past
And present and
future
Roll around
together—
We call it a
‘moment’
In our world of
clocks
And schedules
to keep:
But that
moment, that
Ghost called
time, is just
Eternity
visiting the world.
What To Tell The Children
When my young,
ever so young ones
asked, “Daddy,
why did that man
shoot all those kids?’,
I knew no answer—
Do I show them
The nightly news
Of murder and its
Ugly sister, mayhem?
Or do I protect their
Sweetness by hiding
The world from them?
When I was a child,
The world lay lightly
On our shoulders—
We were free, free
To ride our bikes
And free to fly
In both dream
And daydream.
Strangers were
Not dangers, and
The policeman
Was our friend.
TV was silly often
But harmless soft,
And we went to
School to learn.
Yes, yes, there was
The’Bomb’ and
We knew that
At an early age—
But what child
Can imagine a
Nuclear holocaust—
Or what adult
For that matter?
Today kids may
Still be free in
Endless play,
But too soon
The world
So cruelly steals
Their childhood
And leaves them
Adult in their
Fears but still
Childlike in mind.
It is one thing for
Me to know now,
As the writer said,
That history is just
A nightmare from
Which I have not
Yet awakened—but
Why must a child
Have to see such
Hard truth so soon?
So I told my children
What I learned as a
Young and vain man
When my life was
Nearly lost in one
Of life’s rivers and
How I learned that
Other worlds exist
And each of us can
Never really die,
But journey for a
Time in a place and
And a body until
The time comes for
A new place and a
Different form: for
We exist always I
Told them, without
Beginning or ending,
So
everything we do,
Think, and feel has
Boundless meaning.
Some souls, I gently
Told them, will do
Bad things in life,
and yes, good kids
may sometimes die,
but evil cannot harm
A soul, unless sought
And darkness chosen
Over the light….
So I told those Beings
who came to me from--
where?
WHAT POETRY IS
What poetry is,
is magic
and words appear
and disappear
in profound meaning.
What magic is,
is God.
Freud and Moses
both agree,
God is magic
and magical
is our Creator.
He disappears
and then reappears
in meaning
deep as death.
What God is,
is creation--
it’s going on
everyday, everywhere.
Think about it.
Explain otherwise
fire and seed.
What creation is,
is poetry.
An infant wakes,
thousands perish,
a girl smiles,
wars rage,
a skyscraper grows.
All beings themselves
are poems:
bad poems or
beautiful ones,
poems of evil or
poems of holiness,
blank verse or
lyrical rhymes
but all creatures
live poetry.
What poetry is,
is magic
is creation
is God
is you
is I
is life
is death
is infinity,
and then some….
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