Only This, Just In
I once positioned my outpost on earth—
at the time, in a forest, within earshot
of owls and a lake’s short waves—
to be the center of all communication
beaming in from everywhere, out
to all the rounded, warped corners
of this universe. I was hoping to fool
that alien sense that’s native to many,
that I was actually practically cut off
from the prime gist of being alive.
So rather than scanning for more
koans-on-transcendence or rapture or
a how-to to convince the chipmunk
I imagined standing in for my mind
that this felt insignificance was
insignificant, thereby skirting
the issue that acted as my Everest—
because it was there, it was always there!—
I pitched a little white tent in a holler,
with vents in the canvas to let in, let out
my antennae, the requisite wires, and
the million telekinetic messages
I’d be managing by the minute,
like some ancient eighty-armed operator
devotedly plugging in, plugging out,
the supple joint expressing a life to Life.
And when all systems were finally go,
and after I flicked the little switch (a
Venetian-like light flooding the moon
of my face), the first words in were
wind and how old leaves left alone
will crackle for no particular reason.
Then the slow creaking of tall beeches
followed by a pulsing, silent swooshing
as if I were holding my personal shell
to my own singular ear, which, naturally,
as my long-suffering custom, I was.
To Be, or . . . It’s Not a Question
Why did we ever buy
the other story, the one
in which we walk
with heads held as high
as deciding otherwise?
This is set without
our consent—
though we’ve conceded
we’ve consented to assuage
our sixth sense of soul.
Try stepping aside,
outside your own shadow:
it’ll take funhouse strides
to strike the balance, to
dodge your own reflection,
to see around your own
conscious self – slippery,
slimier than a hand,
the same one that,
with the sleightly other,
helps wrangle the lies
you don’t want
to show, the lies
that are the truth of you.
If only they all came out!
Ah, the relief!
The pure ease
of that pain!
Meanwhile, the sheer effort
of holding in, holding back,
holding forth – holding at all
the broken-winged bird
of your heart. It’s
Herculean, really,
ridiculous as myth,
silly as saying any
thing, any way,
anyhow.
Poem on Itself
—as told to its author
“Reluctant, I’m shy
the confidence of squirrels,
who clatter across laced branches,
reckless when the unmapped way
lays itself out or
doesn’t, the dead end,
the spring-and-give
more the living
than the solid path.
“I fear this next leap—
that a soft spot in leaves
or a sure next move
won’t rise up like a dream
or like reason—
that I might have to answer
to myself
or to some perfect image
shouldering its vague weight
onto a balance, trying
to tip the scales
favouring significance.
“Right now,
I’m hesitating
to inch
along this fine line
I’m barely feeling
between seeing meaning
and needing
merely being.
“Even in this
I am afraid.”
A Couple of October Options
An invisible train’s distant whistle
this unseasonably warm
yet seasonably blustery early hour
plays a fetching, come-hither counterpart
to the crickets’ mad ventriloquism,
their ceaseless, crass rasping
somewhere outside the open door.
On a morning like this – long before
the garbage truck will rumble by –
sprawled on the familiar hide-a-bed
that doubles as the center mezzanine
in the psycho-surgical theatre
of your own emotional vivisection,
you’re torn between
– critiquing your perpetual allegory
in which Long-Suffering and Proaction
engage in their stylized dialog
about your non-unfolding life
and
– coveting the rustic romanticism
of a hobo riding the rails,
whose only concern is to time his roll
into the liberty of an accelerating boxcar
so as to minimize his potential
for slipping from its lip and clipping
his otherwise unencumbered body.
At Sunrise
The cat at my elbow is like a rising—and falling—loaf of bread.
She will become cinnamon-raisin swirl.
Across the way, white shutters over dark red brick glow in the early light.
In long intervals, cars swoosh by through a sprinkling of spring.
This fine first cup of coffee is not bitter-sweet, just bitter.
It smells like the morning I knew I’d move away to the lake.
These computer keys are smooth and reflexive and move me into today.
Their dainty clicking prompts the flickering I’ve been seeking.
Another time it was Thoreau re-counting his beans from Walden Pond.
Meanwhile, the cat has become a multi-grain muffin,
her batter expanding over the paper cup, malignant
mushroom looming over a city soon to be our ally.
Though the friendly fire is frightening,
it will bring us the happy ending as always.
Happy is as happy does.
The pealing bell of freedom will deafen any outrage,
for we are as open as a Good-Friday tomb.
We will mend the crack and roll away the stone.
The prophet schlepping his satchel and silly redundancies
will forever find his satisfaction in cynicism,
his cynicism to be satisfactory, his satchel alone to be sacred.
No matter—in this he is going to get what he’s going to deserve.
Il va obtenir ce qu’il va mériter,
whether the cat tips her top or the shutters mutter a percussive tune.
Look: as the sun blooms, the bricks bleed.
—first published in Poetrybay
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