FLAMES NEW AND OLD
Smoke blew over
from the fire two counties away.
It was like some past love affair
intermingling with this one,
like some people who
can never quite leave.
It wasn't even thick clouds
of the stuff
just the merest hint of it
but that was enough for me
to see the wall of flames
consuming dry grass,
devouring tree trunks.
And one pair of eyes
can be all the eyes,
or, at least,
a pair of eyes
that's not these.
And some words
someone once said
that resound even now.
Not still in love
with that past one you understand
but I will never forget
how the fields buckled
so beautifully,
how the lush green forests cried out
for that relentless flame.
KABOOM
An
exploding volcano,
flames
spoiling for
a fight
with the sun,
air
reeking of smoke and ash,
red
rivers rolling down
all sides
of the mountain –
is it
real?
is it
sex?
or is it
some kid,
face up
against the mirror,
squeezing
a large pimple?
Herein
lies the poet,
the
sensate,
and the
troubled adolescent.
They
merge
into who
I am now –
Mount St
Helens
in a secluded room.
THE ODD
ONE OUT
A bunch
of young women in the coffee house –
all
except one is either
gabbing
into their cell phone
or on a
tweeting frenzy.
That odd
one out is
writing
something on a notepad.
No way
that it’s just a to-do list.
From
where I’m sitting,
it could
only be a poem.
Hair long
and silky,
eyes dark
and thoughtful,
cheeks
the pink of the dogrose,
lips
shyly parted…maybe it is a to-do list.
But one of us, at least, is writing her poem.
REPORT FROM THE WAR ZONE
It's a war zone but it's also a social occasion.
There's a bar near the camp
where pretty nurses would just love you
to buy them something pink and fizzy
and aimed at all the bad news in their heads.
And it's comforting to meet a stranger
who's sure to be unarmed,
speaks the same language that you do.
Maybe five miles away, the battle's resumed
and the dead, the wounded, are being stretchered
to graveyards or Red Cross tents
but here there's a jukebox, it plays memories,
even the ones that haven't quite happened yet.
You even dance a little in between the other drinkers.
It doesn't bother you that the hand around your waist
cleans out and bandages bloody wounds,
bathes incapacitated men.
Or that these eyes have seen it all.
And the heart that beats against your chest
has been broken more by ailing patients
than any temporary lover boy.
It's a war zone. If you don't find peace
within yourself then there is none.
This may be your only time together.
Bombs don't believe in fairy stories.
Stray bullets can interrupt a timeline any time.
But you don't plunder the occasion for meaning
or accelerate the feelings, pin golden medals on a night
that it hasn't really earned.
You merely appreciate the touch of another human being,
acknowledge how, when civilization falls apart,
men and women still feel good together.
Soon enough, the night will end.
You'll go back to being shot at.
She'll return to running
that gauntlet of bed sores and diseases.
It's a war zone.
Only when its attention's elsewhere
are there people in it.
CIRCUS TRAIN 1935
When we see the elephants again,
in fact, the whole menagerie,
we will know that it is 1935 again.
When we look out the window,
watch the train pull into the station,
we’ll see drab lion faces,
tears dripping down bars.
And there will be a Jumbo
with a chain around his ankle,
one eye on the keeper’s sharp prodder,
the other on the gathering crowd.
It’s 1935, the Great Depression,
with small depressions everywhere you look.
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