Discards
In my lifetime I have thrown
away more than most people
alive today will ever own.
And thus, I am told,
we live in the greatest
nation
this world has ever known.
New York, Upstate, One Day, Three Thoughts
I don't expect to see a
pheasant on the road,
and as I slow to watch it go
my heart accelerates a tiny
bit.
Then further on a fox’s
fleeting face
starts me to wonder how the
hunter's heart
within that canine chest
might race
should self-same pheasant
cross its path—like mine—one day.
(The bird's breast would, I
think, feel much the same,
though different instincts
surely are to blame).
The water falls across the
Massachusetts line
and crashes (cool) into a
pool
reflecting green-topped
granite cliffs. Its sun-
drenched ripples flowing out
proceed untamed
into New York, to cascade
back along
the easy trail on which I
came.
The trees and rocks, this
waterfall are here, I note,
since long ago (how quickly
we forget)
When these two states had
never even met.
Some wild raspberries will
soon be growing here,
for I can see the bumble bee
whispering sweet secrets in
big purple ears.
Perhaps, returning in a week
or three,
I’ll find these soft red
drops of paradise
have ripened up
sufficiently—
but no, so close along the
path they'll all be gone.
So I decide: If berries be my
aim,
I'd better wait right here
and stake my claim.
A Different Point of View
Pink snow flaking
from a cherry cloud
to coat the ground below;
wisteria purpling
high in a pine tree;
spring birds
looking up expectantly;
scattered rain circles
offering their fleeting glow
on the surface of the lake;
keep company with thoughts of you
as I sit on the shore
across from where I wrote
a lonely poem once before,
and wonder whether then
or now
will count as my mistake.
Curriculum Vitae
You thought it would all be better
when you moved to the big city,
far from friends who
had you pigeonholed—discovered,
however, that the pigeonholes
just travelled along with you.
You thought it would all be better
if you could only identify the proper
substance, but eventually realized
that no matter how high, or how long,
you still had to come down sometime.
You thought it would all be better
after you met her, and it was—
for a while, until that afternoon,
walking up Second Avenue,
where it dawned that once again
you were counting how many
women who passed by would never
become your lover.
You thought it would all be better
when you were able to look
at your bank balance and not
have to worry, yet even now,
as you pay others to do most
of the real work, a voice
nobody else can hear continues
to insist that you are a fraud.
You thought it would all be better
if your life were condensed
into a poem, taken to the local
open mike, shared with me
and everyone else—if you learned
to understand our words too. And
although you’re wrong again, at least
here there is an opportunity for you
to find out that you aren’t
alone.
Old Friend
Turning
on the radio
I’m
in the middle of
a
symphony, anticipating
every
note before it sounds—
like
seeing a familiar face
quite
unexpected in a random crowd:
fitful
moments searching
for
a name I’m sure I know,
or
knew back when, and then
.
. . . . . . Beethoven.
Once
placed such pleasure
in
this unplanned rendezvous, old friend,
there’s
nothing else to do but sit
and
listen ’til the end.
Genius Relativity
Genius
to
a genius
is
just the thoughts of every day,
and
does not really understand
when
others cannot comprehend
the
rather simple things it has to say.
Masterpieces
to
a master
are
only what they ought to be,
and
if one labors long enough
to
build according to that plan
the
truth undrapes itself for us to see.
Even
our most modest thoughts
could
masquerade as genius
to
less brain-bound beasts than you or me.
But
now (to think a slightly different way)
imagine
creatures out on other worlds
who’d
find our fondest masterworks
to
be their children’s play.
Finally I Understand Why . . .
.
. . the chicken crossed the road.
It was to get away from me.
All the world flees
as I sit writing this poem.
I could stop and chase after you.
But I always try to keep my promises.
Moonlight . . .
. . . streams into the
room
through my open radio—
sounds of a sonata:
right hand of the pianist
caressing each arpeggio,
the left constructing
a gently rhythmic
scaffolding of chords.
It is, I tell myself, the simplest
of musical ideas.
But listen well and you will realize
how Beehoven takes us
on an unexpected journey
of harmonic progression
where another composer
might have traveled
a less meandering path
and thus reached a completely
different destination.
Here is genius, I tell myself:
surprise embedded in
simplicity.(and wonder
whether I might find a way
to write a poem based
on that approach,
someday.)
Bee Watching
1. I can't remember the last time
I stopped to
watch a bee step
from blossom to
blossom,
stand here
entranced
by this
four-cornered dance
(insect, color,
pollen, nectar)
take
some time
to contemplate
all of the
factors
that had to
evolve
synchronicitously
for even this
tiny slice
of an ecosystem
to emerge.
2.
The bee,
however,
simply harvests,
then returns to
her nest.
Simpligance
There
has, until this moment, been no word
for it among English
speakers. In Castillano
I discover it's "sencillo":
a simplicity
encompassing both depth
and elegance.
"Simpligance"
now in our own tongue,
for
I declare it so:
a word to capture ways that we
might
shape our poetry,
even learn (I hold out hope)
to live our
lives.
Check your dictionary in a decade,
if it
doesn't take them four
or five.
Philosophical Conundrum
Why
do so many people
spend
so much time
trying
to reinvent the wheel
when
it would be so much easier
and
far more direct to simply
reinvent
the flat tire?
Dark Ages
"The world is dark" you
tell me.
If a human lifetime
were measured in minutes
rather than decades.
"The
world is dark. It has always
been dark."
If we were each born,
reproduced,
comitted all of our art
and infamy, in six
or eight minutes.
"It has always been dark
for as long as anyone
can remember."
If the longest-lived
of human empires,
had risen and declined
in less than an hour,
"Dark, for as long as anyone
can remember. In school
they told us that we
must learn to find our way
in the darkness."
And all of recorded history
has unravelled since
the last sunset.
"In
school they told us that we
must learn to find our way
in the darkness. You are a fool
to believe there is such a thing
as daylight." |