be anew

my brother, in the prolonged lead-up
to his death, photographed a rose,
a rose my mother planted in a narrow
garden at my parent's house, where
he'd come to live out the remainder
of his days

i would sit with him over nights, to
be a vigilant watchmen of his frail
meanderings, a guard against a sudden
stuttering fall

that morning, the morning of the rose,
we sat together on a bench on a porch,
and he leaned into me to show me his
photograph

"it's a venus flytrap," he said, and
i looked at it once more, thinking
he was being queer with me. even on a
slope toward death he was alive with
mischief

squinting, i tried to see his plant;
i tried to morph the tender pedals of the
rose into the spiny wings of the fly trap,
but failed. my vision was fixed

despite all, i could not
release from my mind the shape of it
being a rose

his brain was on fire, of course,
and i knew this - the cancer was a
restless bulb, while the drugs were
a different kind of thief
and together they had him adrift

i marveled - just briefly, and not
for the first time - at my brother's
reduction at the hands of fortune

how insignificant had the flowers in
gardens or the trees in forests or the shape
of the sound of my children's voices
had become for me

but for a man in the wake of a crushing
wave, he was now cast out and had no power
or time to make it back to everything
he'd easily dismissed in life

"it's beautiful," i assured him and
he put the photo away - it was on his
cell phone - and then told me he
couldn't talk about his daughters
"not right now"

i'd not asked, but his infected mind
had leaped from the photo to some
darker place, which was common,
and he now cried in a slump

why do we arrive at all our different
places anew, demanding that this at last
was the best, and now permanent, station?

for nothing in nature informs us of
this: the sea, the wind, the sands,
they never affix themselves forever
and their flux toward death and into renewal
is how they live

yet we cry out from our fears and
from our loathing of change and
we make blasphemers of our friends
who question our new sacred, firm place

he used to never sleep, in those last months,
from fear that closing his eyes would,
at last, tear him away from us

but after this, after the picture of the rose,
he began to sleep more, and i dismissed
it as the natural progression of the evil
that had consumed his brain

i just now recalled the rose and
how he'd seen something different,
two years since he slipped into
a new night, quiet as a closing curtain

but i see his venus flytrap now, from a new
vision: of a man resisting the solid
place onto which we all insist on staking ourselves;
a man wanting for release

he was - perhaps unconsciously from
his illness - reforming his perspective,
loosening the grasp that allowed him
to float away, renewed

Read More

shidah

destruction,
i see, is how they've mended that
city in the distant blown-up country,
and i think how the sons of abraham
have all made a mess of it and his
daughters are left weeping

i once embraced, with gaiety and without
shame, my brother, who came to live with
us when we both were greater idealists

the muslim and the christian by
the faith of our fathers,
but to hell with that on this day
just for a moment

i must remember that we've all
been fed broken conventions
but were born with the perfect
blood of adam

that what is instilled in us
is opposed to what is born
and what is collected in
time crashes against what is
there at birth

i do not deny the greatness
of certain men, but
i question the truth in any
assertions of superiority

i recall weeping on the day
my brother caught a bus to the airport,
to fly home to his distant asian
country, because he'd impacted me

but from then on we wandered separately
in our own wildernesses,
marrying and making children
in these sheltered, assigned orbits

as the world saw the collisions
of faiths and nations; peoples
in villages perished and history
folded upon itself as it always has

but in our time together we despaired
not once about our wilting differences,
our encouraged ignorance,
but loved instead, for being alive
and full of the ferocity of youth

yet today i think my brother
will agree with me that we're all to blame
for the current calamity, all of us except
shidah and her sisters

the sisters of indra, of confucius, of
lao tzu;

the sisters of the tanakh, the bible,
and the qur'an

the sisters of the primal faiths:
of the maori, of the sioux, of the bushongo,
of the pygmy, and the dayak too;

the sisters of the mythologies of the norse
and celts; the slavs and the greeks

i see them all in the face of shidah,
my brother's wife, star of the malaysian sky,
her eyes the color of the melanistic wolf,
her smile as wide as the deserts across
which our prophets once wandered

in her is the seed of the beginning,
the coursing of the begotten,
the horizons of the generations and the
origins of the spark of truth

i'd rather see her rule, and her sisters
too; and i would see the world of
men know peace at once

for i believe the answers are in the
arms of our mothers, not in the arms of
men

that rules and laws, faiths and borders,
are the constructs of the self-appointed
while the members of our race who nurture
are the true keys to the gates of heaven

my own tribe will dine on these words
of course; make a meal of my
naivete, spitting out my bones
into a chalice made of earthen clay.

after all, what am i, but a small poet in a
village of inert souls who march along
in a cold country going colder on this snowy day

i'm a recipient of good fortune,
to be sure, but the only currency i have to
make change with is word after word

and we all know that the heaviest of words
possess no weight in the hands of
those who hold the scales of power

so i plea to shidah and to her
daughters, her sisters and their
daughters: assume your thrones
and cast out the usurpers and fools

for once claim and use at will, to
correct the blunders of men, what your god
has imbued in you by nature:
the power and the joy of
creation

Read More

my passion

i tried to be as cold as the
church wanted me to be when i was
much younger and they said i
must remove the bellows that fired
the passions of the flesh

in me dwelleth no good thing,
they said, and for years i
flogged my inner yearnings
down into a loathsome pulp

and the homosexuals i knew became
stock characters, with their lisps
and flexed wrists and flash and
bright arrogances

and the girls who unfolded into flower
before me at every turn, in halls
and classrooms and on beaches,
became plastic pieces on a board

and the men and women of the
motion pictures and
the television programs who
joined the flesh of lovers
became unartful and flat

and while what was said by the church
against them was intended to brand
into my heart an impression of the
vileness of their stations
i instead made them all a craved thing

so that emerging from youth
i was something of a submerged brooder,
skulking in a corner, fearful of my mind
making offenses against my truth
and against the people of my life

my best friend, he died alone in a hotel
room, years after confiding in me that
he was gay and that he hurt from being in
the shadow of it, cast by familiar men

and my brother, he died from a tumor that
consumed his brain, months after confiding
in me that he felt he was unfairly
judged for being in life what everyone wished they
could be: unashamedly alive

free and boundless in his passions,
open and groundless in his flights
against the headwinds that buffeted me
for so long and made me hate love
and myself for wanting both

i was once overruled in every way
- as constantly as our revolution
around the sun - by the opinions
of those who had no real investment in me

i've lived a life accepting the
rejections of some and rejecting
the acceptances of others to
the disservice of my inner self

i used to believe that there was no
precision in passion, because it
held no good aim and struck at random
and was not a controllable thing

it was a trifle, something
like waiting for inspiration to
make one's mark on the page, so
therefore not to be taken seriously

wanting and expressing want of the
flesh was cast as a villain; that
desire was subservient to a higher
good, and therefore a dog in the gutter

but since meeting you, i understand the folly
of that: passion is received and spent
as vibrantly as allowed, when people
become people and the scripts of men are burned

and passion is where life flows
best, passion is where life loves
most, passion is where life lances
the boils of the callous cynics

i knew a man with passion who embraced
the essence of what made him feel at
peace, who shunned the preachment of
the fools whose desire was to control

they want nuance and implication when
i write about the act of lovemaking, when
neither exists in the thing itself; they want
that i be quiet with my dark thoughts

but the cock and the labia
nipple and lips are explicit
in the throes and the demand of implication
is just another forced march to church

so close your doors and click
off those lights; draw the blinds and
disrobe in your darkness with an
object-of-affection, your trapped lover

shun those who dare expose themselves
to the true natures of their beings;
tell the world how it is them
against us on our way to salvation

but i will not: my passion is naked
and raw and alive and truthful and
unashamedly in flight, accepting
of what i was naturally imbued with

because in me dwelleth all good
and in my friend
and brother
and you

Read More

light

a descent of the mind to gloom
is that slow wind-down of a senile clock,
that dull drip in a country sink,
that gray water in a pasture puddle

it tightens the jowls
and draws the heart into the stomach
and aches the legs toward a bed
where relief-in-sleep is a fool's illusion.

winter, it does not consume,
it extinguishes by bloat,
crowding my primal inner space,
suffocating it by a crawling expansion.

observe the fester of a sore,
how it begins in a spot
and advances, by dint of invasion,
overspreading with a brute passion.

that is the assault on my
primal inner space
that can come most any time
but particularly in winter.

with the bowing of the sun
to the earth's roll,
when her light ebbs away
and becomes an ineffectual flirt.

the assault
can get hold of me, and i
play the part of a mortal pulled
down by the hands of Hades himself.

i felt it for the first
time when i was old enough
to distinguish reason from the mind
and draw romance from the heart,

when associations first formed between
the material world and the
spiritual, when pain could be felt
somewhere other than the flesh.

there was a click in a moment
and i was no longer inside
myself but had stepped out
and into the sphere of others

and everything after that was
pointed to knowing, and pointed to
feeling, and pointed to the muscular
act of believing in a thing without proof.

how the descent of the sun
in the fall made the shadows of
the world something that now breathed
and made darkness a stalking menace.

it was at this same time - a time of revelation
and the bridging between the solid and the
fluid of life- when the darkness had seeped in
and begun its strangulation,

that i rode, in this gloom, in my parent's car
down main street in december, staring out
the window, feeling the breathlessness
of that choking of the soul,

when above us there passed lights on a string,
like the pulse of a beacon,
then a second, then a third, and i looked
up finally and began to count the strings

that had been strung 'cross the street
between the light posts, fat white bulbs
beaming in their fat white way hung upside
down like glowing acrobats on the circus wire.

the entire street, down its straight
way, was uniformly lit, equally and
of a perfect imperfection, a supine ladder
of lights suspended on rungs between those posts.

the town was of tall brick and short wooden businesses
shouldered together in two sentry lines on
either side of our car, the storefronts
likewise glowing, and with the lights of the cars

the scene became something of a jewel
afire, alive with an untouchable and reverent
warmth that had me sitting forward and
spectating on a brilliant miracle.

it had for me the effect
of being buoyed to a surface
after a long descent, the feeling
of a palpating heart and breath-hitch

and from that moment till now
and after now i look to the lights
at christmas as a favored thing,
a thing that holds the best of it.

the lights on trees, in lamps,
in the tall windows of shops
on the roofs and doors of homes
and strung across streets

what i think i dream of christmas,
when i do dream of that particular time,
is not of the meal, of the gifts
or of the family who partook

traditions count for something:
as markers along the short line
of our histories, fragile slips
frayed by the winds of memory

they are something enamored
and reused in a romantic way,
valuable in how they
keep us tethered to contentment,

but light acts a different part
in this primitive play;
it stands not as a marker
but as a thread of currency;

a thin potency coursing through,
pulsating within the conduit
of life, unbroken in the way
it knows how to find you wanting.

time and time over and time and again
light grows in that darkness
like searching irises and
their glow expands the inner space anew

for christmas is a time of
tradition, to be sure, but
the songs, they fall away;
the vacations from school,

the movies, the shows,
the family and the friend
the eve and the morning
and the unwrappings.

they all fall away and are hung
as markers on a line of histories
important in that form, in that
station, but different than the lights

the lights come before and remain
afterward, well after, and
have no histories or fading
inequalities, they simply remain

and in their place
come as a friendly force
to liberate that primal
place of the occupying darkness

Read More

motion

when i woke, i went straight to
music and what i heard
set a scene one might picture
if awaiting the rise of a curtain

on some expected play
between actors we know
and whose work we have
a certain anticipation toward

or maybe that was the mood
i was in already when i awoke
and the music was a mere
conspirator? either way

the music felt like a prelude:
a softly moving bass, the strum
of a guitar, the slide of the jazz rake
across the face of the snare

the laying out of a rhythm,
the pace akin to a stroll
down a leafy path in
cold, wetted autumn with its

smell of the sweet decay
of the world on either side,
of sodden woods and the effusions
of cedar and pine

a man's voice comes in,
a lofty tenor, like a swallow
crooning up high in a barn
or a coyote call on a

ridge above the valley,
singing about a slow-moving
river on a snow-gray morning
or of something she lost

and the curtain draws open
at least in my imagination and on
the stage are two figures in silhouette,
frozen and waiting the lights

and that's when i knew
i should be alone to think about
recent scenes between us that
placed me in such a closing mood

but let me keep this confined
to a simple idea: love is not won
by talk but by the violence of two hearts
and a compulsion toward their unity

so it is with you and me
that we give out so much
in our passions and clashes and
rights and wrongs, the truth is

we have our primary source
of difficulty, our dramatic
situation to keep this play
on its feet and moving

we are personality upon personality, we've
got our cause and effect, our exercise of wills;
we have our action in the wishing of something
done and the doing of it, or the failing at it

a struggle means we've got movement, my lover; and
movement means we're alive with it, pulling in our
opposite directions, all of it a kind of goodness
and all of it just enough balance to be vital and breathing

we've got the small business down, too;
the blocking is perfected;
our habitual actions that keep
the eyes and ears busy:

you draw the baby's bath and i do the dishes
and you fold the laundry in the front room while
i start a fire in the stove and by god do we
like to see things getting done

there is drama as much in the healing of a child's
bruised knee as there is in the healing of our
bruised pride, tears and laughter come to an adventure equally
and hold the same station in the theaters of heaven and hell alike

the lights on this small stage are aimed in such a
way as to illuminate us in a singular spot, giving us
tone and a sharp focus, and everything surrounding
us – all the people and their events – is in a gray shade

let our audience look upon the play
with unpassionate eyes, seeing the flaws
in our action, the kinks in the motivations,
the poorly placed climaxes

we followed our own second thoughts
in the manufacture of this story after all,
because there is greater validation in the
inspirations of the heart than in the mind;

it makes us irreducible to their methods
and therefore we should not be
surprised by their distaste for our little drama,
as if it is a foil to all their proofs somehow

we play our comedy and our tragedy
on a single wire and live not by the
shallow mechanics of some joined plot but
by the depth of our plunge into life

we have the contrast and with it
the balance and our entrances
and exits and our business and our
passionate pleas and counterpleas

and our pulls and our lovemaking
it all strikes a fire in each other and
that's what keeps the drama
moving

i thought maybe the song i woke to
was about the disaster of two people
who'd spent their currency on
the ill fates and poverty of bad living

and how it spoke to me in that one
way, how it spoke of the troubles
that vex lovers to the point of distractions
that steer them toward a tragedy of ends

but i think now i misheard it all,
listening with intent and hearing
the meaning that the mood told me
to hear

the way our audience, in their patronage,
wish upon our unfolding story
what they suspect is a truth
they themselves are eager to consume

but the plaintive song, with its
drawling moan and its languid
slide toward a darkness not unlike
the sun's bow to winter,

is talking to me of you and
of you and i and of us as a one
always waiting our entrances,
our dialogues, our business-making

our pitches, our advances and set backs,
sometimes against each other's grain, but
sometimes along the same grain, a
pardoning of sins or ungranting of wishes

sometimes, when we intermit to take a moment to consider
a scene, we become melancholy, sure that living through so
many negations is just one bad episode following
another and we become convinced that we're playing this all wrong

that all this jousting and pain suffering is
a sign of a broken thing when placed against the
play of others, whose stories seem to be framed
by more accomplished actors and with greater ease

but thinking on them, thinking on them in a reflective
way, i see that a farce moves likewise: easily along
a flat path, without motion, without fire, and performed
for the sheer enjoyment and edification of their audience

i repeat myself at this point:
love is not won by talk but by the violence of two
hearts and a compulsion toward their unity, so i say
let them talk in their stasis. and let's remain in motion

Read More

play

someone asked me once:

why do you play like this, why

did you not leave it to children

and remember that you have a

certain elevated place now and must

put away the things of your youth?

and i could not answer him with

any honesty except with a shrug

and a blush of shame and i'm sure

my silence was the answer he wanted

or expected

the way some teachers, who question their

own life choices and are soured by them,

can turn on their students with a maligning

condescension that relieves their dismal

self loathing, at least for a bitter moment

and after some time of reflection and

reconsidering, of probing my intentions

and giving due consideration to his

inquest and feeling generally bad about myself

i went outside and breathed in the air

and i awoke day after day and kissed my wife

and embraced our children; fed our dogs and

went to work and watched television and

wept over the loss of a brother and laughed

to myself about something that was not funny

and i bled from the prick of a splinter

and i sweated when the gas tank got too low

miles from town and i called my mother to

wish her happy birthday and i got angry

and then remembered i'd forgotten something

and the world contracted upon me in a sudden

breath and i was crushed by the weight of it

until my wife said she loved me and then it all

expanded again, with a new knowledge and

with a new wonderment and with a different shade

and the question of the man went from me for months and

then came back, as if it were something placed in a bottle

tossed to sea, only to return in its glass chamber sparkling,

the reflection from the sun burning my eyes so that i had to

pick it up and remove the message

why do you play like this, why

did you not leave it to children

and remember that you have a

certain elevated place now and must

put away the things of your youth?

it accused me once more

and pocketing the question i went for a

walk and tread upon dirt roads and paved

roads in the rain and snow, the wind in my

face and at my back, the swell of a storm

that pushed me into the woods

i found a structure, a form, made of you

and others like you, all of whom in arm and facing

each other in such a way that felt familiar

a form, this structure, of a power and understanding

that willed me to rejoin

in a dark room, with a stage, and lit in such a way that

felt real. you and your faces and your lives

and your work and your children and your pets

and your schooling and your tears and your fears

and your bleeding and your laughing

you and you all, like me and with me,

knowing that i do this as you do this,

not for a way to run toward youth again

and leave behind life but rather to

face life head on and seek truth

the form we make in this place

in this dark room with its lights

and its make believe and with our

voices not our own in costume

is a way that we understand

i play

because

i live

Read More

coins in a Ball jar

coins touched by the hands of a

thousand now come to rest in a Ball

jar that sits on the edge of our kitchen

counter

it was the precarious position

i found it in – on the ledge like that -

that got me thinking of the man whose

face was the first i saw in this world

something of glass so close to falling,

so close to tumbling that i could feel

the descent of it in my lungs and i

could hear the shatter of it as it

struck the floor and i could feel the prick

of the shards on my fingertips and i could

smell the copper of the pennies and the

nickels and the quarters that rolled about

i don't know

it didn't fall, that's not what happened,

i'm just saying that i felt the heavy fall without it
going down, which is the way i approach darkness

i hate the idea of the fall, knowing that

it comes to all of us, but lately it's

come to too many of those i've known

in my life

it's that feeling of the dark figure that

descends, of a soul slipping downward

toward an ending, that has had me flailing

in my sleep lately

who would be so foolish as to place

a Ball jar on the edge like that? a child

i'm guessing, who went fishing for coin

and left it in that poised way, ready

the man who passed on yesterday was a

doctor and like i already told you, his was

the first face i ever saw in this world

when i emerged startled and blinking

once when i was 10 or so he had kids

take jubilant turns sitting atop an old

hand-crank ice cream maker at a church

fellowship lunch at their house in july

how the men filled 'round the canister

ice and salt while we took turns sitting

and laughing at the vibration of the crank

and the doctor sang hymns and laughed in kind

and that was a coin

or how he was the only man of god who

assured me that my sister was no pariah

when she got pregnant as a teenager while

the other men stood with cold stones in hand

and that was a coin

or how deftly he slipped the cord from around

my daughter's neck when she emerged

in a slick of blood, naked and pissing

everywhere, but scowling and full-throated

and that was a coin

i came outside on this november morning

to write a poem in the cool air but

this is no poem, so i went back to the

Ball jar that sat in a shaft of light on my counter

and i slid it away from its edge, the weight of

the coins a dense gravity and my fingers tingling

with the sense of an impending fall that did not come

to it but it came anyway, didn't it?

it always will

Read More

let's be friends of a thing in its spirit

let's be friends of a thing in its spirit
in the same way we view a stone
or a single blade of grass
or the sound of wind

how they in themselves
alone and free can be
considered as they are
and are not without injury

to separate them out for a time
in order that we might
enjoy within them a view
of pure simplicity

indeed they are part of something
outside themselves and into
which they belong
to be sure, of course

but have a beauty alone too
that can inform and
cut away that which
oft clouds all things

because the big calamity of life
is that of the single spirit engorged
upon by the machines of
those inebriated by expansion

and become, in time,
self-enriched and bloated
but left hollow and
undefined after all

their construct designed by
plucking us as singles from our
vast fields to form a fierce whole to
bond against invented foes

feeding us with fears of
a certain half fiction
not wholly true but that
rings in our ears as such

and so we become less
of a spirit of our single
selves enriched once by
the power of our uniqueness

and more of a larger
mass of energy drained
and oppositional and
ever shaking with worry

so for our current obstacle
i ask we extract that which is
pure in being unique and give
it a renewed consideration

so that when returned to mass,
it in itself and what
we know of it will
renew its power to us

let's be friends of a thing in its spirit
and in that view deny for now that we've
been parsed on a beach by
the coming of a deep tidal river

stepping out of the huddle of our two camps
and away from those who
throw their fists into the air against
their brothers on the other side

fomented by the false complexity
of the scene before us and
riled by the rattling words
poured into their ears

by something that got
away from someone, got
out of hand and cleft us
of our inherited reason

and in this quiet posture we alone toe
the water standing across from each
other with the sting in our lungs
of salt water and bracken

that we breathed in after that
sudden gasping when the
water came and tore through
and divorced us

nature over her time
forces us into our separate
corners but it is men who
take advantage of the obstacle

beguiling us to believe
that we have but their remedy
to repair our station and
none of our own

by swearing an allegiance
to their machinery
we forfeit what governs us
naturally and we become hardened

but standing now in
this way we must consider
not what pushed us out
but what pulls us in

for in is where we belong
alone but together, singly
and apart but embracing
and unified for a purpose

of our own making
and of our own design
a spirit of a thing that
denies the power of

those who wish to veto
the spirit of the single
soul for the sake of
their own cold machine

we as our own excellence
can believe in the pure power
of a thousand independent
souls joined through simple clarity

from a position of one who
sees the one and fears not the
many who see the one in
me likewise

that i am no threat to you
as a genuine friend of a thing
in its spirit but someone who seeks
to bridge all waters with you as you

and let all the others
who claim to be master
follow or be drowned
in their pursuit

Read More

sonnet for the bird with the hollow song

i care no more for your enthralling song
your recitals i refuse to attend
those once-beloved lyrics now all but gone
with that performance, i cannot pretend

i am left more cautious since i have heard
your siren sound tempting my ships to harm
how you caroled us with your cloying words
and burned us with the bitters of your charm

now you've flown to feed upon new goodness
to trill your story for another soul
with fresh audience, no need to confess
to the deceit that exacted this toll

you flew alone by force of your own wing
from a cause you invented, did you sing

Read More

three leaves

these last days of autumn

shimmer down to something
close to the moment before
sleep, when the world outside
contracts into darkness and
the ether of dreams comes
drifting

out a dining room window
of our simple maine farmhouse
a red maple stands with half his leaves
still blazing, still clinging
to branch, while two thousand miles
away they eulogize my uncle

who was my father's best
friend, chumming together in a
small maine town in the 1950s and
who married my father's sister,
thus becoming family, and who,
like that indomitable maple, let fly
a thousand brilliant souls each year

there is a launching in a death
a love in a passing on
a joy in a giving forward
a strength in a receiving
an awakening in a faith
a salt in a sweat of real toil

i look at my shedding maple
while a northeastern rain tamps
down a landscape that has become
a watercolor painting while on
the radio simon and garfunkel
carol about bookends

i love jack's youngest boy
like a brother, more than i
loved jack i suppose
but only because i knew the boy
more than i knew the father;
we were chums of a different
age while our fathers looked on

a physical relationship
made fallow by the circumstance
of distance but a love and
kindredness bonded by a conjuring
unknown to either; our affection
a hit-or-miss lesson found in the
mysteries of tornadoes and falling stars

jack left maine years ago, took
his wife and their children across
the wide world, to build bridges
between men and god; to sing of
a savior to whom he devoted his
life; to pray; to prostrate himself

there is distance in time
and in space but not
in blood, so this poet calls
across the separating miles
while he stands at the trunk
of his dripping maple to
ponder the fallen at his feet

to find three leaves in
communion among a thousand
in a placid congregation.
how my eyes fell on these three
is a question for the interpreter of
fortuity; all i care about is
that i am here, awake

jack was an orphaned irish baby
from boston who came to maine
in youth and who played baseball
and basketball and ran track with
my father - that's history
i've seen all the black-and-whites

two men hatched in poverty
but rich in something else,
something made of the iron
of will and fortitude of soul;
how they both bled from their
flesh and cried from it to
no one but their own hearts

there is nothing more
eloquent about the men
of that generation than how
their graciousness in maturity
was informed by the tribulations
in their youth

i believe in the lesson there,
i'm attracted to the value of
their constructs: how, brick
by brick, they fashioned a life
for their families in the form
of a thousand selfless decisions

my brother daniel and his siblings,
progeny of the felled man,
is living my foremost fear
as they now are witness to the
coming of an age in which
the foundation of their lives
has been smashed

i took a picture of the three
leaves at the base of the tree because,
of all those countless gifts,
these three measured the most
and blazed most brilliantly
and came to rest in a certain
embrace at the feet of their
beloved giver

all great good men
stand for something
larger than themselves by
the exquisiteness of
their humility. the
shadow they cast is thrown across
time and space, no impediment

and while his generosity was spread
and spread wide, his gift of fatherly
charity coursed through his limbs
and infused into the hearts of all
those receivers, i believe
it lingers most in the
blood of his children to whom i
bow as i do to these
three leaves

Read More

blur

we were married in a sage masonic 
meetinghouse during our descent,
on the stage of that stoic hall, as
part of a late september day dressed 
with mist and autumn removals

it was a fine place, yet what is a 
place but a context into which
we rain our droplets of time 
that we manage to 
stir into something like a life

my brother took pictures for us, do you 
remember this? and nearly none of the prints 
came out, those vague images now - in looking on 
them today - a reminder of how nostalgia is 
really just a meander through a flustering fog

let us, you and i, go back for a bit right
here, through that narrow aperture of memory, 
and think on the day with the vision of two lovers
who are bowed against a headwind that
seems always to shoulder against us

and recall how it was all an ambition
toward gaining a certain quarter that we've not
ever been given, not really, but let's
not forget the moment or pretend
that we received our desired acceptances

i want nothing more now than what that
would feel like for you, whose 
blessings were lost in the smirking
visages of all those foreigners who claimed to
be in the blood, saints abroad indeed

i know the pithy insults and where they
were aimed, and i know that they struck you
with a velocity and were tipped with a poison
meant to topple you, to bring your towers back
down to this earth in a smoulder

it was a rebuke from a loveless crowd,
a riot of the yearning, whose tongues 
wielded a lash of resentment against the
bride and her joys with their eyes turned
away from their own hands

regardless

think on this day with me and recall the
table rows with their wood-slatted chairs
and the picket fencing we set against the
front of the stage encurled by white christmas
lights, and think on the bales of hay we brought in

the cornstalks we stood about and the baskets
we filled with gourds of the season; the 
tables we laid with country favors; the
dress made by my niece and the children
standing as the truest of witnesses

how you wanted so much to host it in the back
yard of our village farm, where the landscape 
was framed by the rows of maples and pines
and what small pasture we had sloped down to a 
pond overspread with the discarded colors of fall

the weather conspired and turned us out and 
sent us inside, but thinking on it now i wish 
we had forced the pharisees to stand 
outside with us to feel the same palsying 
cold from the rain that we felt from their carping

no i don't
in fact i don't
i know i don't 
i'd not join their
ranks for gold

after all

we cannot change
the hearts of the vile 
anymore than we can
change the whip of the wind
or history in its watery hold

but how i fight against the
wishing and the wanting; how i
push against the yearning for a
salvation from my sins, a confession
that once went out to my beloved

as if they are the stewards
the keepers the guarantors
the angels the founders
the givers the makers the 
healers and the true

all of it nonsense

the truth of the present hurt is in the
way in which we stand before the mirror
now and consult not the confidences
in our passion, but the braying echoes
from past jurors

whose evidences against us were 
smaller than the incrimination
we laid against ourselves,
and the sentence we administered
was self-inflicted 

because where are the judges now?
in their hovels again, waiting to
spring on another so-and-so
whose tumble will set their tongues 
wagging once again

there is a reason why we see the dark 
whenever there is light all around,
why we paddle against each other
in an endless round when we're sharing the
same shuttle on the same intrepid sea

i want our photos be left to 
blur and seen not as an omen to the
vex that we felt came from fate
but as a symbol for our real passion

that leaves all the gallery scowling
as they squint at us in their
frustration for not being able to quite make
us out; quite make us clear no matter how 
hard they look or demand our focus

i'm a poet in a mood on this october day
and i spy a single maple with two different
plumes of color; two crowns for a single
tree as if two lovers conjoined sinfully in
a violence of passion

it looks like mist is coming this way
and i'm casting across time for you
and for me with its warps and its
evaporations until we stand, again
in that hall, happily blurred

Read More

cicada bottle summer

the kids just last week presented to me a
trim, stunted bottle unearthed by the rooting snouts of the
piglets in our garden bed out back
where the soil is still a rich virgin black.

i placed the vial on the sill of our kitchen window
above the sink and it still held the earth in it;
so besodded that the light outside labored against
an obscure passage through its thick glass:
the random specks of dirt constellations in an
unfocused universe

and so it is with memory, which is constantly
strained through the gauze of time,
filtered and abridged to the point of it all approaching
mere romance when it comes calling to the fore on
some trigger

like it did when i considered the bottle on its
new perch, with the world of light outside
peering back through it to me as i peered at
the world through the vial and in a moment i was
reminded of the cicadas and one summer day

(i am told to avoid the sentimental by sticking to
the showing of things and not the telling and by turning
the hand to the figurative and leaving the abstract out
in the withering cold - so i will attempt to here, but in truth i
am in love with this memory, all joy)

how my brother took me digging for bottles in august
one year when i was - perhaps - 10? that sounds about
right because i ached differently at 10 than i did at
13 when he was 20 and no longer at home

what lived inside of our conversation that day i do not
know, but i pretend to know by assigning this broader truth:
we said little, the way the mature and the immature
say little of substance to each other because of the
gap in age and understanding; especially brothers

this half-fiction, therefore, would have other voices in it:
namely the creak of the metal bucket that swung in one
of his hands while the other gripped the short handle
of our father's spade that my brother bore on a broad shoulder,
twirling the metal of the spade like a boat's propeller

or the flop of his Converses onto tar in our perspiry push
up hill against invisible wave on wave of swelter; how
our eyes stung against it and our lungs were filled with
the density of haze

or the cry of the dog day cicadas stuck in the limbs of
leafy ash and sugar maples and birches that stood
on either side in their own dense congregations; how
their everlasting saw was a hymnal to some prevailing dream echoing
a song of end-of-summer longing that hummed in my own heart

my brother borrowed the idea of bottle hunting from our
uncle, who scavenged for them as well, unearthing such
colorful curiosities of medicine glass that he would clean
and sell to various collectors

and my brother took it up and was adept at their discovery;
mining his own modest collections of blues and greens,
rounded and squared, long-necked and snub-nosed
that he too scrubbed, but that he kept for himself

posting his finds on window sills in his own bedroom
or upon the sills around our home. i marveled at their
altered optics, how staring through the antique glassware
was a lull toward divergent moods

the lighter colored bottles had me thinking of the
weightlessness of clouds observed from one's back in
a pasture; the darker colors of the fate of fallen leaves
into an autumn brook and how they could never resist the pull

he stopped at the top of the hill in front of a house and
he said he had been told it used to all be
farmland up here and how farmland was perfect for the
burial places of back-in-the-day houses and outbuildings

that all that was left were usually field stone foundations filled
in by the collapsed wooden bones of buildings,
piled upon by time with earth and leaves; that hidden beneath
that, with the point of the driven spade, could be found the bottles

i was a mere page to the leader of a great enterprise; on an
exploration led by a man knowing of the unknown world;
i marveled much less at the landscape than i did the shadow
that he cast across it, as younger brothers are apt to do of the older

all that needed to happen, he said, was permission from the
owner to allow us behind his property, down a hill to a place
i could barely make out as a thin line of a stone
wall at the edge of woods that, i imagined, once was miles of pasture

my brother rapped on the owner's door and we waited in the heat until a man
emerged daunted. looked my brother over. my brother in a pair of cut-off Levi's
with the bottoms of the pockets dog-panting out from beneath; my brother
with the long hair and a muscle shirt and shouldering a spade

he asked us what. said no to my brother's request. said no to my brother's plea.
come on, man. my little brother with me. just bottles. and then watched us
in a scowl as we walked away back toward home, my brother swearing over
his shoulder at him while i trailed. i was always trailing and looking back

he cursed the way home and spat on about how some people can be
this and some people that and don't tell mom and dad we did this
and here, carry the spade and how he should have just gone to the lake
it was too hot to dig for bottles on a day like this

i carried the spade over my shoulder for a length of the walk, then switched
it to the other side, then let it drag behind me in the dirt shoulder
while the dog day cicadas wound up in their trees and i listened
wondering about what bottles we had left unearthed in the old man's field

i look at the bottle my children gave to me
and to say what i would say would be
sentimental after all and i see the light seeing
me from the outside and i hear cicadas

Read More

give

i've defaulted on a few loans
lately and the lenders have now closed
their windows to me
for not meeting their terms

perhaps i'm sorry or
just not taken in by the
rate of interest and how it all felt
like an ambush of serpents

i prefer equal terms scribed
within the bright tails of those luminaries
with whom i've shared some
meteoric passing

an exchange of corresponding
light against a contrasting dark
no unparallels
no imbalances in our intensities

you burn for ______ and i burn for _______
expressed in a graduation
of interest and meaning
to step in step, in kind, and deliberately

all my recent lenders are
on a take after all - saying with
full mouths whatever it takes to
convince me of their hunger

does anyone give truly
without the shading
eclipse of want?

does anyone truly want
without feeling the
sweep of guilt's hacking scythe?

i'm a fool in the
service of my heart
and lack the cool
dispassion of ice

that covers the lake
in winter or the
hot hunger
of fire in the wild

unable to believe that what i will
lose from offering my passions
will counterbalance
what i will gain

and that it all
in the end is an
exercise in the
leveling out of truths

and i suppose we
lose, we all
do, in the games
we play with our hearts

no one is the same
and we all fly toward
what we desire with
faults in our wings

but i -
i want my want to
be not answered
with your beckoning palms

but rather with
an open cup
into which i
pour myself

to be consumed
with genuine thirst
and to give equitable
nourishment to a lover

than to be asked
and asked again
and shown vile
disdain

if my cup goes
dry from
the evaporating
powers of your selfishness

as if one can
taste the flavors of
my affections with
a mouth full of bile

let's give and
give; allow to
be given to and
let it be just that

and then - then
i will refill my
cup for you
and for you

Read More

your dry field

i'm a thunder advancing
the edges of your field,
crawling in a scold,
rumbling toward that
squalid acre

where you pitched a
flag to stake a claim
with a tongue that
carries the poison
of asps

yours is a field turned to
scrub, bordered now by bramble;
no more dancing daisies, happy gilia:
all of it burned by
the transgressions of your lips

you summoned this heat
that has dried your
range and drained
the waters underfoot
and now

look at you
pouring vain tears
onto those
deep cracks hoping to
call back the flower

i offer no hope
bringing my torrent
from a gray brow;
these are not tears but
something to whet your ego

to make you thirst
again for my attentions
only to see it all
evaporate when i've
passed you by

that is the way of
the drought: when some expect
the deluge to be a cure when
a month of rain
is the only way back

Read More

we had our forests

we had our forests,
my father and i,
where i witnessed the
sanctity of his gesture
on walks that trimmed
our margin

a hike taken in a place
with precipitating light
and inscribed
with the words of god

what mastery
of yours
did you bring to
that place for me!

my shepherd
in a cathedral of
spruce and pine,
steeplebush and needle

bowing my youth
and making souvenirs
of all the
parables between us

while bending the branch
and tramping
the fallen leaves
decaying underfoot

i witnessed those steps
before me
with the attitude of
the sojourning pilgrim

crossing great
oceans and
weathering great
squalls and
piloting great boats
made of the thinnest of skins

we had our forests,
my father and i,
whether in the hunt
for a tree to ornament
in december

or a vernal brook in august
into which we could
cast and wait
and cast and
wait

i couldn't wait of course -
i tried, i talked
and you listened
and i talked over
your listening

my boy-chatter a
thief of the
melodies of rapt immersion;
an oppressor of
woodsong and woodsilence

you would shush me
and i would watch the
back of your shirt
and ponder your heels
while the broken current
resumed

either way
our moments were
present like suspended
hummingbirds
flitting and filtering
captured by nothing
except opaque memory

a fugitive place,
memory, swallowing
life whole and
regurgitating
the merest ghosts
of it for our sympathy

i have tried congregating
the hacked recollections
of my youth into
something of a meaning

and what is left
is no ghost
no forlorn decay
no rot
no crumble

i see the
lanky birches (your
favorite)
and the brawny oaks
the barbed firs
and the leafy maples

i hear the champ on
the dry underfootings
and the trill on the
branch and a breath
in the canopy

and i especially see him
my father
and how his arms - yes
and how his legs - yes
and how his hands - yes
were my tenders

we had our forests,
my father and i,
like a soft hymn in a
sleepy boy's ear:
a sweet song
sung low
a hum

just a hum

Read More

my serenity

i.

i became vexed
by your capture
and the menace of
your leveling domains

foaming torrents
coalesced
beneath your brow and
exuded an eliding patience

i in my swagger
pranced in a boast,
delighting with
the purples of hubris but -

soon weighted and cowed
by the sway of
your scowling lectures
and fisted ragings

you wore me to the
thinness of a sighing
wafer and in my arms you
unspooled chaos

dispersing from your
coil certain hymns
to a sympathetic
yet minor god

until in a softening
light i hardened into
a pearl of a man
called father

ii.

i make of this life
that no road really
ends and no road really
goes anywhere
but people end
and people go
that a prayer is a possibility
a dream a song
a dishonesty a knife
that life is the prolonging
of an affair with god
that you'll know the meaning
of my life at its
broad dusk
that you'll sit facing
it the way a
cat faces a field
of tall grasses
in late august
toward the anonymity
of all those blades
all those wisps of
loitering blades

iii.

daughter of my daughter
sighted softly

in a vague rain
emerging out of a lurk

a firedancer and
frolicking waif

scuffed toes pouring
light from a genie's cloak

no beholding pride
no forged facade
all wonderment
beneath a cascade
of fragrant life
and yearning flower

a certain belle
beneath a parasol

of an unsculpted mother's
enfolding serenity

Read More

after loving

you're as tempting to me

as a voice in the loitering ear
as a finger within the melding folds
as a release of the theological moan
as a breath of the jubilant tear
as a quiver in the harmonic deepness
as a lure of the rushing smile
as a parting of the governing limbs
as a nuance in the presiding glance
as a kiss on the shading mouth
as a tongue on the greedy flesh
as a flitting of the consoling nipple
as a smelling of the dashing rose
as a rocking of the foraging hips

make love in the making
     find fondling in the love
inhabit the lover in the flesh
     tumble in the skin crying
mouthing the lips with a splurge
     engrossing in the man
and woman in the woman
     man in the man and
falling into a sliding
     tumble to find a following
and groping for them in the dark
     looking for the pearls in the
way your lover plays
     along the piano keys
and licking their way
     to where you inhabit the
grandness of your granting
soul

fall deep
deeper still
joust and shiver
in their arms
but be still after awhile
then find a way to
say it

Read More

pray

now comes my father
prostrate in his
own garden
ebullient and free:
he readies his solomon's temple
and God enters in
a slow descent

green goes the tightened
apertures
dilating
the corrugated irises of
the closed mind
and i leave and
arrive

he seeks - my father -
to burrow down into
the valley toward
tranquility
peace is peace
no doing
no meaning

pitch from the canopy
of pine floats down
upon me;
the grace of a
garden with her
black-eyed susans
and asters and
chrysanthemums are
languid in a thoughtful
breeze

my father approaches
God on a bed of whispers

i lay
in deference
my face inches from
the grass:
blades are congregations in
tufts among
pebbles and twigs
tossed from tree-towers
and they all are epicentric to
my vision, no
landscape no horizon

my father's face
is in the face of
his Lord's
lips to lips
giving and receiving
something approaching
a haloed kiss

the good center
is a shallow pool reflecting
what i know
and in the vein a stream
toward an island
filled with knowledge
- winged horses and
laughing birds

my father delves
- no plea -
a pressing of palms;
a passage over
and through so that He
receives what my father
is, not what he wants

the earth is on hold
this mistress of humans
and the birth-mother of her
inhabitors calls me
to conjoin
and blades become
stones become
twigs become
me

my father
in prayer
is an abundance of
joy and a weeping
willow in a field of barley
his words are for him
and Him alone and i am listener
pulled into the orbit
of my father's blessings

amen

Read More

pammy

pammy, so verbally
pale, yet
soaked with the wisdom
of mothers,
saw her boy sent

has life been good to you?
has life been kind?
has God of others
been God to you?

or did all the heavens
burn up
and her angels fled
the day he was flung
in the night
and left crying?

we are stolen
in our time
from embraces
and from calamities
and we leave our loves
and our lovers
longing

we're all spun
within the same lottery
the same sobering
flip of the wheel
and we are flung
and the ball drops

something turned on you
didn't it?
something from the
clouds
precipitated and the
souls of happiness
they all fled
you

only you can make
the soaking twilight
of your son's fate
rise again on the
horizon
but just on those days
when others aren't looking

and all that meandering
between magic
and mayhem was
the only thing that
kept you hinged
because there's something
good in the moments
before dawn

how do i reach
the woman whose
loss split the
canyons of
love and drowned
the valleys of
her spirit?

i hold a child
in my arms and
fear her departure
is nigh
and i rage for
your loss as much
for my own

but i see you pammy
in a moonlight
lull, looking
out a window on
a staving wood
and i wonder:
how did you shine on?

how did those days
become nights?
how did that ambush
not carom against
your droning dusk
and make you a pale
shell?

i've said and i
say: a woman
whose womb has
spilled out and
with it the shape of
her fear and her
jubilation

is a woman
ascended
and a woman
reached
and a woman
giving
source

i see my mother
and mother's
mother
and i am
held
fast

women like
pammy who've
let loves pass
and became
perched on
the arms
of living

because they
saw beyond
and above and
found no quarrel
with their
God after
all

Read More

pietà by my side

pietà by my side
draw me that
pitying picture

of The Mother
cradling her
spurned son

that has inspired all
those sculptors, poets
and painters

to live, a poem
must die
in the lap of the poet

resurrected by
the source of
smashing love

tear it down tear
it all down and
pietà builds it up

by my side
in loose
lashes of the pen

my partner in
heraldic play
hand to pen to paper

the mother and the poet
sacrifice their children
to brute betrayals

and watch
their ascensions
from guttural prayers

we incant
and we outcast
and we topple

the girl with
hair the color of a
Mediterranean night

proves again
that i must seek
the shelter of palms

of the guiltless
ones who have
a better view

of the source
of the free
and epic heavens

unfettered
by the tongues
of elders

pietà by my side
wings across
the page with doves

as her beloved
carriers; no foil
to the divine process

i fly there
too when i'm
a child

and i have
loosed the latches
on all the bindings

pietà by my side
it's a pity
i don't dance more

the way you
do and let fly
the sins of men

that keep the
mothers and the
poets crying

Read More

tally

takes the tally
and makes his mark
the fouling driver
hollers and the
hungry hawk
hums

with a brute lash
he
makes her a prisoner
with a knife
to inner thigh
lie still and yield

mine mine mine
he marks -
mine he marks -
marks his mine
tick tick itck
she unmarks and unmarks

singing
in her head's head
a hymn from
a former glorious
field
wandering

and he makes the
the blade thrum
'cross the
chrysalis flesh
pleating it
bleeding her

of her senses
feeling it
retreating her
from her
once upon
a time

when she was
a child and
scudding through a
farmer's pasture
bare legs bending
the blades

a wet wander
wild and
hilly
a stumbling
girl's giggling
elopement

the blade
today is a
tool of the warden
to scowl
a lapsed
girl

lie still lie
to yourself
fly from
the shape
of the sound
in a dark room

tick tick tick
mine mine
tally a penalty
into pliant
skin the color
of sin

momma will
say you've
got a good man
to love you
enough
to fight to
keep you

blundering
bitch
blubbering
braying
beast
bestill

this place
her passage
her way
her forward
her entrance
her real

this man
is no man
is a dagger and
stone and
the power
of a spit
coal

and brandisher
a mulling
percher
ambushing the
ambitions
of the weak

pouring
salt water
into the eyes
of
the souls
of innocence

and she
was lured and
slain
and pinioned
between charm
and will

tick tick tick
for each
transgression
against the
father of
her dark cathedral

she won't look
now she won't
dare; for
it's a frayed
fragile
foiled place

yet:

her lover
does look now
a gentle man
looks
and loves
and lingers

there
where the hawk
once made his
mark
this lover
kisses the place

he loves her
he loves the woman
he loves the flesh
and the marks
he loves the woman
and all her marks

he washes
the walls
of the tallies
with tender fingers
tracing
the lines

that will
not ever be
erased
but he washes
at will because
he loves

and the girl runs
wild in the
farmer's
pasture again
free free
of the tick

tick tick
mine mine
you're mine
no longer mine
not mine
released to a

passionate
lover who
knows this
woman:
he sees her
he knows

he looks
he looks
and sees
and kisses
and loves
her clean

Read More

my portable moonlight

my portable moonlight
lulling me into loving life -
a seductress with your
impermanent posture
pulls me toward a terrifying
peace

i have not tried
hard enough
i have not cried
long enough
to know the
spoils of good love

you blunt me and
you enmeek the brimming
crowds that soon
yield at the knees;
the sky a sable oyster
and you a cunning pearl

i have no impostor
in my bed at night:
my passion is a
greed for something
hot and brutal
and eclipsing

so don't follow me
so much;
your eyes remind me
that i destroy
things and my life
is unclever

there is no precision
in love as a matter
of fact; it's all
a fist of brittle
leaves tossed into
a retreating wind

so you hang there
and i sit up
next to my lover
with my knees folded
and my head cocked
and my soul starched

invent for me
an ending to this story
in which there is
no fatigue of heart
when the lapses of love
come careening

do that for me
at the least
my portable moonlight
and remove from me
an excuse to
loiter in my penalties

because i want
love to be love
and all else to be left;
for life to be life
and all else to be lost
beneath your pale sweep

Read More

you

the pursuit of
your leisure is the
oxygen of my love:
your untensing
your fists released
your loins gone back to meekness

and our repose
is not unlike
being drowsy in the
sun of an open window
on a day
meant for labor

yours is a metaphor
found unfurling
in the language
of your limbs: they speak
in rising waves
of a tidal pool

bees tending to their
peonies below the
window
are lovers tending loves
after all
and you tend me

the waning light that
passes into darkness
is the definition
of spells; the magic is there
in a thin line that evaporates
and you're asleep

i with a hand cupped over
the place between
parted limbs
find a warm comfort
in the measure of
the days between us

age can be
a supple haven
between two old
lovers whose
fingers find no fault
in the familiar

i love the curve

of you

in these nights

those small

small small

hairs on the tailbone

and your

breathing

into a pillow

Read More

she takes a lover

and the man kisses his lady,
watches her drive
from their home to
meet her lover,
the swollen sky a'dusk
is the color of plum

and the garden beds emit
green flavors and the scent
of a lulling fertility;
on the ear
the sounds of
calling crickets

and in his chest
the night breathing
opposes his own;
his lungs pressed upon by
an unexplored thought
while something low stirs

and he sees the taillights
of their car
some way down the road
and he wonders if that
glance in the mirror was to
check her face or his

and the porch light
winks against the dance
of night flyers
oblivious to the white
burn that ends their
black lives

and he walks around
to the back side of their home
to sit on the stoop
that looks down their
long pasture toward
the elm at center

and this is the
business of summer:
a wanting elm
and the coy reveal
of her palms
at the first blush of a breeze

and the coming of
something strong
over a western rise
flowing over and across field
down and through, tousling
that tufted thatch

and he finds his
hands together;
his heart ponders
with his eyes east
overlooking
the laid scene

and there is a vision
of something in the
world turned reverse
that makes the night sky
burn and the earth
cold

and the form before
is something observed
but he wonders
is the image
the thing itself,
or is it not?

and the wind, he
is driven to gain
from his advances
across the field
pulled but pushed
equally so

and the man whose
lady has taken a lover
looks on the scene
with enfolded fists
and his mouth
surely set

and now the breeze
has grown to wind
and finds the elm
with limbs bent to his
will and he
pushes through

and the man
closes his eyes
parts his lips
releases his breath
leaves his mind
opens his soul

and he is
becalmed by
whispers of truth
to the ears
within his
mind

and comes to
know that she moves
the way of the
swallow
from a need
in a mysterious heart

and her return will be
to him and him alone
enriched in some
unspeakable way,
overpoured from
a deeper well

and on seeing her
he'll drink from her cup
a certain
marking remedy:
something as warm
as this night

Read More

nearer you

do you still yet find yourself
on a walk down that near lane
eclipsed by the breathing wood

drawn like we once were
by the worn latch of the cabin door
that led onto aged pine boards

into familiar gray-lit chambers
induced as blood is
into the vessel of life

and do you still yet find yourself
treading among a
breeze of souls

impelled toward
a day's worth of
languid summer business

of late breakfasts
of cool swims
of play-in-pines

we boys were gone
to an extravagant leisure
in a harmonic time

seeing God's reflection
in the mirror shards of
mr. hogan's watery garden

while across the way we
heard old mrs. whitney
flirting with all her visitors

and within this small
frame of our world
we were naked to

the sun and the moon
that both burnished
us equally

and there was no difference
between us that meant
anything important

we were elevated
as it were and were
of one coil

but these days deceived us
our innocence laid on a bier
made from the bones of brutes

poor from ignorance
who profited most
from the selling of fears

from the pew and the
pulpit they preyed
and summer was devoured

those days
were rolled up
and her windows shuttered

and the curiosities
of boys muted by
the lash of elders' tongues

we were taught
well to master the
provinces of passion

to keep our heads bowed and
quiet the inquiries that might
yield us to enlightenment

at once we were open
boys floating on a loft
of nature's mysteries

tethered as we were
by nothing more than
our imaginations

all brought to quarrel
by an injection of
terrors and eternal fires

i knew you were you
before you told me
years later

but didn't whisper the
name for it for fear
of impoverishing you

i knew you were not
being you before you
knew it yourself

but didn't put tongue
to it for fear of the
shadow it might cast on me

and so we two boys
who once danced closely
did so less closely now and

learned not to say
what was meant to be
said but bridled by pain

and allowing the world
to tell us that you
were no man if you were that

often in the course
of having grown up
i wandered and wondered

how our unfettered
friendship got filled up
and guilt overspread it

how i could possibly
say i loved you without
the specter of a crucible

between the cross
and the shadow
of misinterpretation

and how i became
a man who gave either
any weight at all

when really the only
true governing laws
are love and passion

and the only minister
ought be that which
drives a man toward art

because then and
only then a man allows
himself to be

and what is a child's
search for meaning is
not lost

to the patronizing peddler
of ancient words whose
true message has been fouled

and had i known
of the farce of it
all i would tell you

was that i loved you
and not fear the pinch
and the poke

of the hate-lovers and
the vile nor would i
succumb to my own

preposterous ghosts
who played with
the mind of a man drugged

and i would have been
nearer you and
perhaps even a small savior

and perhaps not learn
of your death in a foreign
bed alone by the interstate

and had i known that what we shared
as youth among mr. hogan
and mrs. whitney's heavenly harbors

was the truest pastoral
of god's love on earth
i would preach it full

and embrace my
friend and announce you
to this world

'here is a man!'
'here is a man!'
'here is a man!'

Read More