Graphing the National Mood
In the grid of the graph,
The space above begs, pleads us to look,
study the sky of the picture, see available space
above the narrow temples, those black statistical peaks
of the surveyed neglect, the counted crimes,
drunk drivers, persistent cancer, homeless children,
those killed in all wars in a given century,
those killed in the first years of a new century.
That fifty-percent, even-steven skyline
flails a hand like an answering child,
grins the comedy of a face viewed upside down
or the lover’s fleshy visage in missionary position,
makes a more interesting sunset behind mountains,
calls out the infinite ribbon of friendships, rising bread,
birds arranged on a wire, the truth of daylight
regardless of the news or the numbers.
It’s the percentage of women not assaulted,
the men not perpetrating, the evenings completed,
days in the laboratory content to step backward, forward,
the greening of shoots in the burnout zone,
the child’s hand patting the elder’s shoulder,
colors all deriving from the earth, our eyes
rehearsing them to send to the heart’s open door.
For now, what else can we do but be faithful
to the negative of peace that fills the blank? —
knowing it sprouts audacious through the clouds,
is not a void but an entity, a raft of possibility,
straining upward out of the sad majority,
containing the higher news of the day,
yearning to go off the charts.
(from NAPE)
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Come Celebrate Another Early Snake
Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast
of the field which the Lord God had made.
Genesis 3:1
Come celebrate another early snake—
a garden dweller who did not proffer sin.
Say that being also tended earth’s daybreak.
Tell of a woman who did not care to make
a meal of apples and share them with her kin.
Come celebrate another early snake.
Rumor a man who did not know soul-ache
for an odyssey beyond the garden’s din.
Say that being also tended earth’s daybreak.
Speak a serpent whose head man could not break,
nor mouth would bruise a man’s achilles-skin.
Come celebrate another early snake.
A woman who did not have a thirst to slake
in any juice of tree that might have been—
say that being also tended earth’s daybreak.
Know a snake that moved for love’s own sake.
Say for Eden’s viper was a twin.
Come celebrate another early snake.
Say that being also tended earth’s daybreak.
(from THE WONDER IS, 2004)
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Frog
Praise the paedophryne amauensis frog,
who dares to be ten times smaller than its name,
who chose to be undiscovered until 2009,
who is the world’s smallest known vertebrate,
who sings like a bug to his lady love,
who has room for himself and two others on a dime,
who doesn’t choose to sit on a dime,
who doesn’t know what a dime is.
(from PARTICULARS: poems of smallness)
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Knots Now that we understand wars against non-WMD’s, Norths and Souths,
fascists and fanatics, let us commemorate other justifiable causes,
such as La Guerre des Boutons. The French have always had their reasons.
This time was no exception. Parisian tailors began the nasty habit
of making buttons out of thread, little woven nubbins that worked as well
for closure as shell or wood or gold. This infuriated the button-makers guild,
the mafia of Paris, and certainly there was little they could do but go to war.
After requisite shouting, brandishing, and blood, the tailors were prohibited
from forming thread-made buttons. If they so much as sat in the dark fingering
their little thread-balls, they would be fined. But the button-makers pressed.
Imprisonment was surely best. From this trouble we gain insight:
If we need a war, no cause is trite.
(from PARTICULARS: poems of smallness)
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The Nobility of Canes
When you first use the Medicare cane—
the J-cane, the ortho-, or the quad,
Do not let it be your bane.
Pretend you’re walking like a god.
Moses, turning his staff to snake,
King Lear, fleeing sad old age,
Paul Bunyan with his walking stick,
Charles Dickens in a streetside rage;
Lady Astor with a dog’s head handle,
Tenzing Norgay with a trekking pole,
Socrates in the Senate in sandals,
Falstaff tapping the stage in his role;
Shepherd with crook on Christmas night,
Mary Poppins’ ‘brella so handy,
Warrior with rapier flashing bright,
Gangster with prop for sipping brandy.
Do not walk gimpy or out of joint.
Prestige, status, momentum gain.
Clinch it, tap it, whack it, point
when you accept your Medicare cane.
(from THE PARKINSON POEMS)
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Apology for a Non-letter
I am writing to tell you
I will not be writing you
until I can present a united front.
Today I am in the down phase of my moon.
Yesterday the sun was too hot,
the cicadas screaming.
Today the ills are jostling for attention,
as if the silly discomforts are
making a case for themselves.
I am waiting to write you
until these preoccupations subside.
Today the world is spinning upside down,
various cultures saying “What?”
when they tumble into each other.
I will write you a real letter
when I am not biting my lips over this fact.
I will go on and on about our hummingbirds.
I will say we had doughnuts for breakfast.
I will report giant sunflowers in bloom
and tell you a story of an aunt who
reports a roadrunner bringing a lizard to her
at the back door promptly at 7 each a.m.
The truth is, lately four friends have died,
it has not rained for a month,
and we sleep poorly or not at all.
I am postponing inspiration,
hunting for good karma, kindness,
a way to bring you glad tidings of great joy.
I am waiting to write you without statistics,
without bellowing or ranting.
I am hanging back, going about my day,
a conversation with you in my head,
a memory of our three-hour breakfasts,
a shared poem, dogs we named and liked.
Someday the sun will be shining
without malevolence.
Birds will be gathering
at puddles of fresh rain.
I will open my heart to you,
where will be meaningful words
written on quality writing paper,
no dashed-off email
or a clipped text message.
Meanwhile, bear with me until
I can write the following—
as we were trained in 6th grade
to do for the salutatory greeting—
“Hello, how are you? I am fine.”
(from ELDER SKELTER)
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Gravity
Yes, it helps us stick to the earth,
blotting paper or glue that never dries.
Yet its absence is exhilarating,
like Sally Ride’s hair full of body,
or the faces of returning astronauts
echoing eternity as aliens
in the capsule’s doorway.
For those of us remaining on earth,
what we might modestly prefer
is an important piece of paper
afloat at eye level,
crumbs around the table
reverting to the whole loaf,
an antique vase undropped,
a child with no skinned knees,
an elder unscathed by a misstep.
Instead, we remain gumshoes,
sympathizers with Icarus.
We must weigh situations,
drag toward solutions, understand
that the film cannot be reversed.
What’s to do short
of breaking the bonds of earth?
Let us observe the trees, ancients
whose roots capitalize downward,
how small animals are not afraid
of the magnetism of their lairs.
Let us credit Newton for the marriage
of celestial bodies and apples falling.
Feeling the knock of moonlight at a window,
or the suck of high tide sifting our toes,
everything tended, all matter soothed
with strange logic, let us bless
the pull that bids us lie down each night,
gravitate toward being embraced,
first by the earth, then by each other.
(from Texas Poetry 8) |
