For ShirleyB*


Feel your heartbeat quicken
For these pasta-salad days:
I am bringing chicken.

Bulging bellies thicken
Laden with crab hollandaise.
Feel your heartbeat quicken.

Sweet Siobhan seems stricken
By the puddings and soufflés.
(I am bringing chicken.)

Insert thy toothpick in
Anastasia’s canapés:
Feel your heartbeat quicken.

Beatrice (she’s Wiccan)
Brought a heap of warm beignets;
I am bringing chicken.

Jealousy shall sicken
Those who brought their best entrées--
Feel your heartbeat quicken:
I am bringing chicken!

Come build me a fire
And write all my names
Across the dancing flames

So gladly I will
Sing all thine until
In silence I retire

For Lori*

          I

Especially in days of youth and vigor
I rose, a tower struck of stone or oak
When challenge grew, I found myself the bigger
My enemies would tremble when I spoke

I trod the land afire and oceans parted
None alive could sway me from my course
I roared my song and mountain ranges started
And bowed their heads to this unbidden force.

Swift and bold and heartless, cruel and clever
I needed none to carry me to war
But nothing young still blossoms young for ever
And thus far shall ye travel, and no more.

Horizons yet expand beyond perception
The Universe will e’er exceed my pace
My greatness spawned from my own preconception
Was always but a speck on Nature’s face.

I could not carve a dent on History’s pages
But I could scrawl a message on this stone
The brilliance of the scientists and sages
Shows how flickering and faint the light I’ve shown.
But when you
Continue
To coil ‘round
My sinew
I understand my strength is not my own
Standing straight, I play the Tiger’s part
And I will find my solace in your heart.


          II

I know that I have nothing to regret here
I cannot rue my selfishness and pomp
It’s obvious, though, now, that those I’ve met here
Have made me more than all my snort and stomp

My purpose once to trump my own existence
Now to carry those who’ve shown me grace
Who, through their kindness and their great persistence
Have taught me brand new wonders in this place.

The earth is hard and sometimes unforgiving
Terrors will beset us, every one
The warmth of life is only for the living
And live we must until the day is done.

Time wears down the sturdiest of towers
And dying now (but dying in my boots)
Hate not the relentlessness of hours
That shake the sturdy oak unto its roots.

Immune to howls of ‘but’ and ‘oh if only’s
Hardening, inordinately brave
But how these days have grinded up my bonesies
My hands reach feebly as if from the grave
But often
I’ll soften
And breathe through
The coffin
I’ll live on nought but everything I gave
And ever shall I own the Tiger’s part;
And you will find my wreckage in your heart.


          III

The castles I have stormed and forts I’ve taken
Which fly my flag for now and all their days
Hail me, but in title are mistaken
To say mine is to hallow yours in praise.

Each of us has private ghosts to grapple
Secret depths that everybody delves
But in the quiet of our private chapel
We are made of sterner stuff than just our selves.

A thousand men I’ve known and loved have made me
Your stone is that which sharpened up my spear
On a bed of soft green grass I’ve laid me
That you’ve watered and you’ve weeded for me here.

Together we construct our sacred stories
Hand in hand we shore up each new song
We revel now together in our glories
And a thousand men I can now help make strong.

Each of us, a thousand rush to battle,
Defeated still at times, and yet we try;
And cower not at that unholy rattle
As lightning tears its strip across the sky.
But under
The thunder
We still weep
And wonder
At the storms that we can weather, you and I,
And together play the Tiger’s part,
And I will find my refuge in your heart.

Fred,
you can't say that simply because
you haven't been there before
means it's not there.

wait, Fred
come back

She turned her face and moved away
But brief light on her countenance
Her gentle features did display
A moment there, and never since.
What saw I then?  A rosy cheek
As smooth as cream, a moonlit brow
Creased as if in thought, and now
Ruddy lips part as to speak.
But not to me!  I cannot spy
The one whom Providence allowed
Her comp’ny; nor any more descry
That angelic face amongst the crowd:
A hand of grace so quickly gloved
That could or could not soothe the beast
A glimpse of beauty, sure at least
It was, or was not, my beloved.

The image lingers, then is gone
Fading, as image is wont to do.
What remains, a warmth of feeling
Ringing like the carillon
Across sun-dappled pastures pealing:
A glance that lit the world like dawn,
And hopeless hope that again we two
Will meet, perhaps, one day, further on.

For Shelby*

          I

O cover the gable in thistle
Let this place become unknown to all
To us only may this place be holy;
Let the moss wrap it up like a shawl.

Let the darkness prevent eyes from seeing
And hearts from remembering when
And the sun hide her grand face, agreeing
That no-one shall find it again.

Let the vines and the beetles crawl slowly
Devouring all semblance of worth;
O cover the gable in thistle
And draw it all back to the earth.


          II

Once this was a temple unfettered.
My heart and hers wandered free,
Free from Time’s shadow and terror;
Nothing would tear her from me.

My spirit was hers for the sculpting,
She crafted my soul by her hand;
Prancing and gasping and gulping
We devoured the joy of this land.

Never a footstep in error
And every omen a boon--
Once this was a temple unfettered;
A monument now to my ruin.


          III

This is the place where I carried her
And swore to protect her from harm;
Here her warm breath was my staple,
Here her bright eye was my charm.

Though the fortunes of fate might assail her
I am her aegis and shield
Unswerving, my love cannot fail her
‘Til the last of my strength shall I yield

See, on the hill, the black maple
And the wink of the rope’s one good eye
This is the place where I buried her
And yonder the hill where I die.