1.

A star-shaped
patch of snow,
achingly white,
rests against the base
of the little white
pine, wrapped
in glittering
golds and reds, gifts
for the Christ Child.

No claw or paw
or beak or wing
has touched the snow.
Only a hidden pitch
of grass pushes
it skyward.

It shirks
its shrinkage
north
of the pine.
It will not
winnow until
the bright star burns.

I pass the snow
and think of nothing.

2.

Lightning split
the hide
of the 80-year-old
oak that shaded
our little tan house
each summer.

Its bark ripped
apart like
wallpaper,
life leeching out
of its crooked limbs
in sap-soaked
streams of sorrow,
making room
for the little white pine
to thrive
in the dead of winter.

Nature is not
our friend.

3.

The pine prays to preserve
some piece of the oak
I used to love. Its needles,
like shark’s teeth,
fend off friend and foe
alike, granting it
the right to grow
wherever it likes,
even here,
at the foot of giants.

Dead, the pin oak loans
its beauty to no one,
boasts only of its hard,
straight wood,
an abiding abode
for birds and squirrels
and barking boys.

I climb to its top
each Christmas,
straining toward
the Epiphany star.

The tree sways, and
I think of nothing.

 4.

The burgeoning pine
pines for such power.
You cannot cut it
without exposing
its darkened knots,
like aging spots
on my hands
and face.

It rises bright with
anemone-like cones
dappled on its coat
of single color:
      evergreen,
      ever young.
      Ever gone,
my pilgrim oak.

I stretch toward the star
of Bethlehem,
dreaming my way
to Heaven, saying No
to the punishing
star of snow below.
Hanging high
above the Earth,
I sense the Christ Child
in my branches.

Wet, wild grasses
brush His cradle,
push me skyward,
His star my home.

William Blake's Ancient of Days
casts down atomic-yellow rays
of ever-shimmering light.

Coal-scuttled clouds vie
for dominion in the dusky sky,
majestically darkening into no-longer night.

On the desert floor, barren and warm,
recumbent dunes lie like sleeping women,
restless and turning.

Cacti stand sentinel over unearthly silence.

Gold limns the crests of the dunes.
Muted light paints the sand a once-fiery ocher.

All this passes for isolation in the world,
a cosmic confusion of identity,

Until the entire tableau passes through its stage
of equilibrium, passes through me like liquid.

No day, no night carries the bundle
on the road to enlightenment.

I peer at the synthesis, bemused.
Suddenly, Satori!

Eternal Now calls
time grasps infinity
all rivers flow upward

Death comes to Everyman sooner or late.
You can’t change the days of the life you’ve led.
Some worry, some pray, gripped by anguish, fate.
Some scurry past problems, all in their head.
Philosophy or Art their yearnings sate.
God of the gaps brings others daily bread.
If nothing’s the end, then nothing is great.
Socrates stayed calm on life after death:
Deep sleep or society would await.
Christ died in torment, his last, living breath.
If we believe or not, our hopes abate
At the gaping grave soon filled with fresh earth.
Nature seems too real; supernature’s late.
Best live your life as if already dead.

Apples fall from the tree
behind the Swiss chalet.
They fall through me as
shadows climb and crest
Wetterhorn Mountain,
crowned by rocky horns
borne from Michelangelo's
"Moses." Horns of brilliance
and power, horns of shining
light that passes through me
into the shadows of the sun-stained
mountain, whose horns turn,
twist and fall through me
into the scattered piles
of apples plopping
onto the neon green grass.
Apples tumble through me
as I pass into the silence
within the silence that beckons
from the mountaintops. I am
the fruit of darkness and light,
fruit of the horn of the divine,
a son of Moses seeking exodus
beneath this rocky band of ragged peaks.

I hurriedly push past myself,
watching my body from above,
feinting with consciousness,
fainting into the Spanish black.

Velazquez's "Las Meninas"
jack-hammers a tunnel
of ek-stasis, pulling me into
the painter's dark studio,

weighed down by overwhelming
curtains, curtailing the senses'
sense of majesty and control.
This is not trompe l'oeil. This is

tricking the soul into the artifice
of the palette, of paint on board,
of black that illumines perfect
placement: the spectator on the floor.

Stendhal's sensitivity is no virtue
or vice. It suckles the sublime,
sated on illusion, art for art's sake,
delivering a blow to the solar plexus.

I gasp as my body trembles at tremors
of terror, annunciations of angels
bearing paintbrushes as paltry wings.
Their back feathers stained a Spanish black.

Painting owns no one, owes no one
comfort or joy or pedantic instruction.
The cherubs in the foreground radiate
innocence, wonder, humanity's blank heart.

At my feet, my body wriggles skyward,
wrenches for a transplant. Paint on it
Valazquez's black goatee, then part
the velvet curtains. I will rise to new life.

Faith overcomes all, a gift
of the Spirit. Let us hold fast to it, like Job.
Let us lean not on our own understanding,
but cling to the mighty bulwarks
of Your everlasting mercy.

is in the cards, some say.
But I never accepted the deal.
I took my life into my own hands.
I took my life, striking a lethal blow
to Ted Hughes' heart. Infidelity lay
in the cards for him. I never turned
them over, knowing what I might find.

Love is the thing with feathers
-- it flies to the poet's song --
straight to the heart of God.

(for Jim Harrison)

poetry is no great solace
alone in my montana cabin
with my faithful hunting dogs
who still don't know me by name
a bottle of 1976 Chateau Mouton Bordeaux
at my left elbow
a meal fit for a gourmand prince set before me
my back blisters in mutant patterns
of unease
there is no sun to burn them away
outside a three-day blow rattles
the hinges
a razor sharp mountain trembles
the wind yearns for my undoing
i have unraveled my medicine bag
beads of healing scatter across the floor
one more manuscript blossoms
is the desiccated orchard
my heart gives way
slumped over my ancient typewriter
i fail to complete the final phrase

The gibbous moon hangs over the Earth,
death descending upon a dying reality.
A shovelful of ashes,
this dance of futility,
nothing left behind but fallen soot.

Dearest brother, we are at the last point,
it seems, and who would have expected
such a ridiculous finale,
this eschatological confrontation
with the black summit of existence?

O impotent little man,
in your melancholy selfishness,
how you distress me
with this great, surging silence,
the oppressiveness of solitude.

Despair is disease,
but I can no longer mourn you.
Your remorse is indulgent,
self-forgiving, superstitious.

The pain of relentless doom
in no way ennobles you;
your retreat into suffering
but a complicity in guilt.

Stretch forth your wretched head to
say the words you cannot say;
a contortion in the throat,
a choking on each syllable.

Do not be deceived.

Beyond all else
there is nothing more human,
than these last, few moments
of the searing white heat
of the God we cannot prove,
of the broken mirror image
of your imminent demise.

Passing beyond all morality
oozes the wound of your existence:
to decry the winnowing of meaning,
the destruction of freedom,
the end of everything.

Night swells with the sweet soarings of tenors.
Beauty floats lightly across the airwaves.
Santa Croce looms as Spirit’s center.
Dante’s Commedia he gave away.
Today he reigns as Italy’s mentor.
Great art leads the way out of Plato’s cave.
Michelangelo falters and splinters
His sculptures. Bright poems to young men he saves.
David stands tall through the chills of winter.
With Goliath’s cold head in hand, he raves.
Florence ferments like wine from a vintner.
It tastes of an angelic chardonnay.
Remember the city’s ancient cantor.
He yodels and chants of its marbled fame.

1.

You descend through night's black skies
an elongated bullet suffused with blue light
from your window the cityscape lumbers awake
like a crab side-stepping fires of flotsam

Your soft shell flashes with pinpricks of stars
plucked from your earth-bound parapets
no one says "castle" or "torches" anymore
yet how you long for the glow of the past

Generators churn energy to seal you
to brothers in arms guarding the runway
your ears pop as you widen your mouth
and swallow the moon hanging by a string

2.

How you love this desert blanketed in sand
how you wrap it around your troubles and sigh
how it obscures the mist of your crab nebula
how love outlasts the sky like a fresco

Reach across the aisle to your sister in chains
plumb the depths of her quiet revery she knows
what light obscures she knows the cost of darkness
tell her night slakes every thirst in the romance of light

The crab sleeps half-buried in sand it stirs only
to shift positions even sleep cannot ease its pain
you know now that this flight remains in shadow
O how light loves the drama of our checkerboard lives

The tawny ridge bulges above the tree line:
sleeping serpent too sly to strike.

The road swerves and curves and dips and rises.
I must stay off balance to survive it.

A chorus of desiccated trees prays for rain.
The earth laughs in repose. Stones of pain.

From a fence post, a falcon thrusts into the wind,
clutches my heart as prey, flings it past tall grasses.

A white-rock trail angles hard toward the clouds.
The slightest breeze will tatter them.

The serpent stirs, stretches, slumbers still,
as I lumber north to Council Grove.

The road straightens on its own.
Who dares call these hills his home?

A wise painter once said to me,
"Make every day New Year's Day;
resolve to start each new day
afresh, full of possibilities."

I retreated to my Stoic cave,
meditating on 2019, and all
its dark, ****** turmoil. I vowed to start
each day fresh in inwardness, beauty, peace.

The green light still shines
at the end of the dock.
It is the deep color of my regret.
Daisy, my first love, now married
to another, casting me out, alone.

My persona, so sharp, proves to be a sheer lie.
Violence and death mar my lavish lifestyle.
I have realized the American dream
in all its purported glory. Only to
discover how fraudulent and empty it is.

Mirrored mansions tower across the bay.
We look past each other,
Daisy and I. How I continually
long for her, willing to sacrifice all,
yet how far she remains out of reach.

Deception and defeat haunt me like Furies.
Without lasting love, I have achieved nothing.
The green light still glows on the horizon.
I stare longingly at it and know that
soon I will see nothing but doom.

Enervated, unenlightened,
I trudge the path to the Cirque
of Gavarnie, lodged high
amid the French Pyrenees.

Sheep cluster on the *****.
Mud and muck mar my way.
I must will myself forward,
weary unto death,
yet soon to rise up above the Earth.

moon white face
fiery red lips
perfect female beauty blooms

1.

Dust devils swirl on the desert floor.
Saguaro cacti raise their arms
in praise or an invisible stick-up.
No gunman looms on the horizon.

My father drives us home
from California to Kansas
in a brown '61 Chevy station wagon.
His goal: to get there as soon as possible.

My brother and I bake in the back seat.
The air-conditioning freezes over.
We roll down the windows to a stifling
wall of heat. Soon, we will cross

Death Valley, already 111 degrees
at mid-morning. I squirm and worry
that we do not have enough
gas to make it. We are the only car

on the road. Emptiness breeds around us.
My imagination peoples the void
with phantoms, characters from comic books
and drugstore Westerns. Ghosts hover over

my memory now; they hold the key
to my travels. I must invoke them again.
I hear the rumble of the American Southwest:
canyons and buttes, mountains and hoodoos.

2.

On the outskirts of the Grand Canyon,
my father searches in vain for a place to stay.
All motels teem with the smell of curry --
for him, the stench of war in Calcutta,
anathema to a young Army Seabee
stationed leagues and leagues from home.

The neon light flashing VACANCY over
the whitewashed, A-frame office
might as well say NO. We do not stop.
We sleep in the car, the four of us
restive and uncomfortable, awakened
at last by sunrise over the North Rim.

A sage-scented day has begun
under a yellow-lavender sky.
There are still miles and miles to go,
as Frost put it. But something changed
in the night. Barreling down the barren blacktop
we have already gotten there, absence our new home.

Two glaciers that once kneaded the neck
of this tiny tourist town have bled
into the mountain -- now twin rivulets of ice
ambling aimlessly up the rocky, grey *****.
Robbed of its tourist prize, the town shrinks
like snow in the scalding sun.
I have not come for the snow nor the ice,
but for the warm-blooded Alpine splendor,
which cannot recede from this isolated valley.
The ghosts of glaciers haunt my path up the hills
into the belly of these bulky peaks, cemented to the earth
like pillars of stone sculpting themselves.
Tourists must settle for such shrunken beauty,
still as intoxicating as new wine.

Two glaciers that once kneaded the neck
of this tiny tourist town have bled
into the mountain -- now twin rivulets of ice
ambling aimlessly up the rocky, grey *****.

Robbed of its tourist prize, the town shrinks
like snow in the scalding sun.
I have not come for the snow nor the ice,
but for the warm-blooded Alpine splendor,
which cannot recede from this isolated valley.

The ghosts of glaciers haunt my path up the hills
into the belly of these bulky peaks, cemented to the earth
like pillars of stone sculpting themselves.
Tourists must settle for such shrunken beauty,
still as intoxicating as new wine.

I follow the droppings-dappled sheep trails of Exmoor, veering right
toward the hills. A ***** white flock nuzzles the close-cropped
ground, but gnaws only humid air. In the dim light of evening,
a presence looms on the uneven horizon: the world of my
future and former selves, fitfully revealed and obscured,
first liberated from, then confined to the clinging veil of illusion
that clutches the dark English countryside, legacy of my birth.

I detect through the flattened corona of the monarch moon
outlines of a troupe of Shakespearean ghosts tottering my way.
Revealed and obscured, like questions in Hamlet's tragedy, they
mime the news of my heritage and inheritance: sin and ambition,
deception and pride. Emptiness reigns within me like a ruthless
queen, ****** and shorn, painted an otherworldly white: Elizabeth.

All this once would have been enough, but the soaked smell
of sheep reminds me I am still alone. No one comes to England
for solace or comfort. Yet the recipe for lasting identity, for a
significance of self, abides in the dark hills of Exmoor, launched
from sodden sheep trails, trammeled by a gaggle of ghosts who
juggle the jewels of Elizabeth's crown, sparkling in fog before me.

Giant cottonwoods rake
the sky, slake their thirst
below dried-out creek beds.
The sunbaked soil fractures
into pieces of a shattered ***.

Octopus roots root out secret
channels underground, unclogged
by fish, debris or mythological
creatures rising from the rocks.
Trunks molt flattened flagstones

of bark, ragged chunks more gray
than brown, more a coat of armor
for battered torsos, more a pillar of steel
for massive, chipped legs. O Time! Age too
long, and bushy tops topple into the creek.

Leaves rustle like muted cymbals.
Still, there is much to celebrate in such
fearless longevity: Do not Heracles-sized
branches veer off in heroic Y’s that
claw their way higher and higher until

they burst through the clouds, free from
the world, frowning down upon it in
verdant condescension? I cannot answer.
Trees soar in silence. I scoot along the creek
bed, scrambling for arrowheads, for some sign

of human presence that shows I, too, belong among
the giants, shooting my roots underground,
rising up as an arbor above the dried-out
shadows, grasping for the sweet sap of longevity.
I shall bite off a bit of bark and bid the world adieu.

Brittle branches claw
the blue-gray sky.
No figs wiggle in the tree.
Barren like Old Testament
women, clinging to their ancient
age, bereft of an heir to bless.

Jesus curses the tree's
emptiness: Bear fruit
of die! Who sinned?
the disciples ask: the tree
or its seedlings? Neither,
Jesus, proclaims. I curse

to show the glory of God.
As always, his hearers stand
amazed, not understanding,
stomachs growling for figs.
None to be had, they march on,
hoping to evade God's glory.

Here, atop a rocky crag,
walking stick in hand,
I survey the swirling
mountains of fog,
a vast gray-white panoply
of vanishing peaks,
blanketed in clouds
doomed to dissipate
in the returning sun.

But no heat ever comes,
leaving me wrapped
in my moody solitude,
eyeing the outcroppings
of ragged stone, reveling
at summiting the top of Europe,
scaling the sluggish
slopes of transcendence.

This is what Nietzsche
hailed as self-overcoming,
rising to the grand height
of perfect power and control:
my will alone uber alles.
Aswirl, I order the horizon
to fulfill my desire, to shift
into view all that is missing
from my finite vista -- the glory
of nature -- only to have it
swallowed up instantly
in the menacing shadows
and mists of immovable stone.

A troop of goats trot triple-time down a valley road,
a machinery of bells threshing the mountain air.
Little breaks the silence of the rural dukedom where
we reside. What does, gains immediate notice.

It is the happening of the moment passing through
to another place to pasture, the *******
Of the seasons. Though meadows burst with Kelly green,
and no trees have dropped their leaves, it is
autumn’s inaugural, where clouds hug the earth, mountains
curry themselves, goats scurry to new homes.

We, too, have shifted homes for a respite from the mundane.
The new now advertises surprise: This will not
appear elsewhere, will not last long enough to forget
where we came. With time, we follow the goatherd’s
abrupt call and hope to be rewarded with a golden bell.

The psychiatrist declares
himself pleased with my progress.
I am stable, hypomanic,
glibly articulate.
My mood feeds
on poetry and travel,
the exultation of grace.

I can face
the limits of my fate,
Ravenous for glory,
gluttonous for Art.
No work in retirement:
creativity is no work.

Outside, the lawn shines
In neon greens.
Irises, poppies break
The color plane.
Beauty, too, is no work
For the Creator.

Unlike Lowell,
My mind is quite right.

Like flowers on a hillside, mountains turn their faces each day
to follow the sun. The radiance from their foreheads proves
irresistible. It is Agamemnon’s golden death mask. By afternoon,
the gray countenance beneath the finely hammered gold
turns green. The peaks are envious of the blumen that beam
the same brilliance throughout the day

Mountains vainly yearn to reproduce themselves.
Avalanches create one pseudo-answer. But they
are messy, ugly, out of control, leaving body after
body in their wake. They destroy life, not create it.
Some mountains have had their DNA tested --
double helix of stone incapable of even rudimentary
cell division. Solitude, loneliness attack
their dreams. They sternly stand guard over the very
flowers they envy. They are virtually immovable, all-powerful.

Weather wraps itself around their mute witness, stirring
up storms. Titanic overseers, they claim a streak of divinity in their
gray strata. No one dares question their beliefs. But I do,
whenever Gatsby’s green light turns pink. The shame they show
reflects hubris, overreaching their place in creation. What
they envy is not color, motion or beauty. They lust for life.

Pink turns to fiery orange. Not only is their DNA lacking,
but so is the color of sustenance: blue. By nightfall, blue turns to
black indigo. Mountains crane their heads together, bow to
the missing sun and dream about biology. But they know from
whispers of those who have climbed them that they are out
of their element. The wind gusts; they sigh. Below, deer graze
in quiet, green pastures. It restoreth their souls.

Berries and cream, Gruyeres’ eternal taste,
Cream thick as wooden bowls you pour it from.
The mountains rise outside the village gate.
The castle, past the bridge, bids all to come.
Walls surround the square, the well, the worn slate.
Outside them gleam the green, vast pastures, some
As fresh as cream; well worth the bovine wait.
Turrets, arches, beams: elements of form.
Traipse the cobblestone at an uphill gait.
Shops sell crafts, art to the beat of Swiss drums.
Time suspends its march: the cadence of fate.
Here, the Middle Ages live on and on.
Gruyeres offers tranquil treasures that sate
The traveler’s wish for a world full of charm.

Berries and cream, Gruyeres’ eternal taste,
Cream thick as wooden bowls you pour it from.
The mountains rise outside the village gate.
The castle, past the bridge, bids all to come.
Walls surround the square, the well, the worn slate.
Outside them gleam the green, vast pastures, some
As fresh as cream; well worth the bovine wait.
Turrets, arches, beams: elements of form.
Traipse the cobblestone at an uphill gait.
Shops sell crafts, art to the beat of Swiss drums.
Time suspends its march: the cadence of fate.
Here, the Middle Ages live on and on.
Gruyeres offers tranquil treasures that sate
The traveler’s wish for a world full of charm.

I saunter through the silent square alone.
The cobblestones gleam from the misty moon.
Midnight, or so I think; the time’s unknown.
A trip to Bruges, where flower boxes bloom,
And canals spout beauty to make you groan
In awe of how the Lowlands can swoon
Under simple charms: an enlightened tone.
In the moonlight, St. Bartholomew’s looms,
A ship for lost souls; its deck made of stone.
Frans Hals, the portrait painter, will sail soon
To the studio where his art was honed.
Haarlem has a legacy, hid at noon;
Only in the dark have its treasures shone.
As dawn nears, the great reversal comes soon.

The Man in the Moon
stares down at us,
craggy and cryptic,
a closet curmudgeon.

His face shows all
the bumps and wrinkles
of the lunar surface:
cosmic age spots, growing older.

He is isolated, stuck circling
the Earth all day and night,
cast into outer darkness,
blinded routinely by the sun.

What he doesn't show
is his vast loneliness. Until,
that is, he discovered a gift left
behind from the moon landing:

A huge, cuddly hare, hopping
over moon rocks, flopping
its big furry ears. O the Man in
the Moon is lonely no more.

1.
Gentle waves wash across
the tawny, packed sand,
as crab skeletons litter
our path toward Haystack.
The gulls pick at the shells,
praying for any last,
clinging piece of meat.
Even fully alive, the *****
make for small morsels.
What lies under water
may be tastier and more
nutritious to the poor,
omnivorous marine predator.

2.
Haystack looms, a giant
half-cone shadow pressed against
the lavender-pink, dusky sky.
Barnacles and starfish cling
to its face; amid the crags
a touch of color: red-orange, light gray.
A landmark, icon, natural wonder,
Haystack forms a filled-in archway
to pass through – or around –
on your way back to more
wave-washed beaches and tiny *****.

3.
It’s not doing that counts here,
but being; the behemoth
black rock overshadowing
humans in the distance, as tiny as *****.
National treasure, natural marvel,
Haystack exists purely to be seen
from all watery perspectives.
Close or up, far or down, its bulk
blocks the way for the beach’s
minuscule inhabitants,
scurrying homeward,
as waves scour the shoreline
time and again — their backs turned
to the big, black beacon
that never shines, but only absorbs
the light meant for souls lost at sea.

1.
I cling to the rigging
of the sleek, black ship
as it speeds toward
Crete, seeding the waves
of the wine-dark sea
with my hopes of heroism,
with my desire to refine
my strength in battle,
my cunning in pursuit
of prey, my courage
in the face of inexorable death.

Immortality awaits
the victor, or so
I profess. It is my Greek
code of honor to turn
glory into deathlessness,
to sow the whirlwind
and reap calm breezes
of brotherhood with
the gods, to revel
in repose at their table,
to feed on the sweet
satisfaction of becoming
who I am.

I am favored
in this relentless
struggle to prove
my prowess and
resolve, my power
to subdue my foes,
to dominate --
in this, my seventh
labor -- the sire
of the Minotaur.
I arrived on Crete
because King Eurystheus
of Tiryns has imposed
this labor to try to
assuage Olympus’
Queen Hera's
irrational hatred of me.
I must continue to atone
for the sins she caused me
to commit. With my entire
family slain, she owes
me everything.

2.
As the muscular
offspring of Zeus --
Hera's wily, randy
husband -- and an
ordinary mortal, I stride
through the world
half-man and half-god,
a living mockery of
the Olympian purity
that Hera so hysterically
cherishes: a mirror
that reflects nothing but
delusion, nothing but
a buzzing hive of grandiose,
self-comforting lies.

The gods don their
pearl-white tunics
to convince themselves
they are made
of nothing short
of pure glory, pure
eminence, despite their
blatant self-indulgence
and moral laxness,
despite their privileged
violation of cosmic laws,
despite persisting
in their perverse ploys
without the slightest
twinge of conscience --  
drunk on the ambrosia
of boundless power,
the ironic gift of my
unheralded birth.

3.
I know I possess
the cunning to have
prevented
the Minotaur
from ever pawing
the plowed-over earth,
from ever charging
some unwitting
victim frozen in fear.

I could have
kept this monster
from being born,
from embracing  
the rosy-fingered
dawn of existence.
I could have
saved Theseus, my
fellow Greek hero,
from his backbreaking
battle with the bull-
headed mutant.

Indeed, I could have
stopped altogether
his labyrinthine
struggle to **** the mighty
Minotaur, to curb its
cannibalistic tastes
for maidens and
young boys, to undo
its enormous
lusts and tame them
into docility,
dissonance and death.

If only I had arrived
in Crete sooner,
before this, my latest
labor, stuck in the stream
of imperious judgments
against my fatal fit of madness
that ended my innocent
family’s all too precious lives.

4.
I proudly claim my
birthright as a son
of Zeus and a worldly
woman. Call it the outcome
of Olympian adultery,
an act that ignited
Hera's intractable
jealousy and rage
until she inflicted
insanity on me
and perverted my
innate powers
and strength,
turning them  
against my wife
and daughters,
as I attacked them
as if they were
the Nemian lion.

Torn by grief,
I quietly returned
to my right mind,
mourning my foul
deeds and crying
out against the divine
injustice of Hera’s petty
interference. And all this
because of Zeus’ calculating
dalliance. All this to satisfy
a moment’s passion
that swiftly spawned
eternal consequences.

5.
Now I am bound
to capture the
Cretan Bull, sire
of the Minotaur
and source of
endless chaos
on the fertile
island of Crete.
In its own species
of madness, the bull
has uprooted crops,
and torn down
walls. All semblance
of order has
vanished in its  
destructive wake.
King Minos of Crete
demands that it
be immediately
removed and
banished
from his sight.

So my strategy
is simple: use
my secret stealth
to wrangle the bull
from behind
and strangle it
to the brink of
death. Unconscious,
it proves such an easy
package to dislodge
and ship back
to Tiryns, where
King Euryhtheus
plans to sacrifice
it to Hera. But she
refuses such piety.
She seems sworn
to deny any
trace of my glory,
to devour any shred
of my pride.

If only I could cut
her out of my name.
I would wander
the world incognito.
I would gladly deny my
identity, happily
forsake my fate,
and in the depths
of dark anonymity
unbecome who I am.

The delicate smell of marzipan wafts
through the room, as the nuns push
their specialty candy through an
ancient iron gate. I pass them
a handful of euros in exchange.

Inside the entrance to the cloister,
we move in slanted lines of shadow.
Outside, the sun, blindingly bright,
awakens the day to everything
but quiet and contemplation.

How sweet these primal gestalts
of darkness and light. Secular
and sacred. Prayerful and profane.
You cannot invent such memories;
they simply spill through the maker’s
hands – not like sand, but like clay
begging to be subtly shaped into
a figurine.

First the noses, then the arms break,
like fragments of an antique statue.
The pieces vanish, but you can retrieve
them, hold them spellbound, pull them
from the depths of forgetfulness.
The past does not exist; it’s true,
except in this powerful kind of willfulness
that holds on to brokenness no matter what.

Time moves like thoughts move,
unidentifiable in the body. Time moves
on its own, eternally trapped in the present.
Here, now, is all we can say.

We can resent time, mourn its passing,
but we can never stop it from moving.
The eternal now that moves like cattle
across a field, like clouds across the
lavender sky. Once we aim to taste
the marzipan again, it flees before our eyes.

Kinderdijk stands like thimbles in the dusk.
The sky, thick with grey, settles on the ****.
Holland is its stereotypes, we trust.
Windmills sail in the breeze, near canals tight
With straight, flat flows. Tulips bloom in the dust.
Great wheels of cheese roll through the streets at night.
Bridges rear up over canals, can’t rust
From the waterways thirsty tourists like.
Here, life is keenly measured, never brusque.
The Dutch pursued this pace since thrifty tykes.
Their simple, ordered pleasures do not rush
The spirit of progress, shining in light.
Turning, ever turning, the windmills must
Show the elegant face of Kinderdijk.

1.
Pink carnations bloom
in stenciled flower boxes,
looking down on Bruges'
grand canal. Locals say they
live in the Venice of the north.

Tourists speed by on guided
boat trips, rigid, peering straight
ahead. The carnations sigh:
They could die from such
indifference. The boat leaves

a white, frothy wake, which
whisks away all the passengers'
woes until the next hour of
ennui sets in, restless for
distraction. I see no need

for speed as I wander the cobbled
lanes laid from the 13th century
to the present age, signs of Bruges'
vast prosperity and pride as the
exquisite lace capital of the world.

Luxurious wares for a luxurious price,
more valuable than the goods
the city once traded as the bustling,
commercial hub of northwestern Europe.
Sundries bought and sold at bargain rates.

I have not come here for
commerce, but for Bruges' late
medieval beauty, for its religious
miracles, for the marvelous making
magic of Belgian lace. All legendary,

all fine, all the subject of tall
tales, of tattling to history about
what can be found and what
can be lost. All draped in gold leaf,
expertly pressed into regal crowns.

2.
After a hurried and forced
lunch break, I scamper to the
Basilica of the Holy Blood
in search of a glimpse of the vial
of, well, said blood with its cloth

that Joseph of Arimathea used to wipe the
blood from the body of Christ. Preserved
for centuries, the vial and cloth made their way
to Bruges from the Holy Land during one
of the unholy wars of the cruel Crusaders.

I have to push my way through throngs
of the faithful to reach the room with the
relic that has mesmerized travelers for
centuries after centuries since the Crucifixion.
Like so many vessels of the supernatural,

the vial disappoints. How can one verify
the holy, the sacred, the miraculous?
The divine element eludes us, remains
hidden, designed to try our faith, to test it,
to measure it against the rule of genuine

devotion. Satisfied that my presuppositions
have proven sound, I squeeze back onto
the streets of the main square and head past
the edge of town toward the windmills and ****,
holding back the sea and its myriad mysteries.

3.
The windmills whisper, "Holland," while the
****, stoic and stolid, remains mute. Sails
whoosh above me, ready to fly from the
Earth, ready to slice the wind into pieces
before it swoops past the city tower and onto

the square. The breeze bears a message that
I can barely decipher. Written in code, it declares
something about the efficacy of the Holy
Blood as a salvific force to bring peace
to the true believer, as open as the windmills

to the wooing of the Spirit. My antennae rise up,
although nothing more seems said. That is
not possible. So I hike the **** of the ****
toward the gray, billowing clouds that herald
their own message of rain, of storm, of baptism.

Such struggles sting more severely than
ennui: Conflicts lack resolution. Resolve leans
on the arms of faith. Arms carry the weight
of the world. The world whimpers in a
whirlwind stirred up by muscular clouds

of doom. These dark thoughts hound me
as I make my way back to the cobbled
streets and the security of the familiar city.
Soon I stumble onto a paint-peeling
open door boldly illuminated by a long

rectangle of light that washes over a group
of older women, their bobbins and
thread and rapid-fire fingers flashing
in a blur across their velvet pillows,
creating magic with skill and aplomb:

the confidence of hard-earned experience.
There are no presuppositions against such art.
Lace making resounds with the spirit of
blessed endurance, with a sanctity of
purpose, a sanity of mind that only

the vial of Holy Blood provides for those
who believe, who see the divine in the failures
of the mundane, who worship a vulnerable deity.
"Only a suffering God can help," Bonhoeffer proclaimed.
The carnations grimly nod, hang their heads and sigh.

1.

Minds break apart at midnight,
piece together in dreamless sleep.

Robert Lowell poaches pen-and-ink
drawings for Life Studies.
Sylvia Plath dons Ariel’s red dress,
but loses Ariadne’s thread.  

Lowell raises For the Union Dead,
mythic monument to his family’s best.
Pigeons decorate it with their ***** mess.
Plath pins a ******* to her chest —  
shockingly pink —
and stands beside the kitchen sink,

Stirring a *** of poet’s gruel.
Madness and death the golden rule
no artistry can break. Not even the careless
reader can take leave of these senses

Once they’re rendered on the page.
Confession doesn’t age well,
as Lowell knows oh so well,
 
unless it suggests more substantial fare,
say, a flannel bathrobe for him to wear
in a Boston psychiatric ward — if he dares.

There’s something wrong with his head.
Crown him Caligula; his lineage has fled.

“What does that have to do with me, Daddy?” Plath artfully whines.
“Fill the tulip jars with red water, not wine,” he replies.
“The bridegroom cometh. Turn off the oven.”
But it is too late. She has met her fate before it predeceases her.

Like a teacher’s pet, she bets her life on a recitation
of Daddy, a term of endearment,
a term of interment in a stark, loveless miscarriage,
a dark, masculine disparagement of her freedom. O Daddy dearest.

Lowell shoots up to salute the younger poet, guessing
she has given the year’s best reading by a girl in red dresses.

At this stage, what does it matter that his “mind’s not right”?
What can he do but give up his right to pray, as every insight
       slips away?

But no Our Father for Plath. For her, the Kingdom comes too late.
Colossal poetry cannot save; the poet raves and raves and raves
       into that dark night.
Turn off the oven, turn out the lights. Daddy, too, is not right.
 
2.

Blake fired his Proverbs of Hell
in the dull, damning kilns
of England’s Industrial Age.

A poet’s no sage, but Lowell earned
his wings when he doctored Blake’s phrase:
“I myself am hell.”

A stone angel directs his descent:

Fortune favors the bold.

Never discount the power of chance.

Affliction of the senses is a gift.

Invisible seeks invisible.

Darkness obscures our limits.

We carry darkness within us.

Anarchy breeds spirit.

Artistry breeds no merit.

Appropriate beauty, at all costs,
whether, man, beast or angel.

3.

Poetry births an artifact of words; we unearth them, and they adhere.
We bury them, and they fall flat — hollow sounds, futile splats,
       prehistoric grunts ground into the ground.

Bathed in lithium and alcohol, here bobs your calling, Robert:
Everything matters; nothing coheres.
Build a shell of a soul on this maxim, a notebook of negation.  
       Grind your axes.

Sanctuaries may crumble, gates may close. Press on. Press on.
Corkscrew your identity into the iambic line; rouse the reader to find
the misleading promise of Eternity in the sonnet, the sonnet,
       the endless sonnet.

For minds lost in madness, tree limbs dangle like kite tails in the wind. No one flies here anymore. Gather reddened kindling while ye may.

What exiles you from the ancients — Homer, Virgil and Horace —
springs from vision, not technique: You lack the requisite blindness.

Absence absents the soul. Here, now, forever, shimmers only presence,
only the present, only Presence: divine, human, animal, marmoreal.
       Skunks, sails, cars and pails. Sing on, O son of New England!

Day by day, failing all, fill your void with fiery
hieroglyphs of verse. Then call your duty done.
 
4.

Behold: You are not the favorite, after all, but Camus’ stranger,
trapped in the blinding sun, stumbling on the burning sand.

Only what dies in you endures.

“Is getting well ever an art,
or art a way to get well?”

The skunks scurry, scavenge and survive far too long for you to answer.

You lie down beside orange fishnets, facing the shore.
At midnight, you will dream of dreamless sleep.

The monks pressed wine for the Pope in Avignon.
The Vatican drank fizzy water.
We tasted hand-squeezed orange juice
and eclairs for our petit-dejeuner.
Breakfast at Mas Vieux was a spiritual affair.
Transubstantiation of goat cheese and bread.
Here, the spirit thrives on mortar and stone.
Ancient walls as thick as oaks.
No town lies in sight: the isolation of prayer.
Old Farm grows a bumper crop of transient souls.
They crunch the gravel, find a body called home.

Calligraphic patterns imprint the sky.
Trees write their names on the wind.

Desert cacti bloom like flowers in a lawn.
Reds and blues spill onto tawny dunes.

I walk at angles to the rising sun.
Scorpions scurry along my way home.

On the flat edge of the horizon
a purple-pink glow beckons me on,
across empty fields dusted with snow.
Trees raise their hands in praise
for the end of this day, plump with possibilities.

I have accomplished nothing.
Yet I turn the lathe one last time,
cutting metal, cutting bone,
with a wound too deep to plumb,
too dark to lighten, transfused
with blood that stains the sun.

Sorrow trails me like a bird dog
sniffing out her prey, startling
quail to take flight. I watch them
pass overhead. I am not a hunter.
They are safe to flee, coveys of comfort.

"The world is too much with us,"
Wordsworth proclaimed. I contemplate
his lament, but see no way out.
Ancient faces watch my route --
aimless, famished, still
seeking out transcendence,
still hungry for God.

I embrace the horizon as it bends.
Purple-pink sky leads me on.

(After Anne Sexton's "The Starry Night")

Van Gogh's "Starry Night"
illumines a damaged heart.
Poetry remains therapy
until the patient is cured.

Pulitzer Prize, parties, men
and accolades galore.
Anne Sexton, the poets' darling,
dances to the darkening sky.
This is how you want to die.

This is how the world ends:
without swirling stars,
without a crescent moon,
stuck alone inside your garage,
door closed, car running.
Inhale the aroma of the blackened night.

Liquid diamonds adorn the sea,
silver sunbursts of brilliance shine
through the waves, living, heaving,
violent jewels of seaweed and paste.

The sky bares its midriff of pale blue
skin, unmarred like a newborn, a marble
dome of sweetness and smoothness,
restless to immerse the nascent dawn in light.

Under the fierce Aegean sun, we saunter
toward Pireas' port, bags packed, supplies
secure, farewells sobbed, to set sail for Spain,
like Odysseus on his makeshift barque.

The journey demands a lifetime of searching
signs, of casting far and wide to escape
the Sirens' enervating songs, anchoring
the helm in darkened caves the size of yurts.

On the hunt for El Greco, the Greek painter
holed up in Toledo, his home away from home,
his haven of elongated, diaphanous figures,
who rise to the clouds, linking heaven and earth.

We owe the Greeks the fat seeds of culture:
philosophy, theater, sculpture for all, democracy
for the fortunate few, women and slaves stuck
in the kitchen pouring libations for ancient sins.

Shades haunt the past, mounting arsenals of guilt
and accusation. The Greek splashes linseed oil on
canvas, erases his debt, dabs an eerie white in the eyes
of threadbare saints, who elevate to everlasting heights.

The immeasurable depth of Being sustains our lament.
The divine radiance is extinguished;
the gods have turned their backs.

All earthly abodes found destitute, unhealing
in the dim twilight of history's
unfolding of the Logos.

And we are left hanging in
the age of the world's dark night.
Long is the turning this side of the abyss.

The remoteness of the Holy discloses its presence;
fugitive gods made manifest
in the acts of godless men.

The inner recalling of those who are most daring
summons forth the surpassing,
an openness to the ineffable.

And in their nameless sorrow all is preserved.

I have been marked by horses
tied to the saddle as they forded
the Colorado River chest deep
in currents carrying me away

I have disappeard in a cloud
of ponies painted black and white
I shudder at their muscular flanks
they nudge me into the corral

I have cheered as a Palamino
pranced down Main Street
my grandfather grandly on board
beauty integrity his hidden strength

I have wept as a horse has died
unceremoniously carted off
will I find him in my glue
will I force the old man to answer Why

Cavernous shadows and clouds encase
the uneven edges of my dream, a dark,
disparate dungeon of beclouded jewels.

No splendor gleams through the pinpoint
gaps. No radiance revels in the penetrating
rays that steadily stalk my internal darkness.

In the deepest center of my dream, I swoon,
wounded by love, which is the light, which
is the Living Flame of Love that sears away

all signs of soot and smudge and stain, all
distorting ripples in the window of the soul,
all disruptive detritus of the dream, its dreaded

diffidence at the prospect of illumination,
of receiving all that it is capable of receiving,
of riding the photons and waves of light

into vast fields of grandeur and affirmation,
of transformation, spilling over with power,
being and virtue, lost in labyrinthine rays

that curve and whirl and roll and plummet and bend
round the center that centers itself outside the circle
of my dream, now flooded with light, an elliptical path

that turns back on itself, leaking through crevices,
slicing up clouds, brimming with the brightest
white, a radiant white aglow with beams of white,

engulfing the bejeweled white that penetrates the center
of the soul, lanced by legions of white, lanced by flaming love,
now penetrated and pinned to the light, until I become the light.

The last breath rattles
in your ribs. The soul
escapes the body --
or so some say.
But the soul survives
only draped in
celestial raiment.

Socrates proclaimed
that death is just a deep
sleep or an introduction
to afterlife society.
Either way, you have
nothing to fear.
Immortality reigns.