The sleepy man at the museum
directed me to the balloons.

Ten out of ten shots went astray
proving my eyes are lame
and so my aim.

The galleries were eerily deserted.
(is people's interest in science flagging?)

I looked down the infinite well
for awhile eternally falling into it
recovering from the realization
they were merely infinite reflections.

The man's smile told he knew from my dazed look
I was lost in the mirror maze.

(Was I stuck in all the wrong exhibits
for my age?)

I got a ticket for the sky in September
finding peace in the dark of the planetarium.

The first bird (bard?) of the morn
I peeped into the salon.

Are you ready mate? I queried.

His eyes were ashes of night
and I doubted his mood.

I should be, he said
your hair is my livelihood.

Make it short I said
top bottom and the sides
and his scissors was Beethoven
soothingly rising and falling
making the sweetest sound
celebrating martyrdom of my hairs
resignedly falling on the ground.

But too soon it was over
and he held the mirror.

Wouldn't a little shorter be fine?

Nope, he smiled
considering your hairline
further recession would be a disaster.

I paid him buying his logic
and like a symphony
skimmed the air merrily.

The acquisition of a son
With an adequate corporeality, albeit with certain caveats,
Certain limitations in terms of progeny and posterity,
Had awaken something in the old man,
Certain forces leading him to the altar
And, subsequently, to the nursery once more
(A second son, brought to bear in the established manner.
With a minimum of drama and fanfare.)
The child was loved, in a rudimentary fashion;
While his flesh-and-blood bona fides were beyond question,
He was a consumer, a thing of constant need
More akin to a hardship than his celebrated half-sibling,
Whose command of the spotlight
Served as a gravitational pull for parental affections.

The old man passed on after a spell,
Hanging on long enough for his second son
To stumble onto the precipice of adulthood
(His mother had hot-footed it out
Almost immediately after the burial,
Choosing to stage-mother her feted stepchild)
Though his fatherly wisdom
Was limited to matters of his craft, his business,
Which was left to the young man, though grudgingly at that,
As a sop, a means of getting shet of two unwanted encumbrances.
He’d proved to have much of the old man’s gift,
Whittling and carving puppets and toys and dolls
(Though with a certain grim fury making it evident to all
That the work was not a labor of love)
Rarely stopping to speak to or even acknowledge his clientele,
Except if one of them happened to repeat the time-worn chestnut
That the toy chooses the child, in which case he laughed harshly,
All but barking It’s the purse that closes the deal, not the ****,
And then he would return to carving some doll or marionette,
Which would always seem to have a certain wan look
Around the corners of the eyes, the edge of the lips,
The look of a child’s toy equipped with the foreknowledge
That it was destined for the back of some closet shelf,
The bottom of some attic-bound chest.

I do not know that man, but he looks like an enemy of the people.
Not the strangest of strange assertions
I had ever heard uttered in these sessions,
And normally I may not have even looked up
To identify the speaker,
But as the voice belonged to a woman,
I chanced to raise eyes upward
Just in time to see an arm fully extended,
An accusing finger pointed at myself.
Understand, I had seen more than one of my peers
Dragged from these chambers
Without regard for decorum or ceremony,
And, in a state which was at least close kin to panic,
I saw visions of myself whisked away to a fetid Butyrka cell
Or thrown, bound and gagged, onto some Siberia-bound cattle car
When I heard a voice something like my own spit out
I do not know that woman, but she looks like a ******* to me.
My accuser blanched and sat down
To a chorus of catcalls and derisive whistling,
And one or two deputies in possession
Of sufficient power or powerful friends
Actually waved handfuls of rubles in her direction.
It may not have been grace under pressure,
But there are situations where chivalry
Is more indulgent than admirable.

It was the season when a young man’s fancy
Turns to hunkering down as the land around him locks,
When the envoys of the abyss
Stalk elderly relatives and spindly late-born calves.
He’d happened upon her
At Aubuchon’s Hardware over in Gouverneur,
Picking up bits and bobs to tie up those projects
(The endless caulking, the pitched battles with plaster and lath)
Which had trickled over the spillway of spring and summer
When she more or less materialized,
Like the sudden bloom of some ill-timed crocus
Popping up through fallen leaves.
She’d quizzed him on the merits of levels, cup hooks, and spackles
(The story being she’d leased a gerrymandered third-floor studio
Over the Rent-A-Center on Clinton Street)
They’d chatted in the middle of an aisle for a half-hour or so
When she tittered You know, I could really use a beer about now,
Which became several, then burgers, then his house and bed
Where she settled in for the duration
(She’d had her suitcases in her trunk, and he came to surmise
That an apartment hadn’t been in her plans at all.)
He’d learned about her what little she chose to share:
A nut allergy, a borderline prodigal capacity for whiskey,
Certain boudoir practices and positions,
But her whos, whats and wherefores an admixture
Of carefully chosen quarter-truths and outright fictions;
He’d noticed, inadvertently,
That she had a half-dozen driver’s licenses in her purse,
And she’d been furiously tight-lipped
About where’d she been and come from,
Save one drunken mention of how she’d lived down near Ithaca
Just long enough to stand on the very precipice
Of one of the town’s plethora of gorges
Before deciding not to go headlong over the edge,
‘S no real point, she demurred,
In anything that puts a period on sumpin’.

There was no question of some Snow White happily-ever-after;
She melted away as abruptly as she’d arrived,
Leaving on an implausibly warm late-February day,
A deceit of sunshine and southerly breezes
Which belied the month-plus of hard slog ahead.
He’d cherished no illusions
Of going after her, of tracking her down:
There was small chance she’d given him her real name,
Assuming she knew it at this point,
And she’d changed her cell number in a matter of hours.
He’d done his best to simply chalk it up as a lesson learned
Or a hell of a hell of a story to share with the boys at Nina’s Hotel,
But she had become (or, rather, the notion of
What she might have become,
As all faithless acts require acquiescence to the existence of faith)
A giant hogweed in his very sinews, invasive and implacable,
All but impervious to destruction and subsequent reclamation,
And the throes of her remained as confabulations
In his mind and heart and groin
All through what turned out to be
The longest of long North Country winters,
With flurry and sleet enjoying dominion over new blooms
Until well into the middle of May.

Our wandering and searching has led us here again,
As April sloughs off winter and takes us by the hand.
(We have had as tutors fishes, birds, and sons of men.)

The long night of our iciness has served to lessen
Quaint faith in schemes and blueprints which mice and gods have planned
Our wandering and searching has led us here again

And in this place and time, pray it’s not beyond our ken
That which truly matters, beyond praise or reprimand
(We have had as tutors fishes, birds, and sons of men.)

Our now has overtaken the reticence of when
Blurring differences between spontaneous and planned;
Our wandering and searching has led us here again

Let God and devil wrestle for the soul of the wren;
Though the very hills may shake, let our conclusions stand.
(We have had as tutors fishes, birds, and sons of men.)

Let callow youth debate free will till time’s end, amen;
We’d have it no other way, we've come to understand.
Our wandering and searching has led us here again
(We have had as tutors fishes, birds, and sons of men.)

I recollect the whole thing as clearly as if I had awoke with the sun,
Dispensing with any alarm, fully awake and engaged.
I am on a gurney being wheeled slowly down a hospital hallway
(For it is clear to that workaday hustle and bustle
Is no longer of concern to me)
Which is all silence,
Save for the squeak and bump of my carriage’s wheels
As it crosses from tile to tile,
And the sheet which covers me is seemingly made of gauze,
For I can, as I pass by one to the next,
See clearly inside each of the rooms,
The tableaus being what you might expect in such a place:
A young man and small child
Fluttering about a mother and her newborn,
A middle-aged woman reading aloud
(But softly, almost mechanically)
To an ancient and clearly unheeding man,
Another woman, aged and frail to the point of being insubstantial,
Dabbing at her eyes with a frayed, damp tissue,
Exiting a room as an orderly closes the blinds.
At this point the scenes become incongruous, almost surreal,
As if another director has suddenly assumed control of the film;
There is a room where a Marlowe-esque priest,
All harlequin-outfitted and codpiece-clad,
Bumbles drunkenly about the room,
Banging his censer against the walls as he speaks in tongues.
But just as suddenly the settings become gentle, pastoral:
In one room there are no walls at all,
Only a quiet valley with dirt roads and small streams
And the sound, disembodied but palpable and oddly familiar,
Of bells tolling faintly and melodiously in the distance,
While in the next there is nothing save
A young woman with angels bending over her.
At this point, I have clearly reached my final destination,
And I expect to find a chilly and spartan space,
Harshly lit and sparsely furnished with metallic chairs and tables,
So I am caught unawares for what awaits through the doors:
Light, just light making everything below it a toy world.
The dream abruptly ends, as they are wont to do,
But it seems I found it oddly comforting,
And it is that which makes me so apprehensive.

I am officially too old
left it all at the station
lost my ticket
and finally
busted by the conductor
for being a poet and a ***
the holy two-fer

Never thought the joke
would go on this long
never imagined
I'd be ******* oxygen
in a posh bar
with Helen of Troy
and me in my cups

Yet here we are
the ships have sailed
the vagabonds have stumbled
home
every swan has flown

And between you and me
Jack
(and while she's in the lady's room)
I am told I was born of a woman
on this day
sixty four years ago

I don't believe it

Birthdays are make-believe
every crease and wrinkle
in the fabric of time
every line in my face
is a testament
to an intricate conspiracy
the stars aligned against me
and on my birthday, no less

They say this ride has a conclusion
people pass on
I have seen fields of grim stones
that attest to this fact

But I'm not so sure.
At this late date
I'm still thinking
I might beat this rap.

When in dark despair drowned
I was thinking, joy was nowhere around
A gentle breeze from the upland peaks
Came and patted on my cheeks

Softly whispering- ‘joy is here’

When the last ray of hope had been snuffed out
From the vapid plane of my arid heart,
A cluster of orchids, beautiful and gay
Smilingly nodding their heads on my way

Sweetly murmured- ‘joy is here

When I feared the earth was caving in
Under my feet with no chance to win
A butterfly with rainbow colors
Alighting on a bunch of flowers

Euphoniously hummed- ‘joy is here’

When all my yearnings got shattered
And sustenance alone was what mattered
The blazing sun from behind the hills
Wiping away all morbid chills

Affirmed beaming-‘joy is here

When I thought I was drifting afloat
Without any moorings on my boat
A crystal drop precariously balancing
On the serrated edge of a leaf dancing

Confidently chimed-‘joy is here’

When darkness settles on the scene
When life loses all tinge of green
When days seem inert and grey
Don’t be in a hurry to say
    
“Joy is nowhere around”

Before you jump to conclusions dismal
And write off life as abysmal
Wait to see the cycle of seasons change
From winter’s haze to spring’s lovesome range!

Good ten minutes to four
I reached the temple door.

Take your offer for the God
the flower seller was eager
no haste, he smiled
his time for a rest
will soon be over.

I wondered
why I'm never contented
with what God has to offer
and as a rule
my bag of grievances is ever full.

In the faint light
I held his idol in my sight
listening in the quietude
to the temple pigeons.

With great peace
I bought two lotus at fifteen rupees
from the flower seller
dividing our happiness
into equal share.