On this day,
Twenty-eight years ago,
I realized that love is not divided...
Not halved between.
A father's love for his children...
Is a multiplication,
An expansion.

How do I explain?

Meanings of life change;
Additions and subtractions aside,
Love multiplies...matures:
Exult or suffer, it endures
Even the agony of division.

Mainly now, love suffers,
But always it endures.

Observations succinctly made
Bespeak fresh graves of newly
Interred friends or strangers
Turn on unexpected
Awarenesses of lives now spent.
Right or wrong,
Inexplicably we are torn
In two as part of us makes quick
Exits to fields of forgetfulness, and yet
Some part of us clips these memories to hold.

Trees forcing sap to bursting buds
Giving leafy glories up to God.

Birds whose winged flight returning high
Fill northern skies with glory cries.

Soft calves and lambs in meadows skipping
Give glory in their lowing and their bleating.

Young stalks' persistent way through old decay
Announce green and growing glory be's along the way.

So you and I with sweet spring sighs
Hear and see and feel Nature's glory cries
And echo in our human tongues,
"All glory be to God!"

All Glory BE!

When Balaam's donkey spoke,
He didn't mention research words,
Didn't point out answers obvious
In spite his quantitative methods.

Balaam, prophetic man for hire,
Climbed four mountains,
Burned a herd of cows in fire,
Tempted Heaven's curses down.

Multiple perspectives brought
One conclusion, tight and rich:
Balaak wanted curses hot;
God caused an *** to kvetch.

My mother used to say to me
When I was bent to stray,
"If you know what's right as you begin
You've no reasons left to pray."

So Balaam's triangulations grabbed
Perspectives from multiple views,
Incensing old King Moab
By blessing multitudes of Jews.

Between the Author
And the Reader,
The Text lies waiting.

The Author,
Only partially aware
Of All Intents and Purposes
In spite of careful diction,
Forms a multi-messaged bolt
To drive full meaning
Home.

The Text,
Scripted in language,
Printed on paper,
Inked in pixels,
Floated in air,
Carries meaning
in a leaking bucket
Denoting and Connoting
Implications only.

The Reader,
Seeking something
Not even realized,
Comes partially engaged,
Intent to dabble
Or to glean
Or find some thought
On which to meditate.

Somehow in this tenuous state
Between mortal thinkers,
Ideas cross synaptic bridges -
Through the air and light,
Tempered by time,
Culture-cured,
Enriched by vocabulary,
Electrically ignited...
Combustion!

A plain woman in a checkered dress
Trapped on a windy hill
With a man whose every thought
Was crops and cows and bad weather coming,

You cooked every meal on time,
Served lunches exactly at 12:00
When the hands aligned.

You drove "flagger,"
moving trucks and tractors
From field to field,
Raised two boys and two girls
To be God-fearing citizens,
Buried one in shock and disbelief;
And then moved on.

I know your secret.

There on that swept-neat farmstead,
Under the green roofs,
Beside the red barn,
In your white walls,
The rational order,
The unnatural neatness
Belied you.

Lydia...
You of the Romantic Heart,
You of the secret desire and passion.
Beside your chair in that sparse house
Stood a stack of romance novels
In easy reach,
An escape from harsh reality.

What guilty ecstasies you managed to steal
Came five miles from the post office,
Ninety-five cents a copy,
Wrapped in brown paper,
Tucked in a galvanized milk pail.

Ahhh.
The stolen moments!
The bliss of passions and handsome strangers
Ready to take you from dry and wind-blown land.

The day he died
The sun rose just the way
It always did on cold December mornings:
Frost crystals on his back,
Breath steaming in the winter air,
A few sparrows chattering,
Molly at the barn mooing news:
Milking time!
Frozen water tank!
Hunger pains!
And where was Farmer now?

So he yawned and stretched himself,
Looked at the house whose walls
Allowed his master's voice to filter through thin, cold air:
Heard an oven door squeak wide,
The telephone ring,
Morning voices and the creak of floors,
And then the door cracked open.

Full scents emerged:
Fresh baking from the oven,
The farmer's coat and boots,
Laundry soap in fresh washed jeans,
And a bowl of food with milk
Steaming for him.

The diesel tractor coughed and roared,
Semi-warm from its head-bolt heater sleep,
and sent thick cloud plumes to winter sky
Before the engine warmed enough to move
The wheels' crunching pressure, packing snow.

Breakfast down, and morning chores to follow,
The St. Bernard stretched himself,
Pushed through the old iron gate
And followed in the tractor's track
To see the morning feeding in the snow.

No one could tell him he was getting old,
And maybe was a little stiff and slow
To follow tractors as they plowed their way
Through newly fallen snow.

An hour later, the man, the tractor and the dog
Had made their way below the farmstead hill
To feed a sheltered herd just out of wind's cold way.
What happened next is painful still to say.

The tires sank through crusted snow and spun
But forward movement failed it in its rounds;
Reversed, a chain came loose and outward flung
to pull the faithful follower down.

So what is there to say about a friend whose harm
And death came accidentally at my hand?
I knelt there in the snow and held him in my arms,
Sobbing sorrows... begging him to try to stand.

But he only looked up at me with brown, sad eyes,
Hard broken from the crushing of the wheel,
And moved his tail a little bit to show he was content
To lie there in my arms, and shuddered once and then was still.

The cows looked on impatiently,
Steam rising from their hides,
And saw me bawling on my knees
and begging mercy from my silent God.

My father,
Who never marched a drill,
Nor fired an angry shot,
Recounts fond memories
I've heard so many times:
How long ago, when I was very young,
He and our neighbor,
Up before the sun,
Engaged in tractor battles
(He's very sure he won).

My father woke those mornings,
Early 1960s,
With the popping cough of
Diesel International tractor cylinders
Clattering out white smoke...
Then blue and black,
As engine heat and friction
Tightened gaps and sealed compression,
And the motor steadied into an even roar.

Across the county road
Our only neighbor led or followed suit,
Sending smoke and sound
To drown the morning songs
of robins and meadowlarks.

Fifty years later,
Dad laughs in recollection,
"We started rising just a little
Earlier each day.
Starting up our tractors
In a sort of game
Called, 'Who's out earliest?'"

Six became a quarter of,
Then five-thirty backed to four.
One tractor or the other roared,
Early and then earlier to pull
Into the waiting fields.
When three-thirty came around
My mother shook her head,
But if she said a word,
I haven't heard.

They even started engines up
Before they ran,
Milking buckets swinging,
to their barns to chore.
As early became earlier
In the little farmers' war.

One day in town,
Entirely by happenstance,
A meeting came between the two.
My father, being younger,
Had energy for more,
But the neighbor shook his head,
Grabbed his hand and said,
"Let's stop this foolishness.
I don't know about you,
But I need my sleep."

The farmer battle ended then.
A hand shake and a smile
Between two farmer friends,
Created country lore,
Remembered here a while,
As "The Early, Earlier War."

Stage One begins the fun;
First sips reveal the bitter
Blast of hops and alcohol.
BAC is point oh-three, which reads as
"Confident & Daring."
Attention Span and
Flesh are flushed
In dual ways,
(Please catch my drift.
Euphoric people, still
May have a need for shrift.)
Sometimes such things are said or done
That later are not wished.

Judgment begins to slide
On entry of Stage Two.
A numbness in the tongue,
A blurring of the eyes,
Which do not yet see two.
Sometimes as low as point oh-nine BAC,
"Excitement" names the awkward teetering
Between slow thought and sleepiness.
Stumbled response takes coordination,
But the drinker cannot see his weaviness.

Stage Three arrives at point one-eight
And takes the name "Confusion."
Staggered is the walk, and one can sit
And feel the moving of the world.
The maudlin lover here appears,
Replaced by jealous hate that burns
Or bursts in untoward rage that disappears
In an instant's instant, only to return.

Stage Four is Cousin Stupor,
Threshhold BAC is point two-five.
The drinker turns into a Turtle,
Unmoving, Unaware, but still alive,
He cannot stand nor walk,
May drown upon his *****,
And if he lies, should do so on his side,
Though he cannot without assistance
From a brother or a bride.

Stage Five, Fra Coma, may start at point three-five,
Cool skin, slow breath, heart beat, (just barely),
Asleep he may appear, or dead,
As Death stands near.

Stage Six occurs at BAC point five,
Bar Tender Death moves on
To find someone Alive.

Bill loaded the truck with hard red winter wheat
One night so as to beat the scales at morning light.

Before sun up, he kissed Margie on the cheek
And roared out of the yard,
Overload springs sagging,
Engine fierce, but groaning,
Toward the town.

Two miles out,
The scale light said "Open,"
Giving Bill a momentary chill.

Shifting down, he exited
Before arriving Scale Hill.
A gravel detour waited
To take him on the long way 'round
And bring him back the other side of town.

Most situations similar
Go from bad to worse.
The truck eased down into a swale.

Beneath the surface gravel,
A bed of soggy clay
****** down the wheels
And stopped the farmer's way.

The creaking truck began to settle,
Testing Bill and
Leaving him chagrined
As the Transportation Deputy
Drove up to see the mess.

"Looks like you need a pull!"

What could Bill say?

And so he took the offer,
Then followed flashing lights
Back to the scale, and paid
A hefty fee to compensate
For being cheap too early
And learning much too late.

Slip into a syncopated
Yaw that staggers some,
Never touches others.
Come back home if you don't have the chops, or
Open up to ranges
Pleasant...
Awkward...
Totter some and Tatter some.
Insiders,
Outsiders
Nestle or Negate whenever Music syncopates.

I remember reading
Martin Luther King, Jr's
Letter from Birmingham Jail
Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom
Mark Twain's Huck Finn
DuBois' Souls of Black Folk
For the first time

The words of Chief Joseph
Sitting Bull
Tecumseh
James Welch
and Alexie Sherman
And others of indigenous kind
Linger like arrows in my mind.

Of course, there's
Gilgamesh's forlorn quest for Enkidu;
Osiris, Amun, Ra, and Seth,
Homer's Illiad and Odyssey,
And Virgil's Roman treatment -
(For whom the gods destroy
We all must learn bereavement).

I remember reading
Milton's Paradises (lost and found)
And Dante's Infernal quest for Heaven
Through the bowels of Hell with Virgil's spritely guide
And up the Devil's staircase with Beatrice by his side.
John's Revelation of Times' End;
And LaHaye's money-making Left Behind
Apocalypses here to chill my mind.

I have surveyed Dead Presidents
Washington,
Jefferson,
Lincoln
Both Roosevelts, Ted and Frank,
And Reagan
And smatterings of others...
Then hopped the bookish pond to read
Sir Winston and some others,
Not the least of whom is Gandhi G,
Taught by the Queen to free his brothers.

I have studied
Moses
Job
David
Ruth
Esther
Isaiah
Jeremiah
The Disciples
Paul
and James
(Ironically,
Though Jesus is the "Word"
He never penned one).

British poets's thoughts,
Tale tellers long-dead
Have found their way
Into my head:
Beowulf and Chaucer
Old moral plays
Shelley and Keats
Cavalier Poets
Scott and Brownings
Burns and (not) Allen
Spenser and Shakespeare
Dylan and Tolkien
Lewis and Auden
And so many more
That I leave on the floor

Western Americana I have loved
Hemingway and Steinbeck, all worth the time,
Mari Sandoz' Old Jules, and
Rolvaag's Giants in the Earth,
Keroac went on the road, while
Joseph Kinsey Howard showed us the West
Lewis & Clark in journals scribed
Their journey west and back again

I can't forget psychology
And so I will digress
Or Sigmund's accusation stays
That I have but suppressed:
Ellis, Freud, and Eric Berne,
Pavlov, Skinner, Thorndike, Watson,
Wundt, and Wm James, Piaget and Chomsky
Then Vygotsky and Bandura put a social spin
on cognitive psychology, and Everybody's in.
Diverging and Converging, psychic students, all
Could never make transaction
'Til Rogers tried to make some peace
But Ellis wouldn't have 'im.

And then, of course,
The lighter stuff,
The popcorn of the mind:
Clancy, Rankin, Carole Keene
L'Amour and Will James
Stephen King and Poe,
Cruz Smith and Leon Uris,
Grisham, Deaver, Cornwall,
Asimov, Bradbury and Herbert,
Carroll and Baum...

Under frizzed hair,
The Conscious Operator,
Smacking gum,
Waits with her tails of living wire
To make connections
At Synaptic Central.

The reader
Tilts a page to catch the rays,
Scans for symbols,
Begins to send
And to receive
Electric fires of thought
Traveling in from
Senses Five -
Traveling out from
Schema Library's
Data files -
To meet and
To commingle
At the Board.

With octopal finesse,
The tireless Operator
Plies Neural Central,
Sending quick myriads of thought
To rest or to revive in living files.

Neurons snap and arc;
Their coded leaping fires
Surge message-full
Through cables sheathed
To Synapse Central,
Where in her nimble hands
Fire Control finds slots
And coordinates connections,
During and Long After
The Outward Reading's done.

Even when the Blinds go down
Synaptic Central's work goes on.
The frizz-haired friend steps out to rest;
Sub-Conscious moves into her place
And with unsteady hand
Plays seeming havoc at the Board
Rearranging and Deranging
Delightful dreams, or horrid.

Waking
From a dream
Of irreversible
Actions

Half in
Half out
Between
Two worlds
My only cry
"Thank you, Lord!"

Not so wonderful,
This world is
Not so bad
As the world
Of dreams
I left.

Time to rise,
Prepare for work,
And go.

It's not that I'm bored with this meeting,
It's just that the food was so good.
My body is busy digesting,
And my brain is fresh out of blood.

The dessert was so rich and so tasty
That the topic seems tasteless and bland;
Perhaps our start was too hasty,
Or maybe I have a bad gland....

So if you should hear me start snoring,
Or if my head's sinking low,
Please don't think that I think it's boring;
My blood sugar's probably low.

On my way to you,
I found a shoe,
A lonely soul without a mate,
Tongue hanging out,
And half a lace,
And a wrinkled look
On her holy face.

Wuddiful, Wuddiful

In

Muddiful

Life is

Wuddiful

To make

me

Buddiful

I'll take a

P U D D I F U L

Uncle Joe,
Quietly a bachelor,
All his 77 years,
Never spoke an unkind word
I ever heard.

Most afternoons,
He sat in his brown chair
Behind my Grandfather.

Two old French men,
Smoking pipes
Talking slow and low
In English, French-laced,
Laden with Quebec enunciation
Though they'd not been back
For sixty years.

I didn't think he'd ever loved a girl,
My Uncle Joe,
And then his nephew spilled the beans
One day to me.

Alice was the damsel's name,
But innocence was not her style,
And so my great-grandma,
Memere, disapproved,
Clucked her tongue,
Hands on hips,
Glared and crossed herself,
Whenever Alice came around.

Still, Joe pursued
Until the day she walked out
To the field where he was plowing
Behind a team of horses.

She didn't think ahead.
So when her dress billowed out
As she walked up,
She set the team in fright.

Uncle Joe,
Too shocked to act,
Fell feet first into the foot board,
And down the field the horses dragged
The plow and Uncle Joe.

They stopped before disaster came,
And Uncle Joe crawled out.

When he stood up,
He ended any chance that Alice
Had with him.

"Dat **** girl near got me ****!"
His exclamation.

So it was
He lived sixty more years
Safely and alone.

Gertrude

Caught in my *** and in my gender,
Out a king and husband,
Without time to seek a lover;
A son to preserve
His chance at the Line....

What could I do but marry?

He has left me now,
Shaking in my chamber.
A blood streaked line
follows Polonius'
Ignominious retreat
From behind the tapestry
In Hamlet's tow.

What could I do but marry?

I look anew at the two portraits
Chained side by side,
Husbands One and Two;
Re-live young Hamlet's scorning words
And wondering, shudder.

What could I do but marry?

Comes Claudius roaring
To my rooms, his eyes ablaze
My answers tremble, filled with doubt
Of Hamlet's sanity.
New- eyed, I see
The hatred in the King
And fear.

What could I do but marry?

I planted a mango seed,
Hoping?
Not sure what...

But the mango grew
Out of its context,
Poked shiny green leaves
Looking for sun and surf,
But found itself awakened
In a land of snow and cold.

Seven leaves into its
Exponential Mango growth,
The newest leaf
Yellowed...
Shriveled...
Died.

The Minnesota Mango
Meditates now...
Watered, but waiting....
Slumbering?
Planning a spring break?
Meditating?
Waiting for summer sun?
Perhaps....

Today
I heard about
A neighbor boy
Who smuggled in
A baby alligator
From the Bayou,
South and warm.

At least my Mango
Stays inside its
Crockery planter,
And an alligator jail break
Will leave him
Freezing in his tracks...

We'll see what happens
In the summer.

Once more, an embarrassing suit forced on him,
Picked out by the woman he'd loved
More than his mother, more than himself,
Sixty years and a few short months.

Strange how women have power to choose
Public attire for the men they love
As babes, and boys, and grooms, and now....

What is he now, lying so still in his new suit
So stiffly, awkwardly at peace?

A shoe-less traveler tucked into a box
Wearing a suit with an open back,
Hair finally combed the way
She'd pestered him to keep it.

"Oh!" she says,
"He left his wallet by the bed."

Around the table,
Literacy discussion turned elitist...
Bemoaning some poor Johnny,
Son of a plumber who does not read
Beyond the practical need,
And has no desire to.

I stopped to check my sense of what I had just heard...
Was transported to a prairie farm;
Thought of my Father, then in his eighties
Who felt no need and no sense of loss
For not having read Shakespeare nor Kant
For missing Milton's Paradises and Hemingway,
For by-passing Black Elk Speaks and C.S. Lewis.

Every morning, he read his Bible;
Some nights he read the mail's
Motley collection of literature:
Ads and politicians and fanatics,
Demanding money and his time,
But mostly money.

"I don't have time to read!"
He'd shout when I suggested a novel.
What literature he had was in his head,
Poems memorized when he was a boy
In a two room school, or
His own lines, written as a young man,
Describing work and friends
Long distant now, but still alive
In memory.

Dad taught me how to read
In different literacies and different texts:
Nuances of sky to read the weather -
What chill or storm or drought was on its way
("Storm's coming, boys! Let's get that hay!");
Cows and calves and bulls,
(Which one was sick or well, dry or bred);
Ways to diagnose mechanical ailments
("Start with the easiest options first");
Metals, to know which welding rod applied
("Aluminum sags, and cast iron cracks");
Grain, rolled crisp between hard hands,
(a test of ripeness);
Cement, to blend the perfect mix,
("Clean gravel/sand, no dirt, not too much water!);
Conservation,
("Always keep some grain on hand" &  
"Keep your fuel above half-tank").

So many literacies...
Dad, the Master Reader of them all...
No wonder he'd no time for books.

He stands awkwardly
Barefoot on snow-packed sheets
After shuffling side to side
Beside his penguin bride
Across thick panes of ice,
Against the blowing snow...
Hesitates...
Suddenly he dives.

Wings spreading now,
He flies, awareness full
The sense of skimming beneath
Deep waves, unsinkable,
The call to move gracefully at will
Pulls the penguin down to dive
Through thick ice holes

He lives as though immortal:
No fear of sinking
Of freezing nor of dying...
Only the ecstasy of flying.

Floating above sea-graves deep;
Flying below the thinness of air,
This visitor to depths of blue,
Creature of air and light,
Escapes the wind and cold above
To fly in water.

Plagium

"There! See that lad beside the stall?"
The master pointed straight his riding quirt,
"The little lad with the home-made ball?"

I nodded, weary, standing slouched, inert.

"We'll make him ours before the day is done,"
I heard his lordship gloat, and wished myself away,
Remembering the day the plaga caught me as I tried to run.

No use to tell him what I thought - no use to even pray.

And so we lured the boy to see a novelty just up the street,
And cast our nets about him and rolled him in the dust
Into a rug and carried him out, bound hands and feet...

Another slave boy in the master's house who cries at dusk,

Missing home and mother's arms and small delights;
His homely past an awful ache, though low and poor,
A place of love and hope and soft, familial sights

My slaving Master Plagiarus ripped away forevermore.

Minnesota,
land of snow
land of ice
and wind
and chill

Gray sky, thick clouds, and fog now reign -
Give visibility that comes and goes
Between the sleety sister, icy-rain
and her brutal brothers, wind and snow,
But sunshine days are only weeks away.

Beneath the snow now sofa-thick -
A muffled trickling in the creek...
Not that winter's in the bag,
But an icicle extends its length;
White powder snow begins to sag;
A trickle leaves the water tank.

The ice, knee-thick, when drilled,
Reveals fish to pull up through the hole.
A month of fishing remains still;
The ice is safe, in spite of dwindling cold.

Somewhere up a path I hear but cannot see
The cheeky call of a chick-a-dee
Alerting family with his tweet
Who feast on orange bittersweet.

There's still a pile of seasoned wood
stacked in the shed, and enough food
To feed a visitor who happens by,
And every day is closer to blue sky.

So keep your hurricanes and quakes,
Your desert dryness and your heat,
Your eruptions volcanic and tidal waves,
Your populations fighting just to eat...
To me the cold and snow are sweet.

Halfway between Malta and Saco,
Highway 2 stops a minute
To look back...

Beside the road
A little shrine waits
The traveler:
A stone, naturally shaped
To form a sleeping buffalo,
But etched with lines to emphasize
The dozing buff's back and sides
And drowsing head.

Nearby, a 1920s entrepreneur
Saw money to be made...
Set up a happenstance hotel
Beside the hot and sulf'rus spring,
And "Sleeping Buffalo" was born
To "heal" and to amuse
Odd tourists in their wandering.

Not much has changed...
The old buff sleeps,
But now inside a little pen
To keep the tourist vandals
Safely from his way.

The old resort is open still...
Same rusty pipes and yellowed walls
And rusty water
Warm enough to stain
Unlucky bathing suits.
(The smell's enough to force
The bather to the bath as medicine....)

On my way to other places
I have stopped along the road
To meditate beside the old stone bull...

I understand, a little,
Now that I am growing old,
Tobacco offerings left
Beside the sleeping stone.
Though not a Pagan,
I can feel the distant Ways
Before our Western ways
Made tourists of us all.

Lady Winter

I.
When surly Winter sighs, her icy breath
Makes adults think of coming death,
Makes children think of falling snow,
Ice skates and sleds and away they go....

II.
Alone among her Sisters, Winter holds such power
To stop the World, to drift in Time, if only for her hour.
She puts the trees and fields to sleep,
Then covers lakes and land 'neath sheets,
And though she tucks them into bed,
Their sleeping form is of the dead.

III.
This Lady White whose frigid face
Turns from the sun with chilly grace
Has for herself a single duty:
The world to rest in icy beauty.
In the North, where'er she goes,
She dresses lands with icy snows.
In gowns of ermine stand the trees
White trains of down lie at their lees.
She sets the plain with crystal lakes,
And sugars hills with frosted flakes.
Where ever she in beauty goes,
The icy Queen her magic sows.

IV.
Strange sister of four Seasons,
Her face, at first, seems set in Death,
But we who walk out on her icy grounds,
Traverse a frozen pond or wander rounds
Deep into her forests fast asleep, know well,
We who stop to listen and to look can tell,
Life's certitude awaits the end of chilly Winter's icy fling.
(Congregation: "Even so come quickly, Lady Spring!")

From silent MUFFFS
of
falling
snow

The stillness
of
fifteen
below,

That clouds the Air
With frozen Breath
And freezes Hair
And threatens Death

A welcome CHAOS

comes with Spring
/ / // / / /// / /
Thundering rains
! !! !!!! !!! !!!!!!
and songbird sings
___
Deep-buried lawns
and dormant sleep
Replaced by mud
10 inches deep.

Children love the

mess ---

ee ---

nessss!!!!

Of mud ...

and

Gutter

floods,

But Mothers

Strip

Them

At the DOOR

To keep

The Chaos

off the Floor.

Dreamed a little
Dream of you
Last night

Saw you
Standing silently
Beneath my arm

So I reached
Down and hugged
Your self to me

Kissed your hair
Held you only
For a second

Woke up
Found myself
Face in pillow

You were still
Gone
And only tears
Were in my eyes

All day just
Tears
Were in my eyes

Roll on the throttle
Spare no horses
Let the wheels spin
And miles roll by.
Today's sun shines
Only a few hours,
And then night falls.

Roll on the throttle;
Streak the fields by;
Chase the golden sun
Set high in sky so blue.
Forever only lasts
This single day
Before the light goes down.

Roll on the throttle
Listen to the road;
Listen to the wind;
Listen to the roar.
In light and air like this
We cannot ask for more.

In this quiet room
People silent,
Sitting,
Uncomfortably shifting.

Settling dust of unease
Wafts in restless eddies,
Too late to contain,
Too early to forget
Haze that hovers here.

New arrivals,
Entering too far to turn and leave,
Hesitate and wonder,
Frozen in knife-cut silence,
Wishing suddenly
For freer space...
And
Almost any other place.

Enoch hurried to the gate
To walk with God one sun up;
That very day the walk of friends
Was born.

A young man still at 65,
In Enoch, something changed
The day the walks began...
A hundred years
Then two
Then three...
The daily walk and deepening talk
And friendship grew.

Who knows the subject of their talks?
What were the words a man could say
To occupy so long a time with God?

Over years, the conversation changed:
"Good Morning, God," and
"How are you?"
Formal and polite perhaps,
As new friends do,
But worthwhile conversation
changed and deeper grew.

One day the walk was long,
And late it grew.
"I'd best be getting home,"
Old Enoch said.

The Lord looked back and then ahead;
"It's closer now to take you on
With me," He said.
Old Enoch smiled, and arm in arm
Walked Home with God.

I have danced on the strings
Of another's desires;
I have pirouetted gracefully
To the swaying pull,
To the sudden release
From above,
But never from love.

I have stumbled and bumbled
In another's uncertainty;
Then, behind a painted smile,
Straightened and bowed,
On invisible strings
To an admiring crowd.

I have hung on the back
Of a dressing room door,
Strings looped carefully
Up on a hook, waiting alone
In suspense...
In the dark.

What the Fisherman said:
"It seemed like a good idea."

What he did:
Went fishing in a rowboat
Out on the Sound
About a mile out
And seagulls all around.

What happened:
Seagulls came about
To see
If scavenge work
Was to be done.
Dipping in and out
And just above,
One had some fun.

Fisherman annoyed...
One plucky bird
Came close above his head
And closer,
'Til finally the fisher said,
"I think I could just
Reach right up
And grab his legs!"
And so he did....

Seagull's Reply:
Seagulls, shocked,
Regurgitate,
Explode,
Expectorate
Whatever they've been
Carrying inside.

Instead of Fight or Flight,
Seagulls puke;
They have no pride.
At least this one did
Not.

Fisherman's Response:
He didn't even know
When he let go...
First the gull,
And then his lunch.

The man and the bird shared
Something in common
Out on the Sound:
They met for lunch
And went away hungry.

South Pacific 1944,
Our ship under attack,
Men at the guns,
Zeroes coming in.

Smoke and bedlam,
We three at our turret
Loading the gun:
Projectile.
Powder,
Fuse,
and slam the door
to belch explosives
at the sky.

Man the post
Keep on firing

But then I knew I had to go
And turned toward the hatch.
"Good-bye, Paul,"
I remember someone said.

Half in - half out the door
We took a hit
Direct
That blew Jim's head
between my knees
And on the deck.

Two died instantly
And there I stood
Wondering
About
Higher Orders.

Trees, so many trees...

Old man at the end of the lane
Stops a bit in his walk,
Feels a little lame,
Catches breath,
Turns 'round and 'round
To see and try to see.

Can't find his memory for the trees.

Frost's woods march on ahead;
Deep woods follow and surround,
Blot sun and moon and city lights.
Whispers of other-wheres and other-whens
Sough softly, speaking of forgotten glens
Now nearly lost to drums of ears and eye-owned lens;
The nostrils' senses feathered, hold only memories.

A lonely venture,
Being out on woodland walks
In growing dimness,
Plodding slow uncertain paths
That wander aimlessly away
From moving water.

My neighbor’s live oak is a modest tree;
She stands now in March
Fully leaved in a brown fur coat,
Waiting patiently for sap to rise
And push new leaves
To hide our eyes.

I have watched her now
Six short years,
Every year the same.

A chaste three feet of trunk exposed,
Her hemline proves her to be the
Modest Canadienne.

Her crisp brown cloak
Rises to the tip
Of her leafy beret
As she stands prim and straight.

My shameless ash trees
Shed their clothes and stand
Naked in October winds,
Brittle in January,
Lifeless in March,
Grudgingly putting forth
A summer supply of leafery
Long enough to prove
Existence.

But she, the oak across the street,
Is beautiful and coy,
Covered in rich deep greens
Or solemn browns
With hardly a day between
Her changing.

The way of a man with a maid,
Solomon said,
Too much for him to understand
Too much.
A snake crawling on a rock,
A ship moving across the waves
The motionless soaring of an eagle
Too much to understand.

I have come to grips with a snake's scaly progress,
undulating,
cupping,
twisting,
hugging,
movement upon a rock.

I can nearly sense a ship's purposeful meanderings
on pathless seas,
driven by compass-aimed sails
and the science of sextants and stars.

I have accepted the Bernoulli Principle:
air currents rushing under and
meandering over
curved and feathered wings
producing lift,
defying gravity.

But still I cannot grasp
the way of a man with a maid.

Though I have studied
oxytocin,
endorphins,
hormonal urges,
a man and a maid
who walk through life
past beauty and prime,
surviving the vagaries of time,
seeing in each other
their youth long spent,
still straight and tall in the other's mind,
though old and bent...
must always bring me wondering, to a stop.
Such things, the Wise One said,
Are far too wonderful for me.

Long live love.

I know why Adam chose
to go with Eve,
To stay beside the one
he'd come to love,
Though he believed
Life and Death's incision
Hung in the balance
of his imminent decision.

He took and ate
the offering from his Mate.
In Life, in Death,
the two were mated,
And for all time,
their seed was fated...
Deadly plantation
of love and sin,
This Reaper's Field
we're living in.

Before he damns him,
I believe,
A man must stand
in Adam's skin
And gaze on Eve.

Whether the smoking rubble forms from
Tumbled towers or ruined desert caves ,
The settling grime of guilt remains.

Whether missiles are guided
By box cutters or by lasers,
Chaos and mayhem reign.

Whether human lives are snuffed
By smoke of oil or ideologies,
Death is the fragrant incense.

Whether "religious," or "political," or "ideological,"
How empty men's blessings and declarations fall...
Empty on the mothers of the slain.
Empty on the mothers.
Empty on the slain.
Empty.

He slid his arm around
The coolness
Of disdain,
Felt the distance
Of an Arctic plain,

Rested his hand
Upon an alabaster
Thigh,
Saw eternal haughtiness
In stony eyes.

Human heart
Has he;
She
Heart of stone.

To tempt a man
To be so close,
But always so alone.