none more than I,
surprised and wary,
that my all-my-life
urbanized body,
be so unnaturally well attuned
to a slight degree
temperature modification

I,
proud city dweller,
born and bred,
urban dust,
the sandblast used
to erode and etch-a-sketch
my body's skin pores hollows,
by definition, pride and myth,
a tough skin necessified
to survive where
plants cannot

the chill of fall,
and the follow up of
it's 'whiteout' afterwards,
faintly dimly but
remarkably present,
unmistakably different
from the chilling moisture
forming on the ice bucketed bottle
of dinner's colden, golden,
waiting white Sancerre

the lowest, coldest single note
any viola can exhale,
I,
hear coming from Itzhak Perlman's
so close, Shelter Island retreat,
a foghorn warning
clearly felt, smelling its deep fried heard mournful warning,
tonal hum, swelling from the outside in,
not despite, but to pointedly spite
the surrounding humidity condensation of August
on the air cooled window panes

the very same humidity
that makes humans
curse the blessing of sweating,
registering slews of
no-one-cares complaints to
no-ones-listening people,
about the drying out everywhere
wet dampness of the end of the
simmering season

a sliver, a musk,
a prophet's portent,
so subtly well entrenched,
secretly by nature sent,
a realtime single line of code,
message that winter is indeed coming,
but not to the Seven Kingdoms,
but to the Czar's literary summer palace

I,
the sole prosecution witness,
to winter's germination
as the evening cools,
testifying about the acorn droppings
felt beneath flip flops,
like hurtful peas
beneath a princess's ten deep mattresses,
reminders of too soon time to be mourned
as gone, gone, gone
the summer,
the peak of the foliage, the zenith, the crest
of this old and very peculiar man

but one?

how can this be,
one **** degree
of Fahrenheit
leads directly to
sniffles and endless
gesundheists?

one **** degree,
separates the operatic arias,
the shower sing-a-long songs of his summer soul's
contented tented revival,
which now, in these sultry days of  August,
he sings, so swell,
practiced with an artistic style of
summer lazy's 'doing nothing'
so, so well

soon to suffer the mysteries of
the longest day
of wintery night,
where silent snow falling,
beautifies but makes the man
put down his pen and
reread his summer poetry

tonite,
we fine and dine
dressed in summer attire,
sock-less, coolest linen with cotton blended,
only ******, good natured,
political discussions allowed,
some daring souls,
bare their left shoulders,
more tan skin out than in,
while others defend
the natural human right
of man to wear in tandem,
white socks and ugly cargo shorts

all the fabrics, all the friends,
crinkling wrinkling upon the tannins
of sweet brown sugar of caramelized skin

some wearing bright pastels
clean new white T's,
so eye brightening-whiting-delighting,
that they are legally required,
and illegal to wear anytime else,
except for this one abbreviated quarter
of the best days of his life

smell the snow,
hearing  the boots and parkas,
making tramping noises upon snow cleared paths
swimming unhappily across
slushy street corners, almost mountain pass impassable
all these molecules, wafting in the coolness
of the August shore breezes ,
fedex'd  up from the polar south winds
of wintertime Argentina

all of these hints,
present and accounted for
in the atmosphere,
but of them,
I,
do not speak
not out loudly anyway

why,
to be lost beneath,
under the munching noises of summer corn
summer fruits, tongue exploding,
clinking of happy glasses,
toasts of "what a great summer eve!"
the wisdom of silence loudly asserts

for who am I to
rob us the deceit,
the human natural conceit,
that the future is the identity of our
permanent press present

that the unpracticed pleasures
of lapping up breezes,
the genteel salted aroma of
heated sweated forehead beads and sea water,
the cocktail odors of barbecue sauce,
fishing boat's diesel, Campari,
root beer floats,
strawberry shortcake's speaking of its peaking,
little children laughing with carousel joy at
running unshod and free upon bunnies and frogs,
all words and thoughts somehow miracle rhyming with...
forever

soon to end in the
disenchantment of reruns on
a flickering black and white tv night,
once again, no longer obsolete,
unlike the man

the eyes glisten from held back tears,
all come to give me hugs, thinking
the old man, in his white apron is
joyous simply happy or simply,
grill smoke got in his eyes

but that one **** degree...

hours drip slowly
onto a taunting empty page
the soul’s depictions brushed simply

a palette of whispered words
dry as if it were thoughts painted
onto a tightly stretched canvas

it's been said so many times before
                   similes,...
     form clots at the tip of the quill
                    words,...
finally surrendering to gravity’s flow
as the ink scribes the paltry ruminations;
flooding the same stifled notions
another way into another moment

metaphorical sleights of hand
incarnate onto the absolving
       sheet of parchment;
traces of past now’s ensconced
       in considered words

        miles of silent reverie,
                     spun,...
        like a spider reprocessing,
        carefully savoring
        each fine silk thread of web,

        spinning the womb of time...

© H.A.  Rivers 2012 … All Rights Reserved

my actress, who
sweated blood on Broadway each night
off Broadway too

said, on a long stroll
through Central Park. she was successful
because she did not like herself

on the stage, she proclaimed,
she was never herself, and she fell in love
with every character she portrayed  

every script was a better bio
than her own, and the playwrights knew
her better than she knew herself

and when our walk
was curtailed by a downpour, she dragged me
into a crowded cafe

where she knew half the patrons
and the wait staff, and they all knew the different
personas she had owned, on the dry stage

rain now forced her to choose  
which selves to keep, and which to lose
while she sipped scalding tea

with me, on a grey wet afternoon,
only hours before she would again be under  
the spell of the hot lights,

and read verses from the pens of prophets,
poets--those who purloined her soul for the price
of admission, to a place without self loathing

Dazzled by the morning sun clawing to the sky
Refracting to a million shards in opalescent eye,
Conscious of the brilliant way a soul reacts to light
Expounding in a genuflections inspirational flight.

Incredible the freshness of the dew on morning grass
Where green-ness saturates and then explodes like shattered glass,
Where the prism’s glow contracts within as image caste implodes
And the dawn comes up like thunder midst the blood red walls of Rhodes.

To feel the plight of Shakespeare, knowing words were not enough
Immersed amid the etching paint in Van Gogh’s manic tuft?
Meandering through vagaries of Einstein’s theorem’s pall
Is to rue at ****** humanity’s impending future fall.

Terror in the realisation mercy clearly can’t
When the blade cuts through the jugular to Allah Akbah’s chant,
Terror in the milliseconds sensed before the fall
Of the incandescent smart-bomb plummeting from high drone’s call.

What now the plight of splendour in the face of this demise,
Confronted by delusions failure now to realise?
In the dawning revelation brightly etched into the sky
Screaming urgent proclamation, re-evaluate or die!*

M.
Auckland N.Z.
Sunday August 7 2016