The Confrontation

he is stirred by buzzing thoughts, irritating him to wakefulness;
mobile, random and annoying for they last but a moment and
his sticky flypaper hands cannot capture and eradicate them into
existence fast enough to make them permanent, shareable and eased.

5:54am
Tue., the seventh day of the sixth month of MMXXII

postscript

he desperately fails to recall the world word labyrinth that urged him to rise and capture the wild animals that roared and removed his half-notions from the lifting fog of consciousness. Alas, they are just like specks of new sunlight upon a linen of grassy, newly watered wet greens; here today, instantaneously, gone and gone and gone. Instead,
he writes of their early death and mourns the brevity of their beauty,
and thinks not of the wasted times of the last seventy years.

Of a Certain Friendship by Elsa Gidlow

Odd how you entered my house quietly,
Quietly left again.
While you stayed you ate at my table,
Slept in my bed.
There was much sweetness,
Yet little was done, little said.
After you left there was pain,
Now there is no more pain.

But the door of a certain room in my house
Will be always shut.
Your fork, your plate, the glass you drank from,
The music you played,
Are in that room
With the pillow where last your head was laid.
And there is one place in my garden
Where it’s best that I set no foot.

Have writ of the return to our sheltering place so oft,
sanity suggests move on to a topic lesser revered, yet,
the throb of compulsion is irresistible, immovable, irrefutable!
so the fingertips tango step over a white screen dance floor,
looking, for old steps, new combinations, awaiting reincarnation!

as if self-denial was even possible, sanity and need are irrecusable.

Every exodus requires a commencement miracle, ours annualized,
the small SUV engorged, supplies-swollen, a Chanukah oil miracle,
time & space expand - always enough, calm stating, ¡más! accepting
all offerings and longings, rolling merrily along the worn paths and hamlets of Indian origin, voyagers, port to port, till we are destined,

free forced to isle~ferry, to-exhale relief; Here! an embraceable peace.

Water~bounded, isolated isola, surround~sounded tween two spits of land, two forks, two tines, define/defend its in~between persona,
welcoming but skeptical, welcoming but take note, we all become an islander, even by osmosis, distinctive, in~possession of a collective history of heroes memory, inscribed names, on our ferries, highways, & eyes

we all become sheltered islanders, serving by remembering….

Memorial Day 2022
Shelter Island

This is the time of the
Cleansing
Where audacity
And hypocrisy
Comes to the light
Though many will stay in the dark
Insisting that they are right
They will be the *****
Among the clean
Convinced their filth
Is pure and pristine

If we are mark’d to die, we are enow
    To do our country loss; and if to live
    The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
    God’s will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.

    By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
    Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
    It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
    Such outward things dwell not in my desires:

    But if it be a sin to covet honour,
    I am the most offending soul alive.
    No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England:
    God’s peace! I would not lose so great an honour

    As one man more, methinks, would share from me
    For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
    Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
    That he which hath no stomach to this fight,

    Let him depart; his passport shall be made
    And crowns for convoy put into his purse:
    We would not die in that man’s company
    That fears his fellowship to die with us.

    This day is call’d the feast of Crispian:
    He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
    Will stand a tip-toe when this day is named,
    And rouse him at the name of Crispian.

    He that shall live this day, and see old age,
    Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbors,
    And say ‘Tomorrow is Saint Crispian:’
    Then he will strip his sleeve and show his scars,

    And say ‘These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.’
    Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
    But he’ll remember with advantages
    What feats he did that day: then shall our names

    Familiar in his mouth as household words:
    Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
    Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
    Be in their flowing cups freshly remember’d,

    This story shall the good man teach his son;
    And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
    From this day to the ending of the world,
    But we in it shall be remembered;

    We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
    For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
    Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
    This day shall gentle his condition:

    And gentlemen in England now abed
    Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
    And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
    That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

April is in my mistress' face
April is in my mistress' face
April is in my mistress' face
And July in her eyes hath place
And July in her eyes, her eyes hath place
Within her *****, within her *****
Is September
But in her heart, but in her heart, her heart
A cold December
But in her heart, her heart
But in her heart, her heart
A cold December