Step right up!

I stand on tip toes in the circle
- grasping for the ring.

It slips - drops - clangs.
(Oh dear you saw that, didn't you -
witness to my futility)?

Go ahead then take a turn.
Curve your knuckles
reach out - seize the brass!

Did you miss again?

What the hell,
let's go another round
for bending or for broke.

The clock ticks on -
soon enough
we'll both be was.
Today is for the seizing.

A small skiff drifted in the harbor
guided by the eazy oars of a fisherman
standing in the hull to better view
the shimmering reflection
of the orange circle hovering overhead-
dancing with the gentle waves
in the morning mist.

Monet had to name it something
so he called it what it was:

          "Impression, soleil levant."

A critic, wanting poison for his pen,
seized Monet's title to squeeze
a lethal dose into the radical veins
of the artist and his fellows of the gallery

          (Renoir, Pissarro, Cezanne).

With scathing indignation
he dubbed the lot of them,

           "Mere Impressionists."

The label endures (minus one word)
but how many recall or care to know
the righteous critic's name?

*November, 2011

Two billion years ago
the river we call Colorado
opened a **** in the Kaibab Plateau

sculpting sandstone, granite, and limestone spectra
on the rugged canyon walls -
reflecting the seering Arizona sun.

Millennial torrents scoured the surface.
Juniper and Aspen, torn from the expanding banks,
****** into the river's red-stained vortex.

All the while the restless Colorado,
obedient to gravity's law,
scoured its bed a mile below the rim.
The last dinosaur perished - choked by volcanic soot.

Pangaea rumbled, groaned and split
and an eye-blink ago our African parents
stood to take their first faltering steps.

Their progeny crossed the Bering bridge
roaming south to build stone shelters
tucked against these canyon walls.

Did the Havasupai huddle in fright
of the jagged firelight searing the skies -
pounding the air across the hollows?

And emerging at storm’s end
did they gaze at the rainbow mist
spread over the buttes and valleys?

After dusk, with fires withering to embers,
did they rest supine,
heads pillowed on their arms,
pondering the jewel case universe above?

*November, 2006

A bell tolled
through the fog at dusk
to summon passage
across the roiling waters.

Through the mist
a ferry appeared
but not the same as called -
afoul with death and sorrow.

With dread our forefathers
boarded ship and listened through
that storm filled crossing
to howling wind sung requiems
echoing from distant fields at
Manassus - Shiloh - Gettysburg.

When the gales had spent their fury
they disembarked in a new land
with both far less and more
than they left on the opposite shore.

*March, 2008