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850 · Jul 16
Rebirth
Robert Ronnow Jul 16
The day after my Aunt Ro died
a doe approached within a few feet
as if confused about where she was
and what she should be doing.
I could neither comfort nor advise her.
I let her be not considering until later maybe
I had witnessed the transmigration of a soul.
But in the end I applied Ockham’s razor—

you rarely see what you believe.
A mile further along my morning stroll
I was greeted cheerfully by a flock
of cedar waxwings I always consider it a blessing
to encounter. Such social, amiable beings
I hope Aunt Ro will join, so sure are they of who they are—
844 · Aug 2015
Jones' Nose
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
Their unspoken opinions
are like a *** of unknowable, unnamed meats
including skunk parts
one morsel of filet mignon

Family or workplace
longer the hours, years of the living
opinions accumulate
perception strained through mortality

This stew of ethics
holds together, blows apart
trees, planets, atoms, galaxies
on or about year 2000

One must not
express the certainty
that the child's coma-induced vision of a dead grandparent
did not actually happen in heaven

One must feign
respect for all beliefs however abjectly
death denying
because they are harmless as

ozone
zebra
xylophone
zygote

A
beautiful day follows
on Jones' Nose
ripe blueberries, black cherries
www.ronnowpoetry.com
840 · Aug 2015
Cosmo's Moon
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
The only problem with 'Moonstruck'
is Cosmo's moon could never be so large in winter,
stand for luck.

Mid-winter sledding brought joy
snow, speed, although the kids were beautiful
none were boys.

Walking the boundaries, and the old field
boundaries. Aged maples, barbed wire
past the cambium.

Northern hardwood all the way, except
less than an acre scotch pine plantation
and a few primeval spruce.

Pendant spruce cones in tree tops
colonizing the old field too. Conifers
a primitive civilization.

Lyonia has red, scaleless buds.
Shrub or small tree, maximum height 12 feet.
It's a heath, Ericaceae.

Small, white, bell-like flowers become
seamed capsules, similar to but smaller than
laurel, Kalmia.

The buds had me thinking red chokeberry,
Rosaceae, but of course the fruit
was completely wrong for a rose.

A timber stand improvement now
in the scotch pine would encourage tall
even straight trees, a cathedral.

The maples on the upper rocky slopes
where the skidders couldn't or wouldn't go
are impressive as eagles', hawks' nests.

Mid-summer, Spiraea, field of pink flowers
fully encircled by mountain ranges.
Bees working them.

Nancy, the broker, coming at five.
These 160 acres, a dream, are unnecessary.
Offer 500 dollars per acre.

Not an investment, a sanctuary.
Backed against the Taconic ridge,
real moon rising.
www.ronnowpoetry.com
840 · Aug 2015
Belonging to the Loved Ones
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
Why make a sound or noise
or do anything to the page?
Unison playing from polyphony,
music evolves toward simplicity.

Gould's assertion that complexity,
NASA, is no more certain than a drunk in his city
weaving, heaving his guts into the gutter;
by any measure, evolution's favored bacteria.

Therefore, the earliest poem taking joy
in abundant crops and the lover's body,
2K B.C., followed by Yeats' Lapis Lazuli
offers the completest hope to us, easily,

for living this life without God's help
or even probability's. We meet
in the meeting house, argue and pray. We sit
with the dead who gave their genes to whelp

ourselves. Today, and then, the one question is
What is the polity's interest in the private soul?
Being free means belonging to the loved ones.
O the individual, alone, cannot be whole.

Governance evolves to democracy,
man accepting sole responsibility
for his thoughts, his wants, his words. Pure,
vibratoless genes from a polyphony of wars.
www.ronnowpoetry.com
839 · Dec 2019
My Giant
Robert Ronnow Dec 2019
Summer rain, melting Arctics
and the lipids lining the nerves
in your brain. These are the metrics
of our times. Mere resolve

is not enough to take care
along the highway—you need wheels and prayer.
When you realize there’s no there there
that’s a scary day. End there.

August, the extinction is terrifying.
Quiet, too quiet. 100% humidity, not a single insect flying.
Summer morning, summer evening, sighing
the sighs of purgatory—grief without pain, death without dying.

I’ve chosen the safety of these mountains
and the beauty of their mists—such perfection
which anyone can have for the asking.
All you need to know is the names of things.

Conflict, coercion, war, strife.
Flying high in April, shot down over Germany.
Have a good day. That’s life. Fix yr brakes.
When I hit a pothole my fillings sing.

Anything’s possible, it’s impossible
to know what will happen until it’s happened.
You can’t know what you’re doing until it’s done
and even then you stare in wonder

unmoved yet moved by the stillness
a pure goodness, bone stillness, potential energy. You can practice it
in the city or the desert.
The wilderness or the mirror over your dresser.
“Travelling is a fool’s paradise. . . . My Giant goes with me wherever I go.”  --Emerson
829 · Aug 2015
Troy and Trinity
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
Learning disabled, hopelessly unemployed
Troy can't write the address for his next interview.
Warehouse stock, 331 Tiffany Street, in the Bronx.
His girlfriend, Trinity, also unemployed,
with one child by Troy. She's more resourceful
but doesn't realize it. For one month
she worked an evening cashier job until her mother
refused to babysit at night. Wants to go out, live
her life, too. Trinity made numerous appointments
yesterday, can write and find the addresses o.k.

Troy has nowhere to live, has been crashing
with a woman in the Bronx. She's on public assistance,
they share the bed. How Troy reconciles this woman
with Trinity doesn't matter. Survival precedes love.
Troy can't meet the rent although she gives him
subway fare. He dresses well enough in the youthful
style, dark shirt, thin dark tie. At least no sneakers
and saggy pants or skinny jeans. Smokes cigarettes
but so do a lot of people. Hedging bets on life.

Trinity is tolerant of Troy. Understands his
predicament. No stable home, no money. How
does she feel about her kid? At least she has
someone to love her now. Troy forgets
to record the names and phone numbers of companies
he applies at. Burned out on angel dust. Wants
a job that pays and offers benefits. Too old
and desperate for a work experience/basic education
program. Needs a living wage, not a stipend.
But can't read or write or even speak coherently.

Interestingly he's not desperate enough to work fast food
at age 22. So the woman on public assistance is
a surer source of income than we think. Good.
Security guard may be the way to go with Troy.
No police record, requires no writing skills, just
stand there and be big. A job with no security
for the guard. Troy's mother threw him out
four years ago, although she helps out now and then.
He dropped out of high school in the tenth grade
kicked around the house and streets two years
doing drugs and partying. Met Trinity, got her pregnant.

Does Trinity have a contraceptive in place?
We don't know. As employment counselors, is that
our business? Only if Trinity brings it up. On
the bulletin board there's plenty of information
about family planning clinics. When she lost that
cashier job, I was completely frustrated, but not Trinity.
Takes it all in stride. I gotta admire her cheerfulness,
but why shouldn't she be happy? She has friends, family,
a community such as Hell's Kitchen is, not the worst,
and a purpose for living and acting in her kid.
She feeds the baby, negotiates living space with her mother.

Troy and Trinity wake up, late August morning,
hot and humid New York City. They have interviews
planned as well as personal business and pleasures
today. They have responsibilities, society puts
survival on them, never mind their disadvantages.
It is tough and it is good. Trinity will land
another cashier position, maybe today. Troy
will go for security jobs, I figured it out, the
uniform will make him feel better, the check
too. The work boring, easy, slow, perhaps fulfilling.
www.ronnowpoetry.com
824 · Aug 2015
Cast a cold eye and wait
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
What do you think
of the man peeing, the ever-******* mouse?
Finding meaning in killing
and cleaning house.

Sal quit school,
your lover stops writing.
Eternity's waiting,
a lazy-eyed tiger.

Or everything's cool
even the fighting.
The weather is perfect
for swimming or dying.

Physical dizziness,
mental uneasiness.
Isn't exercise
the best blood pressure medicine?

Universally sad
about my mortality
but also glad
to be leaving the party.

The noise was incessant,
success inconsistent.
The demands of my neighbors,
employers, persistent.

Belonging is longing
for complete solitude.
Seas, odysseys
the loneliness of being spouse.

Rain of April, rain of August
writing of it dry as dust.
What's my reason, rhyme?
Pass the time, pass the season.

If you're alone as you get, why are you crying?
Hold steady until a tsunami.
Then swim if you can. Don't gulp.
Hit in the head by speeding debris. Couldn't be helped.
www.ronnowpoetry.com
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
The white-breasted nuthatch
upside down the ancient bole.
If it has no soul, neither do I.

Pencils criss-crossed on the desk,
sticks tangled on the ground.
Oblong lenticels, yellow stars.

We try to worship the divine
in our ****** partners. They **** and sweat diurnally
and fear their deaths. But the abstract

God has also died. He lied to say he was
eternal. Earth must burn, universe grow cold.
Old field species become ornamentals.

Mosquitoes prey on us, and black flies.
The body decays, and this is what you come
to love. And the ants that carry it away.

This morning, the profusion of species
contents me. The temperate zone is warm, late May.
The posture of that bird is good to emulate.
www.ronnowpoetry.com
809 · Apr 2016
Mortal Poets
Robert Ronnow Apr 2016
Which is it: you can't get started unless
you're riding some current bigger than your reporting voice
or the best time to write is when you don't have much to say
and without plenty to say about everything you'll get better right
      away.

Form is very often a betrayal of reality.
Although we are initially drawn to poems by their passion and
      urgency,
we are convinced by the formal means invented
for their impelling motives. Every accidental crack or dent.


Not just mildly disquieted but actively repelled,
running for the River Styx, the doors of Hell pell mell,
there must be a crack, deep and unmendable, in the poet
that the poet must forever try to mend. Or not.

While mortal poets imitate, immortal poets steal.
That's plagiarism. Fortunately the public feels
less strongly about poetry than television,
communism and aging gracefully through meditation.

Now I'm being silly. My silly indefatigable lusting,
silly sadness, silly arguing and silly trusting.
All I do not know about our nation's history, wars
and what showering the people you love with love does.

Ransacking apothegms, algorithms
and selling the loot as memes,
dissemblings. Bearing fardels
with the warrior's skull.
www.ronnnowpoetry.com

--with lines by Heaney, Collins, Milosz, Yeats, Eliot, James Taylor, Helen Vendler, Kay Ryan

-- Heaney,Seamus, RTE Radio 1, September 1997
--Collins, Billy, The Exeter News, 6 May 2005
--Milosz, Czeslaw, Partisan Review, Summer 1996
--Yeats, William Butler, "Lapis Lazuli," The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats, The Macmillan Co., 1940.
--Eliot, T.S., The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism, 1950
--Taylor, James, "Shower the People"
--Vendler, Helen, The Breaking of Style, Harvard University Press, 1995
--Ryan, Kay, The Yale Review, April 2004
803 · Aug 2015
The Dark Green Conifers
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
another day in the woods. on Strawberry ridge
looking out over undulating green hills to
the next great wall ridge of mountains. the last
morning clouds left from last night's storm
hanging in the valley mistily. the sun eventually
burns them away.

the respect between old Paul Karlsen and I continues
to exist. even though he's a Mormon and I'm a fallen
New Yorker. the work is comparatively easy, lifting
hundred pound bags, so you can just imagine what
we do other days. in fact, it's fun, especially for
young Bates. we get all white (and our lungs dusty).

on the way to and from the work site I read
in Silent Spring, the chapter against herbicides, gathering
inspiration for the upcoming controversy. in the end
perhaps I'll be fired for refusing to lay down Tordon
beads. realizing this, as I drive with Bates,
I see the dark green conifers and begin to miss them.

                                         Rocks and rattlesnakes, bluebells
and mountain daisies, grasses and cactuses, mahogany
bush, lodgepole pine and quaking aspen, lush forest
and dry sun-tortured mountainside, wind and seed
carried by wind, ants, streams, hummingbird
and hawk, deer, badger, ground squirrel, wolverine.
www.ronnowpoetry.com
803 · Aug 2015
f(x)
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
Have some fun.
Presentation of self.
Afterlife functional illusion.

If your memories don't heart attack or cancer out
or from traffic accident
who will effortlessly flush them out?

You must give yourself to man
be more selfless.
Do one thing well. Flute.

History final. F is for fiction.
Nature's philosophical partner
afraid, affectionate, forceful, confused!

Within a tradition, fine to know what you're doing.
Polka dots and moonbeams. I'm old fashioned.
Noh, opera, film.

File with business cards.
What's the offer?
Free marketing. Unusual reflections.

Why fight fires, floods?
Hurricanes and other acts of the Father. As for man's
fate, what has this to do with the temperamental, fragile self.

Power failure
just as we were fixing dinner.
The white egret ate fish after fish, one then another then another,
      forever . . . .
www.ronnowpoetry.com
802 · Aug 2015
Rhodora in Winter
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
Rhodora in winter, capsule like a claw,
remains of the 5-part flower Emerson saw,
gone to seed. Deciduous trees and shrubs
have their own winter beauty and a power
akin to the fittest's survival, self-same
that brought me, musing, here. Large globose buds!
(that dwarf the rose's but not the butternut's)  
distinguish it from other Ericaceae that
surround this inland wetland. The Lord
all claim to worship is not better
than thou. I'm passing through naming you,
your parts, and the autumn elaeagnus who
is your neighbor. Good a walk as it gets
before edible understory herbs sprout.
www.ronnowpoetry.com
802 · Aug 2015
Life is not a curse
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
I'm not hard,
I'm scared.
I thought the cherry was the birch.
When the cloud cleared
I was still afraid.

At my best
I accept death
As a necessary search, wary
Of philosophies
That assign us souls but not the trees.

Nonetheless
I want long life, yes,
I want to plant my seed and walk the wilderness.
But not yet.
First I must just sit.

Sit and feel the pain
That keeps me sane.
Eat my meal quietly and remain
A guest
In the body I know best.

This morning in the east
The sun rose on the lake. Again
I breathed. I was blessed
And thought to say
Life is not a curse.
www.ronnowpoetry.com
796 · Aug 2015
Peter has gotten a new job
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
Peter has gotten a new job
as a bookstore clerk from one to ten
down by the river
in a sunny little house.
I've come to visit and I'm thumbing through
a book of poems
by Robinson Jeffers' brother.
Incoherent but
more interesting than this.

Out of the river rises a *** of a blob
dripping with water and begging a yen.
While he shivers
I call him a louse
and say This isn't Nippon, you!
So off he roams
probably back to his mother.
He was a nut
because he wasn't a fish.
www.ronnowpoetry.com
794 · Aug 2015
Year Million
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
Standing at back of cafeteria during youth basketball awards
      ceremony
This is my community.
"What you do may not seem important but it is very important
      that you do it."

The men and women bringing the boys and girls a step to
      wisdom.
Win or lose, play your best and treat your opponent with
      respect.
Maybe the school principal can explain the ultimate mystery?

The women cannot be this chaste! The men so committed to
      non-violence!
What is the board president alone in her bedroom.
Coach Strong and his blowsy frowsy wife?

They put much emotion and gratification aside to get things
      done. Done for their sons and done for their daughters.
Visit the web site! Buy a raffle ticket! Belong to the loved
      ones!
I follow distantly. I watch warily. I have not been asked to
      lead or lift a load.

Sitting in a chair in a corner of a room at the top of a house
      near the end of a street on the edge of a city at the mouth
      of a river,
Estuary of ocean, ocean of atmosphere, pierced by a meteor
      bringing ore and organisms, incinerating elements and
      rototilling ecosystems,
Everything changes but consciousness.

The kids of course are perfect as animals in habitats.
In light of these basketball certificates, team spirits,
Time, our moment, is indeed "the mercy of eternity."
www.ronnowpoetry.com
791 · Jan 2021
Who's Got Trouble?
Robert Ronnow Jan 2021
I’ve never put a candidate’s bumper sticker on my car before—
why not take sides—what are you waiting for?
Death puts a stop to daily low intensity warfare but in the meantime—
      fight on!
What are we fighting for? Let’s see—
clean air and water and room to walk around in cities and deserts
America the seeing eye dog not America the junkyard dog—
collective deliberation among nations, clear passage through seas and
      borders
compact and contiguous Congressional districts that represent actual
      communities
education and health care for everyone who wants it—worldwide
good food too, affordable shelter and a living wage
a say in governance—local and global—free from fear of violence

Should you be subsumed by a cause bigger than the self?
unlike Rick in Casablanca who keeps to himself
I’m advertising my loyalties with bumper stickers on rickshaw and kayak
every time I come and go
it’s a free country—or maybe I’m so low profile no one notices or
      cares to take revenge
so small time I have time and no enemies or friends
What about Whitman and his love for Lincoln
he found a way to participate in the war that satisfied his muse, as a
      nurse
oh, I want to add space exploration and no nuclear war
plus basic science and ancient arts, black lives matter

Here are some things you have to put up with or out of mind
while enjoying the beautiful black and white photography and rousing
      Marseillaise:
that Sam, played by Dooley Wilson in worshipful subservience to “Mr.
      Rick,” endures his lonely abnegation and abstinence in Paris while
      Rick savors the nordically white, luscious Ilsa;
that Ilsa, on the lam across the wide world from pursuing Nazis, is
      apparently transporting an extensive, elegant, perfectly manicured
      wardrobe;
that Rick, in wartime Casablanca, has managed to hire a full 20-piece  
      jazz orchestra for which we willingly suspend disbelief since it’s  
      essential for singing the Marseillaise which never fails to bring tears
      of pride to Yvonne’s eyes;
I guess that’s about it except why would you spend a minute in Sydney
      Greenstreet’s fly-infested café when Rick’s air-conditioned
      establishment is right across the street, an overnice contrast to
      Maghreb culture;
otherwise, I’m in complete accord with IMDb’s 8.5 rating.

On the news last night the president changed the trajectory of a  
      category 4 hurricane. He can’t do that! Not my president! They’re  
      laughing at us!
Who’s got trouble? We've got trouble. How much trouble? Too much  
      trouble.
After Casablanca, it's headed for South Carolina.
--Jerome, M.K. and Scholl, Jack, “Knock on Wood”, as performed by Dooley Wilson in the film Casablanca, 1942.
787 · Aug 2015
Meditation
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
There is no religion in meditation
but it's worth visiting with your mind
in the morning. What will you find?

Equally, think about the moose and nation.
Cleaning house no less than apocalypse,
food rations. The mind lights at random.

Sit ten minutes. Breathe in, out.
Counting, or imagining the mind's a horse
galloping leads to other thoughts, not

catastrophe but also not allowed. Visit
with your bones which will outlast
words and desires. In them there's a fire

banked low, where particles of sun are
stored and slowed, or stilled entirely.
That's where I reside. Not really,

not certainly, not virtually. Then
eyes open, flowering or snow falling, the day begins
no wiser, happier or myself.
www.ronnowpoetry.com
786 · Aug 2015
A Designer of Systems
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
1

I say I'm a designer of systems, plans
Man's
Parts that stand together, set in place to serve
Trees and planets, too, which are unplanned by us
The observant, wise man
Tries to understand
Name the parts, pistil and stamen
Rocks, eskars
Elements.

Winter is shuddering to an end, mud roads
Cardinal pairs
Robin flocks return that will soon pair off
Buds
Soils swell
Will I live to smell it again, learn the lobelias
Understand and name the parts
It ought to be a great comfort to be so insignificant
Go among weeds, a wind
Thinking to myself

One's never alone
A dichotomous key is needed, a book of twigs and fruits
Accumulated over time and generations
Without it mine would be a blank mind

To be blank but knowledgeable
Without any machinery
In a perfect silence
That is the definition of death for which we have only to wait
But in my panic last night I thought death's inert
Grace requires consciousness
Hold on long to the senses
At least a century, maybe more
A boy hanging upside down from a fence at sunset, counting
      clouds

2

Now we go to our daily practice
And chosen disciplines
Sustained by the satisfactions of being good men among our
      fellow men
Women
Choosing to do this and not that
With the finite days allotted us that at first seemed like a lot
They're now few
But the chickadee's life to the chick and the cankerworm
      moth's to the worm
Seem as long to them as ours to us
What question am I asking today
By now, past half a century, I should have chosen a discipline
And been satisfied

To be a war president one must have war
May you live in interesting times - wish or curse?
Squirrels, high in oaks,
Fiber, fat and protein in acorns
Strong runners, leapers, climbers
Should stay off the roads which some cannot avoid being
      where they're born
Natural selection is occurring
Those that look for machinery in motion
Hesitate or don't as needed before crossing
Live in larger numbers than those whose modus operandi's
Guessing
The ravens eat the fur and guts of bad guesses off the roads

I impose my own small order
Having chosen mountains over plains or shore
Go to my daily discipline
And estimate the motions of the seas and stars
Measuring my satisfactions by my children's satisfactions
"I design systems that allow people to do their best work regularly and predictably, instead of intermittently and by chance, and to produce outcomes in quantities large enough to make a difference in their communities."

www.ronnowpoetry.com
775 · Aug 2015
Morning Chores
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
As if the sun intended this habitual tendency to make the body healthy I do. First, the brain believes itself what a mistake if it's blue. The eyes blue breeze sky praise God some beautiful living world earth. Good as a proper prayer could good. Then a leg moves. What a miracle course of muscle goes to greatness human and divine. Morning moving as good a feeling.

            An arrow of cloud on the sky points the way. Everyday look you and you find an ancient new way. A list of the components contains the river's horizontal reserve deep dull and dark as a dream, the blue sky and her daughter the gentle breeze and her great husband the morning sun. After these, men and their nice machines and their morning chores.

            When I get up I brush my teeth mundane. I put fruit in a bowl by the bed and brew tea. I feed the cats animal meats preserved and cans of caught fish organs and oils complex. Their ***** being different from mine cleaning. I sweep the floors with a broom and a dust. And knock in the nails. I check the mailbox and search the street a fence a neck a stretch for the mailman and imagine the mail. My doing this opens the windows and unlocks the doors.

            Next I water thirty thirsty plants important. The ferns smell of earth spray. This good thing lasts into the wee hours of your life remember. Open goodness goes to heaven sky on earth or in a sense four seasons. I open the back door porch and a black cat morning. You wonder why. A childhood breeze makes the feelings in the mind play music. The mystery of night is now a mystery of morning. Something of nostalgia wine.

            The center the stomach the body the ***. It propels the people's body all day. From morning to night a woman a man. Everything fitting and grand and in through the door healthy, nothing and wise. The grass on the hill of a willing riverbank. Welcome and good morning.
www.ronnowpoetry.com
772 · Aug 2015
Until the fight is done
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
My confusion comes from too much doing. During the news
eating cheese and crackers, drinking wine, thinking the world
needs me.

Or the falling leaves, the days shorter but so much brighter.
How the cloud cover of the canopy has lifted to reveal
maybe God.

The longest continuous democracy may end in another
      theocracy.
A bunch of voodooists with their hocus pocus blessings
and understandings.

Bombs and poison. Grief. Chiseled, tearless face.
Chants gregorian. Her sad, clear, soulful missives from
the city.

Unbelievable acorn crop this year! Skate on them
like marbles. Last year was a maple year. The ash crop
significant, too.

But not the cherries. Or a single pear. Blackberries
held back too. Sure the towers were a violation, but they
      came to
hold community.

One stands not apart or alone but an individual within
his or her platoon. Committed to the mission and survival of
the platoon.

Fedex leaves a package. There is or is no anthrax
in it. It is our disappointment as Americans that the world
      cannot
be trusted.

Yes, New York is the enemy and brother of Kabul. How
does one reconcile those differing communities and be a non-
violent human?

With words. Wendell Berry's words. And service such as
the secretaries of state give, leaving when one's time and work
is done.

Staying in the diatonic. Agreeing first on rules of engagement.
Then engaging. Not stopping the fight or thought or song until
      the fight
is done.
www.ronnowpoetry.com
771 · Aug 2015
Adnate to the Funicle
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
Accepting aloneness, incomplete solitude, imperfect rest. The garden
wasted, pumpkin patch planted late, potatoes untasted left in ground.

A thousand email addresses, each unique represents a flame of
passion, compassion, desperation or depression. To understand, to
      know's

impossible. It is therefore only reasonable to observe the shadows
on the mountain, the actions of the dreamer which tell us something,

little, nothing of his dream. It's a simple secret shared,
longevity. The half breed John Russell says it right, the

date and place don't matter, dry desert or cold mountainside,
lush bottomland, soulless or hospitable, contagious hospital.

The best laugh's death's, a perfect escape, perfect error, perfect
rest. Their solicitude's unnecessary, grief is temporary, life goes on,

you go under, underemployed, the undertaker's never unemployed.
Forensics prove an ***** with two chambers, ovule adnate to the
      funicle.
www.ronnowpoetry.com
756 · Aug 2015
How cool!
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
How cool!
this early summer evening
after a day so oppressive
even we New Yorkers move painstakingly.
The breeze in sumac trees
so why am I not more content?
The electricity went off at the bank,
spontaneous bank holiday,
so I'm broke, drinking water.

All my needs except love
fulfilled. Woman
opens her windows. How cool!
this summer evening
in New York, dense New York
the jets overhead
the people on the ground suffering
and struggling toward vague goals
or goals clear as Harry Helmsley's.

How cool and refreshing
this glass of ice water
after today's hot pavement, clothes.
During the afternoon heat
I sleep in my underwear.
What a city I murmur to myself
looking at its map. Big,
Jamaica Bay to Inwood,
the Battery to Pelham Bay.

Nowadays novels need
a few cities to move the plot.
New York, Saigon, Paris.
The protagonist
does not walk in the park. He
uses his car to get around fast.
How cool this evening in New York!
Lost among the bars and industry,
moonrise over Bronx.
www.ronnowpoetry.com
752 · Aug 2015
Family of Weasels
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
On last night's news I heard
of an engineer named K_ who
invented the microchip and changed
our lives. How the chip now contains
a billion circuits which I still don't get
but what I do perceive is this engineer's
(a man modest in pride, fame and wealth)
achievement of Teilhard de Chardin's vision
of a world that is one organism and a single-
minded mankind.
                                 Also mentioned
were Edison, the Wrights and Ford,
oddly not Einstein, Galileo, Copernicus, Newton,
Hamilton or Jefferson, Christ or Buddha,
or the unknown gatherers and traders
who invented agriculture, money.
8,000 generations and each individual
an experiment gone well or wrong, a chance
to respond with love or grief to the universe's effort
to extinguish us.

Family of weasels, young ones playful.
One reference says they're vicious murderers,
killing for sport. Absurd, I think, in the wild.
Another clarifies they eat ½ their body weight daily,
extremely active, high metabolism, hunt all their caloric needs
before eating. And, like the raccoon, ferocious defenders
of their young.
www.ronnowpoetry.com
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
To presume to write to someone about courage
and not complaining, don't importune or make dying people cry.
I've always said Leave me alone with autumn.
Don't stand around my bed, I won't be in it.

Over 7 years after he died, I finally looked
through my father's papers. Couple of unclaimed insurance policies,
savings bonds, our genealogy and on graph paper in an engineer's
block lettering quotations from The Seat of the Soul.

Reincarnation and karma are the chicken soup of the soul,
the after life is the reward for our colossal imperfections.
Along with banking instructions, he'd underlined
this: Your soul is immortal. It exists

outside of time. It has no beginning and no end.
Every time you ask for guidance you receive it.
If we are not at home in the world, contributing purpose,
we lose our desire to stay here -- and we die.

The physical world is an unaccountable given in which we
      unaccountably
find ourselves and which we strive to dominate to survive
or it is a learning environment created jointly by the souls that share it
and everything that occurs within it serves our learning.

Sin is activity directed toward self rather than toward service
to others. Sickness is sin. Almost any condition can be corrected.
You are part of God, therefore, think in a godly manner.
If you cannot accept this, forget it all. Do not even begin.

The first act of free will: How do I wish to learn?
If we participate in the cause, it is impossible not to participate in the
      effect.
We shall come to honor all of life sooner or later.
Until you become aware of the effects of your anger, you will
      continue to be an angry person.

Walking is the most commonly suggested exercise. Also, breathing.
"Thy will be done." Concentrate on that!
These expressions of certainty, conjectures and guesses
were inscribed by him in block letters on graph paper.
--Zukav, Gary, The Seat of the Soul, Free Press, 1990
--McGarey, William A., The Edgar Cayce Remedies, Bantam Books, 1983

www.ronnowpoetry.com
734 · Oct 2017
I can clean. I can drive.
Robert Ronnow Oct 2017
Plenty of sleep, no more tv, the wars in the Middle East
are resource wars, disguised as religious debates.
So Dad would say.

A beautiful winter day, hunting
season. A Gun In Every Home, in light of U.S. mass shootings
seems an irresponsible poem. 10K clicks

most popular poem on line, NRA enthusiasts and conservative
talk show hosts quoting it. Not really, no worries, poetry
makes nothing happen. Which is something, magic.

               *                     *                     *

I wonder if I'll have to someday defend that poem,
as in a Russian or Chinese show trial, Salem witch trial,
McCarthy anti-American committee or a college
political correctness safety hearing. Oh well.

What does it mean? Doc Wiseman says that's not how we decide
things in this country, lynching and chasing people with dogs.
You'd think twice about bombing Iran if Iran had the bomb.
Assume a defensive posture.

I've been reading Walzer's
Just and Unjust Wars, much like explaining how to tie your shoes,
or teaching an artificial intelligence to walk, talk
and think about God.

               *                     *                     *

The citizenry doesn't need weaponry sufficient to win a war,
just enough to give pause during its normal pursuit of pleasure
(hunting deer on a beautiful, clear winter morning).

Hunting and gathering and agriculture, local and small
or these almonds I'm eating from California's Imperial
Valley and all the water it took to grow 'em.

Slowly
          drip irrigation
                               takes hold.

Technologies
such as the Anasazi and other aborigines used are uploaded
for sustainable survival.

Much good goes with the bad,
school shootings with school science shows, art shows and
      Shakespeare's plays.
How to stop the unhappiness of ISIS

those lonesome souls from interfering with the evolution
of the species? With love. What did Christ mean
(and what did Wallace Stevens mean by imagination)?

               *                     *                     *

Accept (but contain).
Trust (but verify). Ha ha! Reagan was a pretty funny guy.
It must bother a president, a regular fellow who'll pack his suitcase and
      go back
to Iowa when his term is up, to know he's ordered the death
of a janitor on the night shift at a nuclear reprocessing plant
in a proportional response to a mullah's anger. Jurors

in the trial of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
have sentenced him to death. For his role in killing four people
and wounding hundreds more. There was no visible reaction
from Tsarnaev, 21, in the quiet courtroom.
Justice. In his own words "an eye for an eye."
Survivor Jared Clowery said he was happy not to have had to make the
      choice between life and death himself but he stands behind the jury's
      decision.

"There's nothing happy about having to take someone's life."
Good people without guilt or gloating. Yet
my thought was now we must forego the possibility of knowing
this young man's mind. There's still time to ask him questions
as in Dead Man Walking. To understand is to love
requiring the patience of the scientific method.

               *                     *                     *

Yesterday's single greatest joy
was solving the equation
T = 2π(r3/GMe)½
for Haley's comet orbiting
the sun.

And sitting in the sun
on a winter day.
731 · Aug 2015
Election Day
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
This autumn morning with the birds waking up
and the leaves changing is Election Day. I meet
Jane Trichter on the downtown subway and discuss
Henry's upset. Her skin is soft especially her cheeks
and she is intelligent and sensitive. The subway riders
do not recognize their representative.

All week, at the office, I accomplish nothing substantive
but keep the aides and interns working
and cheerful. On Tuesdays there is always a wave
of constituent complaints, by telephone. One woman's
Volkswagon is towed and the police break in
to get it out of gear. Do they have that right,
can they tow even though no sign said Tow Away Zone?

It is an interesting question but I try to avoid
answering it. The woman persists and succeeds
in committing me.

The people at the office want to bomb Iran. A few Americans
held hostage and therefore many innocent women and children
pay the postage. It may be good classical logic to hold
      responsible
the whole society for the acts of a few, however, then
I must begin to expect the bomb and the white cloud that
      waits.
Apocalyptic visions are popular again
but we are more likely to thrash the earth to within an inch of
      its life
than scorch it to charred rock.

Corner of Church and Chambers,
German tourist's language, accent repels me
although I wasn't alive 45 years ago
and many sweet, great Germans opposed the crazy Nazis
but lately I've read Primo Levi's If Not Now, When?,
seen William Holden in "The Counterfeit Traitor",
have followed the argument started by revisionists
who say the **** atrocities never happened.

War brought many shopkeepers, bookkeepers close to
      their earth,
weather, seasons, death.
I see daily life as low-intensity warfare
as my father, the World War II vet, did.
Off to work we go. What is war?
Population control, mother of invention, diversion
from the work of making life permanent.

Today is Election Day and because it's a day off
for most municipal employees, the City Hall area
has been quiet and easy to work in. Henry and Jane
hold a press conference on teenage alcoholism.
Leslie, the other aide, who I'd like to draw
the stockings and clothes off of and feel her whole body
with mine, goes home with her mother, leaving me
standing by my desk with my briefcase at the end
of Election Day.
www.ronnowpoetry.com
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
I'm thinking about rhyme and meter
but also my kidneys and my liver.

The nation-state and the failed state
and whether killers should be executed

or forgiven. Meditate on this: Thy
will be done. Do what has to be done

don't ask why. Clean the dishes and the house.
Will I be left to my own resources

or will all be given? Nevermind
what you can't imagine. Living's

life's priority. Friends are merely friendly,
they're in the majority. Loneliness

is the default position. Rain happens.
We supply the reasons.

How do people process their lives without art?
By caring not.

Ignore
yr autobiography.

In olden days, if you couldn't stand to ***
the family buried you under the pecan tree.
www.ronnowpoetry.com
723 · Aug 2015
Negotiation
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
Chipmunks, squirrels collecting
bitternut hickory, chirping
against a small owl cruising
low beneath the trees.

Everyone has gone this morning
to school or work. Laundry rolling,
carpets vacuumed, cleaning
in the bathroom on my knees.

I'd like to be Whitman, praising
the pure contralto, Wynton practicing
all day. But like my father dying
I cannot hear what I cannot see.

Locally there's politics, processing
points of view. Eventually coming
to a decision, building or not building
windmills on the sky, bridges in the sea.

Insignificant and mighty happenings
seem the same from my vantage ageing
gratefully, inexorably, planning
how to die in my own **** way.
www.ronnowpoetry.com
721 · Aug 2015
Snake Creek
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
Tired body aches. Long walk on starry night -
ears attuned for bear at creek, or cougar.
Nothing, not a doe.
                                    But that afternoon
came upon a healthy young buck in a meadow.
High up. And a hawk left a feather for me.
Old, old stands of lodgepole pine, grey bark
like wrinkled hides of elephants. Thick carpet
of dead needles.
                              Thirst. Sit at snowbank
for an hour eating snow. Burn tongue.
To soon after stumble upon a pond and the place
that a creek springs from the mountain. Water
indescribable. Eat ravenously and drink deep
gulps.

Climb highest rocky peak at dusk. Razor-back
ridge. Mother hawk scream nearby. Must
backtrack and then go straight down near dark
feet fall through layers of scrub pine, hands
grab for the live stalks only support against
broken bone.
                          Choose steep narrow bed of loose rocks,
surely waterfall in some other season and descend
on *** and all fours, feet first always fearful
it will end in an uncontrollable hundred foot drop.
Trickles of water nearing bottom.
                                                         ­  Cracked hands, raw
behind, cross final snowbank and attain road
along Snake Creek.
www.ronnowpoetry.com
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
In the holy spot
with a sitting rock,
an oak. In back
yards, shagbark
hickory and maple.

Ants climb the rock.
August, birds
celebrate flowering
weeds, the seeds
of autumn to come.

I am here to name it
and know it and help it
to grow. These mountains
are my grave. A good grave
to go to.

The crows have been
in conference, again.
A jay, blue, pokes
a hole through reality.
I find sumacs fruiting

and the male *** organs
of the Queen Anne’s lace.
Dark-eyed juncos glean the lawn,
an occasional nuthatch
in the butternut.

I hear a pileated
woodpecker jackhammering
and my neighbor’s skill saw
chirring. Ants crawl
on connecting interlacing instructions.
www.ronnowpoetry.com
718 · Aug 2015
The World Without the Self
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
Between conjecture and classification there is
observation, experiment, data (collection and analysis),
statistics, calculus, and a good guess
about God's intentions -- probabilities, fractals, chaos and complexity.
This is the thunderous city.

The form of the poem, the rhyme.
Form cannot be first if you want to reach high artistic levels, since
      you are then bound by form, and that form is very often a
      betrayal of reality
.
Yet I find I am attracted all the time
to philosophies in short skirts, jewels and eyes lined with kohl.
I love where her legs lead, to her very soul.

Three women hike by under an umbrella in a winter rain. Two men
      side by side run in rhythm.
An oil truck takes the hill in low steady gear.
My old Marine, 89, died last night without anxiety or fear.
May I overcome my pain enough to reach the place where the deer
      lay down their bones
and, like them, die alone.

When making an axe handle, the pattern is not far off.
The purpose of school is to introduce us to the world's innumerable
      wonders.
The periodic table, World Wars I and II, Huckleberry Finn and Jim.
      But soft,
what light through yonder window breaks?
It is a billion trillion nuclear detonations per second without which
      nothing can be done or faked.

The temple bell stops, but the sound still comes out of the
      flowers.
Forests and the composite species will be nameless. Genetic
      prowess,
receiving the sacrament, performing Lohengrin from the Great
      American Songbook,
the look of love in all the wrong places, facebook,
fakebooks, folios of old family photos on or in pianos.

How can I be both still and skilled?
When we took Pop-Pop off the ventilator, we put him in a refrigerator.
He stopped eating, he stopped breathing. Circle with a dot.
He had his dream, he'd rowed his boat.
No single line can completely explain -- or rhyme -- or untie this knot.
--with lines by Nye, Milosz, Jeffers, Snyder, Basho, Dunbar

--Nye, Naomi Shihab, "Pakistan with Open Arms", Words Under the Words: Selected Poems, The Eighth Mountain Press, 1995
--Milosz, Czeslaw, Partisan Review, Summer 1996
-- Jeffers, Robinson, "The Deer Lay Down Their Bones", The Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers, Random House, 1953
--Snyder, Gary, "Axe Handles", No Nature: New and Selected Poems, Pantheon Books, 1992
--Shakespeare, William, "But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?", Romeo and Juliet, II, ii, 2
--Matsuo Basho, "The temple bell stops", trans. Robert Bly, The Sea and the Honeycomb: A Book of Tiny Poems, Beacon Press, 1971
--Dunbar, Paul Laurence, "He Had His Dream", The Collected Poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar, University of Virginia Press, 1993

www.ronnowpoetry.com
715 · Aug 2018
Rules for Old Men Waiting
Robert Ronnow Aug 2018
Jack awoke in his usual pain, un-
daunted by it. We're all gonna die
someday is his morning mantra these days.
Isolate the variable, anything
you do to one side of the equation
you gotta do to the other. Practice
zen, eat less, an empty belly's holy.
These are the rules for old men waiting.

On the other hand, attachment to self
and to things to do. Clean the house, watch for war.
Count syllables, teach English to immigrants
from Slovakia or Syria.
Advocate vocational education
in the schools. Jack has much to do, a new
administration, low social security.
He goes slow as the day will allow.
--title from a novel by Peter Pouncey
713 · Aug 2015
The Writer Working Hard
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
This morning I put the apostrophe in
and this afternoon I took it out.
Oscar Wilde's comic wit
about the writer working hard.

Revision has lately become the sign
of seriousness, as in I revise
some poems a hundred times,
maybe more. A word of praise here,

a critical word there.
Before that there was the debate
if poems not stitched with end-sounds
were playing tennis without a net.

Late summer, August, hot, but
chickadees forming platoons.
Three months until the snow flies,
sure as the June my father died.
www.ronnowpoetry.com
698 · Aug 2015
Watching Homer Struggle
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
Watching Homer struggle
to explain how a god wounded by a mortal
cannot die but may thereafter live with minor pain

and the humor when that god
complains to Jove that His supervision of His daughter
is inadequate and His Love too unconditional

while Diomed (or Tydides)
wreaks havoc on the Trojans and Hector
gives it back (in kind)

anatomically correct descriptions
of spears piercing jawbones and groins
sons without fathers hunting and fishing thereafter

alone. Written
amazingly presciently!
as a metaphor for Vietnam (our war)

forgotten consensually
as this generation slips lazily away
to Hades (on Huck Finn's raft)

where the lights are always blue, gentian actually,
supper's served at 4 and former adversaries
pass the heavy hanging time playing pinochle (and pool).

We're selling the house to pay the taxes.
Pallas Athena wars among the men
from the axle of her chariot

and Venus is injured by Diomed,
standing in the field of battle where she never should have been,
in her adorable hand.

What has this to do with Solomon in jail.
Not the Jewish king, a black American male,
same thing.

Your children can be failed at school and marched to war.
You can be taxed and sent to gaol for the honor of it.
anyone lived in a pretty how town.

We have no obligation
to perform the Iliad or read poems and even Homer
considers Achilles effete (compared to Hector)

and Odysseus is wrong even when he's right.
Therefore, modern man explores
the mathematics of circles in coordinate planes and their tangents

(when) (once) (soon)
the secret of warp speed is discovered
expansion of the species will be limitless and permanent.
--with a line by e.e. cummings

www.ronnowpoetry.com
693 · Aug 2015
Infestation
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
Full of doubt. About survival of the species and my own.
A plague of tent caterpillars, worse than an infestation,
an insurgency that has left the sky naked, bones revealed,
trees knee deep in webbing.

Another way to look at it: The caterpillars have opened up
the understory. It's not a form of terrorism,
it's an opportunity for otherwise repressed species
to assert genetic relevance.

A scientist gets out among the ticks and webs, observes
the march of barberries up the watershed, mustards spread
in tire treads, and hidden among this mess of invasives,
a jalopy of a hunter's roost.

Beer cans are also diagnostic. Inwood Park,
dog **** and abandoned cars, yet a copper beech around
      which
Indians camped. The broken asphalt and Spanish language.
Humanity followed time there.

When I see a fox, a coyote or a bear, I think What Good
      Luck
to be made of clay and alive this year. If I saw a cougar
I would not know what to do. It would change my life,
like an archaic torso of Apollo.

Look for the silver lining. Walk on the sunny side of the street.
Count your blessings. Life goes on. A little better every day in
      every way.
You can't take it with you. It's only money. People who need
      people are
the luckiest beetles in the world.
www.ronnowpoetry.com
689 · Aug 2015
Birding by Ear
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
The poem requires a mind
that finds meaning, even divination,
in language. Non-fiction,
up to academic standards, demands
evidence. Nothing less will do.
Most of us read fiction and this
needs a taste for action, motivation.

Lately, as have you, I have
thought about our war and its purpose,
motivation. But I have also closely
listened to the wood thrush, analyzed
its song like a tune by T.S. Monk
or J.S. Bach concerto. One belongs
to the loved ones who ostracize us, too.

A robin looks, hops, pecks, is never calm.
It is the flute-like tones, yes, but mostly
the patient, meditative clarity
of the thrush that enchants. One wants
to be that bird. How will we attain
calm clarity for the species **** sapiens?
Through the discipline of asking questions.

Mimics, woodpeckers, sing-songers, hawks,
chippers and trillers, whistlers, name-sayers,
loons, owls and a dove, high pitchers,
wood warblers and a word-warbling wren.
Unusual vocalizations.
What did the wood thrush sing
teaching its young thrush meanings?

Too much commotion is the commonest of mortals’ sins.
Peace has many faces,
the wood thrush in the canopy is one.
A word of praise here, an encouraging word there.
A wraith, a ghost against an impatient man,
verbose, unsure of the path, always longing.
Nothing satisfies like the thrush's song.
www.ronnowpoetry.com
689 · Jan 2016
Problems
Robert Ronnow Jan 2016
Problems many of which are not getting solved
not because I'm not resolved but because I delay
to savor the day, the moon and the season
which is why I'm a non-person under the eye of eternity.

Except for my unpaid bills. And iambic pentameter.
Aaron fails English. Is there summer school?
What an *******! I want to slug him, but also
his teacher, Mr. Fisher, who's probably

a nice guy, just doing his job and raising a family.
Then there's the catheter from my last surgery
I was so sick I thought I was dying. The out of network
pathologist and radiologist have declined my insurance

and charged me to the hilt. Like I had a choice
face up in the emergency room. Facing doom, you don't ask questions.
Now that I've rejoined the living I've got to raise a million bucks
to save organic farms and endangered species I'll never see.

Perhaps none of this matters and chanting's the answer, Buddhist
      precepts,
or as Dad would say This too shall pass.
Life is a back and forth game but baseball is zen meditation,
you're in right field, nothing's happening, nothing's gonna happen,

but you can't let your attention wander for one second.
I should clean and oil my trumpet for Saturday's gig
or the valves will stick. And leave early enough
not to get stuck in traffic. Other lives, other quilts.

A guy who takes the subway to a dead metal desk
and the boss who fires him with the cold hard eyes
of one who accepts the rules entirely. Actually
we're fortunate to have rules because otherwise

child soldiers armed with AK-47s would be shooting up
the village and setting fire to our thatched roofs.
Instead, under the rule of law, when snow falls
even old roofs look like problems with proofs.
www.ronnowpoetry.com

--Francis, Robert, "Old Roofs", Collected Poems: 1936-1976, University of Massachusetts Press, 1985.
680 · Aug 2015
Late Summer
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
It has been beautiful, late August, full moon
a million crickets following
a million fireflies in June,
a million May peepers. Immersed
in insect, amphibian cycles, I am a mammal, drugged,
crossing the road, car approaching
fast, unnoticed.

I would choose to die in late summer.
Why?
So that my wife would have autumn, intense,
to grieve by,
snowy bandages with which to bind the wound,
and spring to reawaken into.
Summer to remember that she's loved.
www.ronnowpoetry.com
673 · Aug 2015
The Summer Noosphere
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
Wet nights, warm days are what we want in the summer
      noosphere.
Man's mind one with weather.
If this is true, life is good, or will be good.
Can I be encouraged that my sons will find mystery on the
      planet
as I did?

How sweet the slow spring! May already and the canopy
      not out yet.
Woods quiet all winter.
Now I can't distinguish the many bird songs from where I sit.
Red maple flowers and first sugar maple leaves are, to me,
      the Christ child
that's been coming.

The ancient poems and the new make the 1/10 inch of annual
      topsoil
from carbon dioxide loading.
As a humanist I want everyone pursuing happiness; as a
      naturalist
I sometimes pray for man's destruction. As a rationalist I admit
I lack data.

O to play slow and sure, even when the tune is fast. Inside an
      aquifer
of love for the audience.
Not to fear or even necessarily obey the changing wind's
direction. Being here I breathe and make the atmosphere as
      seen
from outer space.

The song of the world will often take you far from yourself.
      There
will be no self. How will you know yourself?
By knowing thyme and dandelion, the blue jay from the hawk,
the heron in its swamp, black cherries and the one pear at the
      junction of the trails.
They are yourself.
www.ronnowpoetry.com
673 · Aug 2015
No cows to look at
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
No cows to look at
I hear the truck traffic

Everything changes like clouds
The page this poem is on burns

Coming from the funeral with friends
Talking on the telephone

No trucks to grind their gears
I hear the minute hand moving

Birds and people inhabit the earth
A black bear inhabits the earth, too

A rock in the sun
Calligraphy brush

In a mind there is apocalypse
No one can hear it
www.ronnowpoetry.com
663 · Aug 2017
Blue Grama Grass
Robert Ronnow Aug 2017
How to break an addiction. Decide to live.
What can I learn from my pain. Danger.
And friends are merely friendly, live on independent
of your injury. You will not be missed in church on Sunday.

Grass. ****, broccoli, burrito, stink, ***, skunk.
I'm talking blue grama, upland bent, smooth brome,
riverside panic, wild rye, fowl meadow, spike muhly,
sweet vernal, salt marsh, bristly foxtail, little bluestem.

****** is unhealthy, opens lesions in the brain,
wormholes into hell, yet should be legal. I'll vote that way.
It may ease the pathos into non-existence
well as meditation, bird watching, last will and testament.

Each joint hurts, rib joints, spine joints, skull plate joints.
The head and hip and heart will hurt, all three.
Insomniac I like the way bones crack and clack like
wooden wind chimes, an untuned piano, a tree rack of wornout
      shoes.

Never forget, the mind is the body paying attention
to what it's doing. Without that connection, each finger bent
or toe smashed is just added to the collection
of anonymous body parts of holocaust victims

in their mass graves. Better when every life saved
or lost is a front page story, an illusion of shared
sacrifice or joy, but that expresses only the surface
of our emotions. I'm mostly relieved to have survived.
www.ronnowpoetry.com
658 · Feb 2017
Exponential Decay Function
Robert Ronnow Feb 2017
Spring is in its prime again
each leaf beautiful
much is edible
birds and peepers are musical at dawn.

The days walk slowly
toward Utah and Italy.
My left nut hurts.
Joy overwrites death.

Well, well. You're well
alone in your brain
only a negligible fraction
escaping as words and actions.

Every leaf that's coming out
is out. Including the self
to the west and south
a golem, mandragon, an elf.

Aaron was stacking
the last of last year's
firewood. He found
a spotted salamander--

Ambystoma maculatum--
Big mouth--hidden
under the final log
with a worm and centipede for a meal.

I exclaimed Rare species!
but it's common, fossorial
lives in moist woods
under cemetery stones and memorials.

Eats earthworms,
snails, slugs
insect larvae
and adult beetles.
www.ronnowpoetry.com
656 · Aug 2015
The End of Faith
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
Two thoughts come to mind this morning. The deficiencies in
      our systems of governance -
local, global -
and the first two pages of The End of Faith in which he
      mistakes political (acts of war) for
religious acts,
but recognizes understanding the workings of the world is not
      the same as knowing
the unknowable.

Every new twinge provokes fear but what is there to fear?
      That one won't
live forever?
The year of a man is the day of an inchworm and 267 years
      on a reverse-
rotating Venus.
A billion of anything is a lot unless it's the distance one must
      traverse to look
at God.

How much silence, or tinnitus, can you handle? A chipmunk
      cannot for long
stand still.
Once the twinge passes I'm off to the next task: building a
      constituency for this compassion,
that solution.
The dialogue starts with a question. To know the question is
      almost certainly to find
an answer.

Conflating questions is the commonest of logic errors. No
      negotiation unless the
violence ends.
Why not talk while we fight? We can always ****, torture or
      assassinate
between conversations.
Justice, or retribution if you want, can remain on the table
      even after we
achieve understanding.

Nature is my religion, I know no other, and community is my
      church.
The sacrament
is policy debate. I attend church everyday. Our jobs are
      hymns (the classifieds
a hymnal)
and payment for services rendered is sung praise and
      gratitude. Walking and talking
is prayer.

Strategies to limit or subvert discussion are the only evil.
      Violence
is one
but not by far the only one. What's the hurry to build a
      highway or free
a people?
The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time and time is
      the mercy
of eternity.
--ending with lines by James Taylor and Kenneth Rexroth

www.ronnowpoetry.com
656 · Aug 2015
Just Us
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
Suppose there is no life in space, just us. And we inhabit Mars,
air condition Venus. Hold family barbecues, national holidays
on Mercury. Fly to Jupiter for spas of ammonium nitrate.
And go farther afield in the galaxy and on to other galaxies
leaving behind map-faced men, crow-like women and open gates.

Who will be the first-born human on the moon? News
from the moon colony! And so on, on every planet where
we've visited and established dusty villages or vast cities
over thousands of centuries. Then, will we not have somewhere,
somehow, under some sun's rays become another species?
www.ronnowpoetry.com
656 · Aug 2015
Enemies
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
I cultivated at least two enemies yesterday
the enemies I wanted
I wanted them to be angry instead of me
my attitude being I don't care I'll do as I please

Please is a word we're trying to teach our sons to use
when they use services or receive gifts courtesy is required
it requires a show of gratitude and recognition for the effort others make
in making their love felt and known

Knowing how to say yes when you mean yes and no when you don't
and doing it without hurting the feelings of others
is another chickadee skill along with watching your partner's back
holding back negativity and expressing joy

I'm joyous making friends and enemies
enemies these days are my only friends, no one lives to hurt us
who hurts so much from something done or said
they'd say our demise gave great satisfaction

O to be great with enemies satisfied
and want something done
to hurt and be angry
and love more than one friend!
www.ronnowpoetry.com
653 · Aug 2015
Crows, bluejays and pigeons
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
Crows, bluejays and pigeons
talk this morning. Closest we come
to wilderness here. Autos screech
and sirens scream. Only 7 a.m.
My fat belly and possible cancer
worry me. With a few months
to live, I'd search the wilderness
for some wisdom I missed. Or
plain beauty of natural randomness.
Knowing that, why do I remain
in health? I must devote my
present to my future existence.

The bluejays complain long after
everyone else is silent.
Love and friendship need the body
and society. You belong, you want
to belong, three days in wilderness
and you gladly return to
lovers' arms and plumbing.
But one day you die. And this
is the ideal independence you sought.
This death is the pristine aloneness,
the untouched wilderness and
freedom from necessity! And
it is certain. You do not save
for it. You do not worry that
you may miss your opportunity.
www.ronnowpoetry.com
652 · Jan 2018
Motel Room
Robert Ronnow Jan 2018
Motel room, U.S. map made of license plates
everything I need for a week is here, king-
size bed, microwave, fridge, tv, hot plate
the carpet's pretty clean, the bathroom baptized
and there are two mirrors in which to imagine
myself, to analyze and idolize.
WiFi, no Elizabethan inn,
in a century when we fear nuclear war
and are warned against the shock of fast change,
the door sports three locks though nothing dangerous
could happen in a town like this, named for spring
water found by thirsty desert travelers.
My home for a week living alone, contained
safe from the elements, roar of airplanes.
641 · Aug 2015
Chambermaid With Ravens
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
The Aberdeen bus arrives, deposits and boards
the same people daily. One is the dark-haired
chambermaid at the tourist lodge, awkward
in her print dress and wearing a frown. Her
******* inspire and her long legs are
quintessence. The sun dispels moisture,

with fire-blackened face I lick a popsicle
after work and achieve a counterfactual
childhood. This is what the chambermaid’s scowl
is about, the frozen treat and smile of a grown
man. On a summer night what passions
would I find in her? We take our place in the pattern

of daily activity, pick-up trucks with crews
arriving and leaving, uniformed rangers narrow
in their imaginations. Two ravens fly low
over the clearcut like weather, in weather, there will
be weather. Felling trees in the forest, I look uphill.
The ravens float like hawks, nearly immobile.
www.ronnowpoetry.com

--ending with a line by Emily Dickinson
638 · Aug 2015
World Order
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
Financiers feel superior to farmers
and pundits have it over poets.
All to the good because if you think America's
doing just fine, don't skip to the poetry reviews.
Our enemies are barbarous, our allies duplicitous
but our smart bombs are smart - that's how they found you.

Dad said all wars are resource wars. Follow
the money. The world needs more order, nothing
less than Nazis, never may the anarchic man's thoughts
be my thoughts, each shove sends a ping,
shields urge on shields, helmets helmets, we can be
the reigning kings between the last empire and the next

or implement a vision of collective deliberation
and binding agreements. Can China's navy
be harnessed to ensure free passage through
the South China Sea? We'll see how
things work out in the next generation.
In the meantime should I read Henry Kissinger's meditations?

He who thinks poetry's effete
probably considers Darwin a geek and Einstein
a postal clerk. Containment means leaving space
for the passionate and zealous to face themselves
and giving them missiles that don't work.
Slowing everyone down until one thing's done well -

governance or sustenance or brotherhood.
When violence comes to the neighborhood
the hierarchy will hold or fold, it is then the peace work proves
      relevant.
Failing to achieve understanding, we're searching outer space
for an entity to unite us as humanity.
That person, or city, is consciousness.

By that what is meant. Sitting still and thinking deeply
on the relation of anger to coercion,
systems for correcting the decisions of earlier presidents.
We're required to report incidents of depression
to a doctor because you're a valued member of of our community,
or so insignificant no one notices or cares.

How necessary the interface of war and poetry!
"If you think America is doing just fine, then skip ahead to the poetry reviews. If, however, you worry about a globe spinning out of control, then 'World Order' is for you."  --John Micklethwait

--Friedman, Thomas L., "What's Their Plan? Obama's Strategy for Fighting ISIS Isn't All About Us", New York Times, September 14, 2014
--Homer, "As when the winds, ascending by degrees", The Iliad, Book IV, trans. Alexander Pope, Penguin Books, 1996.
--Micklethwait, John, "As the World Turns: Henry Kissinger's 'World Order'", NY Times Book Review, September 14, 2014
--Ray, David, "To a Child of Baghdad", Music of Time: Selected & New Poems, The Backwaters Press, 2006.

www.ronnowpoetry.com
631 · Aug 2015
Janie Huzzie Bows
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
thesis: strength endures voids and emptiness.
strength constructs no homes (antithesis:

if your house leaks then on swollen days
in sullen seasons there is no home for you)

there is endless repetitious strength
enduring endlessly there is this paradox:
strength is the void endured and consequently

synthesis: enter everybody's anti-hero cross-eyed,
sees crossed eyes cross-eyed but looking in his eyes
sees straight, sees sick, sees something monstrous
something insect, sees this philosophic frippery:
that is sees man

endures in his mirror that is self-doubt,
his left arm being his right arm
his left eye sees his right eye
and no eye sees his nose right.

synthesis: enter naked the hero's fists blazing
won't put up with that mirror is laughing
smashing his left hand smashing his right hand
breaks his wrath--

enter the dumb smile of blissful blindness or
dumb sadness belting down a drink
enter an angel's colorful rags and bells
enter a man in colorful sights and smells
enter blonde beauty dragging a bulging ****.

there is the entrance where they enter through
the black hole with crescent thin edges
the animal den the fish smell the ocean motion
there is women's strength endures the stretch
forty-eight hours of warm pain
two hours of sharp pain around mid-night
last sight the tippy-toppy veins of its head
bled and blood and body and push push Push -

and the tide goes out,
enter sleep.
www.ronnowpoetry.com
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