Age and Grace

Her steps were always slow;
Even in youth she swayed,
Walked with sultry composure
And seductive flow.

Like a heathen goddess,
She tempers movement with grace.
It was not done out of vanity,
But pleasure in the flowing stream of steps
That mark her pace.

The relaxed fulcrum of her hip
Tilts with undulations in the turf;
Her feet tread lightly with a claim
On the summer fields,
On the bending trees
Where beauty still abounds..

She savors the trailing of her skirt
Through unseen paths in drooping grass.
Until the evening mist accrues
From out the forest paths
Caressing her as she yields,
Until she and it are almost one.
Like Whistler’s “breath on a pane of glass”,
She bargains with nature,
Waning to become an aesthetic phantom.

She stops at a window and watches
With a sad smile, the warm light on life,
The laughter, talk and dancing grace
Of her children, who don’t yet know
The bittersweet taste of withered garlands.
Yet she accepts and passes into the dusk.

Now she executes a careful,
Battement fondu as her hands dip
To reach the soaking pods
Of next year’s summer flowers.
Every move must be planned,
To manage every hour.
For they are as precious now,
As her own days,
Fading into glory and reborn,
Into spring and youth’s careless riot.

Doctor Larch peers out the window,
Pulling aside brocaded curtains to hide
The grief that he will not show,
The rending emptiness he feels inside.

As his son Homer rides past the sunset,
Not knowing where he goes
But aspiring to see the wide world,
The ocean at Mount Desert,
Seeing wonder in the expanse
And worlds inside a circle of glass.

He has taken with him his heart,
A dark picture of frailty.
He finds unexpected work in an orchard,
Leisurely harvesting round, garnet jewels.
The nomads, dark and wary,
Ask him to read about death and stars.

There are rules for the workers.
And Homer finds that they apply
To no one, neither nomads or
Curious young men.
He sees in the errant father
The reflection of his own,
The man who made him good.
“You are my work of art”
He wrote.

Like an artist with his painting,
Who resists giving it away,
So Doctor Larch holds on to him
Hoping his adolescence ends
And he returns.
Finding peace at the last.

The lack of rules bring about a sea change,
Allowing forbidden love and pain.
He ventures out once more into the vacuum
Of conscience set free,
He devises his own rules about the womb
And how to help those in agony
But eventually…

With all the rules now open,
There is nothing left for him to do.
So he boards the migrant truck
Just as the pilot returns, broken.
He watches the struggle with a wheelchair
Sees his lover watch him with her yellow hair
Knows her future, years of sacrifice.
And he admits at last
That he has a purpose,

The train to St. Cloud huffs slowly away,
With Homer standing in the wet snow.
There is the old asylum,
The orphanage and home on the hill,
Almost black, with the sunset behind,
Homer begins the long climb.
He approaches slowly.

But then, a burst of laughter
And children from the door
Flock around him, dancing, shrieking,
Some holding him like an errant dog,
Who must be told to stay.
“Will you stay?” they ask.
“I think so,” he smiles in irony.
He is home at the last.

Admiration is the cousin of envy,
as I learned long ago in Austria.
I knew a girl from a village in the Tirol.
I don’t remember her face,
Except for the placid smile
on her berry red lips.
She was not beautiful, but pretty
in a Mägdlein sort of way,
"smelling of crushed daisies and sweat".
But her long, butter-yellow hair,
seemed to have fallen from the sun.
She wore a black, Dirndl vest
that hugged her torso, a white blouse,
and a long. striped, pink skirt.
Even her legs were beautiful,
With tiny, blonde hairs that glistened.
I wished I could be like her:
Simple-seeming, unaware, unquestioning.
I watched her stand on a rocky ledge,
On a little mound like a pedestal
That overlooked an green-blue alpine valley.
She was a poem or an imagined girl
From a fairy tale or an ad for Priumula.
She was  a goddess escaped
from the the netherworld
of dairy barns and milking cows.
I thought that she might never return
there from her lofty peak at the world..
But another girl stood beside her.
A spartan sort with round glasses
And a face like a Pug dog.
She seemed to stand guard,
In a sexless, violent way,
Threatening those who might approach.
I fantasized about pushing her off the cliff,
Just to rid us of her presence.
The altitude was spinning my thoughts,
Wondering what would happen
To this Hummel Fräulein someday.
Would she follow the other youth to Vienna,
Smoke and drink espresso in a café,
Or come back to her alpine home
And milk goats while her children played?
The next day, as if still drugged,
I strolled across the bridge to Germany
And the river path to Freilassing.
There I bought a new, blue blouse
With a heart shaped neck
And brown, corduroy slacks.
It was the best I could do then
And Dirndls were not cheap.
So I spent the summer
As an ersatz Austrian,
No longer an American with jeans.
My freedom was almost euphoric,
Including dodging classes
About Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Weill,
Die Dreigroschenoper,
Those overrated poseurs!
(Except for Mack the Knife.)
I even attended Mass at various cathedrals,
just to hear Mozart or Schubert dance
up in the arches with cherubs,
or in front of ancient, colored glass
in the gloom of medieval stone.
I accepted that The Tyrolean Girl
And her antique, sunlit style
Were as inaccessible as
Gentian and columbine, mist-shrouded
on high peaks wrapped in clouds.
I once ran to see some up close
And nearly passed out.
But knowing that, I felt their charm
Had descended from the heights
To entice us in the valleys,
With pink striped cloth, gold hair
And amethyst flowers.
They flee past us like time,
Swift as the rivers in Spring.

“Angelica arguta”,
He shows her his wildflowers
“Angelica Susannah”, he says.
And prodded further by her
His heart.
Lingers briefly with the night;
Her affection has power,
But not enough
To keep him
From marching off to fight.

Tristan, son of One Stab,
Brings wildness from the mountains.
Lovely woman from the East,
Fascinated by her,
His passion.
Revels in her bridal bower,
And stops her
Loving any other.

Alfred, eldest son of his father,
Full of rectitude and romance.
Angelica abandoned,
Adrift between the mountains
Becalmed far from the sea.
He takes advantage,
Snatches her soul with riches,
But never captures
Her longing heart.

Years pass and one son gone,
The other lost and mad.
Year of the red grass and
Happiness found
Is felt too soon.
Tristan loves young Isabel,
But Angelica is his doom.

Yet only he survives
The waves that lash her shore,
“Like water in the ice,
She breaks them.”
And in the Spring,
Is gone once more.

Angelica Susannah is buried
Above the box canyon in the meadow
Among the many dead.
Near Samuel’s heart,
The executed Isabel,
And others who follow soon.
Until only Tristan remains,
Left to hunt his nemesis,
The bear inside him.
And dream of one wife lost,
And a lover left behind:
Angelica Susannah
Beside whom he should lie.

He is slain by the bear in Sixty-three,
After forty years of solitude.
And laid to rest in the plot
Between two women he loved,
Isabel, his ingenuous wife
And Susannah, his tragic love.
Do their spirits meet at last
And wander the golden fields,
Or ride out to bathe in the hot springs,
Under the moon of the falling leaves?

The frost is still there,
Throttling the rhododendron leaf,
And ice stalls the dissolve
Of the stone-like snow,
Yet I am happy.

The sun-rays are almost Etruscan,
Filtered low through lace and blind,
Like that ***** of sunset on Irene’s hair
Sad “couleur de feuille-morte”.
Yet it is sultry.

I can open a window
And breathe the warming air
Finches flock close, careless,
Now desperate for food
And pluck menescent fruit
Off an ice-bound branch.
In the distance, a cardinal sings.

Thick drapes are drawn aside
And geraniums strain toward the light.
In a nook outside the door,
An old cat basks on a corner of sun.
He yawns, seeing me, and strolls across the snow.

All nature seems to wait, but poised,
For the final unfettered token.
Will it be a sudden, favonian breeze?
Or the robin’s unrelenting noise?
Telling us, “Winter is broken”?

Favorite word: “nymphet”, but no!
Halcyon, a kind of drug, you know.
Searching through the pages’ mist
And imagined deeds
Of poets’ needs…
I found my favourite word,
As asked,
Neither sacred nor profane
That describes the Venetian rain
In my beloved’s eyes
And the Florentine sun upon her hair:
“Auburn, russet, mythopoeic”.
Oh, it is not fair,
To liken an object
Of my lust and love
To anything as mortal as autumn air!
Nor “October’s orchard Haze”;
She had her own
Inscrutable, premeditated ways!
Rather let me say that she was perfect,
Though her eyes, pale and myopic,
Her shuffling gait and
Graceless limbs, to them Grace lends
Fey charm, the power to mend
My suffering and
Delusions of a poet’s end
As anything but pathetic,
(Her mother’s fondness for vague emetics)
And I left softly hanging,
On a girl’s new taste,
A tang of russet apples on her face,
But no, not that, the sum
Of my love, My Lo!
Then her bleak demise, partly by my hand
That none of you brutes could understand;
The pure love,
So sadly consummated,
Between a lover
And the one she hated
Yet loved once with inexplicable delight,
On one stolen, frightened night…
In which the two of us agreed
To satisfy a simple, yet maniacal need,
And then depart…
But I could not,
You see;
She was my life,
My love, my heart.

Humbert Humbert 1950

Sharon Talbot ca. 2005

Mourning

Mourning is an eerie thing,
Not always tied to death.
It may celebrate or sing,
May widen eyes or lighten breath,
May bring unexpected things.

Sometimes it is a wayward thief,
That steals among the tombs;
It can alter feelings, and twist beliefs,
Searching for less bitter rooms,
Yet it brings a strange relief.

The heart may not know it,
Nor the mind accept it,
But it may be for the best.
As it guides the sorrowful away from grief,
To a long and healing rest.

Fingerprints and fibers,
Accumulated talk,
Whispers in the corners,
Bodies demarcated in chalk
On the marble courtroom stairs.
His misery became a pall.
With mourning signs in splattered pairs,
Red flowers on the wall.

All that he had left behind was grief
And powerless rage,
A Tansu chest in high relief,
A coiled brass clock fatigued with age.

Retreating to a white house in Simrishamn,
He’d walk his dog along the shore,
Find sterile clues amongst the sands,
And travel a ferry between two lands.

And now: An experiment! Blame Google Translate for this weird (?) Swedish translation: Please tell me if this is a bad translation!

Fingeravtryck och fibrer,
Ackumulerat samtal,
Viskar i hörnen,
Kroppar avgränsad i krita
På marmor rättssal trappor.
Hans elände blev en pall.
Med sorgsignaler i splatterade par,
Röda blommor på väggen.

Allt som han hade lämnat var sorg
Och maktlös raseri,
En Tansu bröst i hög lättnad,
En spolad mässingsklocka utmanad med åldern.

Att återvända till ett vitt hus i Simrishamn,
Han skulle gå sin hund längs stranden,
Hitta sterila ledtrådar bland sandarna,

We three met
Beneath the Eye In the Sky,
Above the green-blue lake.

You two were sent for a lesson;
I met you to escape.

Stories from long ago
And old films that you two know
Are shining new to me.

One of you loves me
And to the other
I made love.

But in teaching me your lessons,
(Balzac is our favourite!)
You have taught me not to love.

Let us lie here under the sky
Unwatched by others’ eyes,
Away from what you know.

One day you will accept this place,
But then, I will need to go.

Years from now, if you return,
You will still not find me.

Look for my name
On a candle-lit, paper boat,
In the twilight of
Zhongyuanjie
On the blue-green lake.

Happiness is an empty street
And a fast car.
Happiness is a clean, cold pool
You plunge into on a hot day.
Happiness is someone in your bed
Who’s gone in the morning
If you don’t want company
Or who stays if you do.
It’s someone who is happy to read the paper
Or take a hike with you.
It’s not worrying what others think
About you and your beliefs
And the wisdom to know who counts.
Happiness is strength,
Enough to fight the world
Or luxuriate in things gone well.
Happiness is attracting and repelling
Without having to try.
Happiness is a an aching fist
And an attacker’s black eye.
Happiness can be a warm gun,
Depending who gets hit.*
Happiness is not waiting for love,
Then falling in love in seconds.
It is knowing that you are fine
With or without a vow,
Yet being able to say “yes”,
When lightning strikes
And “no” when it’s just a cloud.
Yet happiness is not being sure
And bathing in uncertainty,
Of the pleasure in mystery.
Happiness is loving, faults and all,
An intensity so focused
That you’d gladly die for the one
Who was sent by some mixture
Of sunlight and shade,
On an ordinary afternoon,
Happiness is his body in yours,
His sweat on your skin in summer,
And body heat on cold nights.
Happiness is loving a little boy
Who looks like both of you
And knowing that love can transfigure
Time, exceed itself and encompass
More than one.
Happiness is contentment
In realizing how much you’ve had
And say you’ll feel rewarded
When your random life is done.
Happiness is the legend they tell
About you when you are gone;
The feeling is theirs and maybe yours.
Happiness is knowing that, if you go too far,
That there is no heaven or hell,
Or if there is,
Then anyone can play guitar.

September 9, 2020

Sere and yellow,
Rough and round, [bright pebbles in a mound]
Pitted and mellow,
Winding our necks round,
We wore them.

Amber beads unearthed from clay,
Fashioned by my artist love,
Glowing yellow, filled with day,
Captures sunbeams from above.
I still love them.

Some say gods have made these,
To ensnare the light of Sun,
But we women saved these,
In memory & hope of sons,
We keep them.

Fat & smooth as butter,
We turned them in our hands.
The bone beads scraped with madder,
The amber just with sand.

Those of shadowy carnelian
Embedded like a shield,
We treasure as we fear them,
Like wounds on battlefields.

The others soaked with brownish earth,
Sere and yellow,
Rough and round, [bright pebbles in a mound]
Pitted and mellow,
Winding our necks round,
We wore them.

So, when we are dead, take not from us,
These rounded, golden suns,
But bury them with us, with sword and severed buss,
To revere the slaughtered ones,
Who never returned to us.

Revised November 15, 2016

Saying “Women of the Night”
Might be alright
As a description for some girls,
They stream eastward
Along the bank,
Checking for marauders and adjusting curls.

Yet courtesans are different;
They came as swiftly as they went,
Called on by important men.
From house and hotel they are borne,
In carriages, and in finery worn,
For those who have a yen.

Yet others still elude one name,
Of condemnation or fame.
They do not wander at men’s whims.
They deliver terms to him or him.
And live in dwellings finer still,
Until the payer has had his fill.

But with the latter does he ever
Tire of the source of pleasure?

For some the need outlasts his want,
And he becomes the supplicant!
Then woman’s wit becomes the master,
While her body wields a whip.
The sinner’s desire speeds still faster,
As she the body’s scale does tip.

These words keep arriving by post,
By phone and through the air:
They say, “I love you the most!”
And he’s always unprepared.

I dismissed them until I knew
What they could mean,
What they could do.

They let a young boy believe
In a dangerous fantasy
Of the young or naïve,
And give himself to ecstasy.

He’d already given himself away
To a girl who “merely loved” him;
He was swayed.
He was wounded by a whim.

How could his young heart
Know the anguish of love spurned?
Of changing minds and false starts?
That passion fades as quickly as it burns?

He was “crushed” when it ended;
His response, pure and true.
Still that phrase he insanely defended!
“I love you, I love you, and I love you”!

How hollow to me it still rings!
My beloved son in pain.
What makes a girl do these selfish things?
What is it that they gain?

Young hearts now seem to lack wisdom;
They’re so eager to believe.
Yet they haven’t the caution
It takes to give love and receive.

Summer, 2006

At first the air seems too dry;
Then you see the mist --
A small town on the horizon;
You decide to ride on,
And give Father's headstone a last kiss.

You find yourself wondering why
Anyone would stay here.
Some of those who passed before
Left their mark on rotten doors
Memories strangely dear.

Love's a gamble in a ghostly town;
It could move you, swift or slow.
You unholster your heart,
Wonder when the shooting will start,
But you already know.

Dozens to go and only one down,
Riding through a town of slaughter,
You're both alive and dead,
Mute bullets whistle by your head:
Are you a killer or a daughter?

He was here once, before you knew
About the emptiness outside.
Still you followed him.
His face was harsh and grim.
And he told you to leave or hide.

Love that's cold, deadly and true
Is the easiest and hardest kind.
You can **** him or just love him;
You'll never know much else of him,
But he’ll never leave your mind.

Dawn bursts over the sharpest peak
And the town streets fill with gold;
It’s the only kind this place will ever see.
You know that soon, you and he
Will shoot each other or fold.

Yet, love in a ghost town always dies,
Killed before it can start.
Spanish ladies even now wear mourning veils
And the lovesick couples' faces pale
When you shoot each other through the heart.

California Kids

I’ll call you up on Saturday
And invite you over.
Take the 101, 110 and 1;
(Sounds like an equation!)
And you’re there.
Just use your GPS..
There’ll be a party at my house,
Daft Punk playing on the Echo.
It’ll be epic, Echoic!
With some vintage’ tunes,
Crankin’ the Beach Boys,
Watching surfers
Shredding out-the-back,
Past prowling sharks in the shallows.
Lets go to the dunes and maybe kiss.
I know that you miss me,
So don’t ask me why
And when you come,
I won’t ask
“What are you doing here?”
We’ll eat fish tacos,
Guacamole, Pico de Gallo
And drink margaritas
While we debate French new wave,
I’ll praise Truffaut while you
Tell me that Scorsese is the man.
When we get drunk enough
I will suggest a walk
Along the iridescent surf.
You should say yes because
I’m safe now that I drive electric,
That I turned vegan
(sorry about the fish)
and wear cruelty-free clothes.
I don’t grill snapper anymore
And take my shoes off inside the door.
Maybe we’ll make it to Tower 28,
Lay down and watch the full moon
Like Jim Morrison did to write.
I’ll tell you I’m glad you’re alive—
I’m no poet, but you know that.

Things sometimes fall apart
Among sisters and brothers,
No matter what they once were.
Childhood picnics and dreamy games,
Memories of trips with Dad,
Since Mom was tired of us.
We would climb Appalachian peaks
Or drive to look at the Mayflower.
Every summer there was a golden week
A lakeside cottage and all-day swims
In crystal water, becoming mermaids.
But time passes and bitterness accrues.
Imagined slights grow like slow tumors,
Never excised but nurtured by some.
I go to college and am freed
From the poison of ignorant rage,
From the creeping depression left
Like diesel fog on an endless floor.
Four or five years of delight pass
With only hints here or there
Of a sibling’s misery at home.
Of a once close sister, Maggie,
Who is ignored and never loved
By any man she pursues.
She blames me for it, for reasons
I have yet to fathom.
Of a brother, Francis, deluded, drugged,
Steals the family car in a rage
And drives to New York City.
Of Deirdre, the middle sister,
Whose friend who knows men who feed
On her ignorance and rebellion.
Only Susannah tries to rise above
The maelstrom of misery.
I send her to a school far away
And she sheds despair, at least.
Decades drawl, children are born to us,
While the bridge between us, obscured,
Sags and frays under weight of rancor.
Christmas dinners and birthday parties
Turn into chores, invitations kept as scores.
Petty grudges, like acid, sever the bridge
At last, all ties are abandoned.
When we are all grown and scattered,
No one speaking to anyone else,
Unaware, uncaring about the others.
Only Susannah visits me and smiles,
With no ulterior plan for insane revenge,
Or accusations for errant slights.
Her once dark hair is grizzled and wild
And her girlish skin now creased.
But her treacle eyes, “black aggies”,
I used to call them, still shine.
Only Susannah writes a letter,
Wishing us well and
Healing scars made by others,
Returning the word “family”.
To my basket of small treasures,
I carry with me
Into the twilight.

I first remembered years ago,
At twenty-something,
Speeding along in a 240Z
With my father.
Apropos of nothing,
I suddenly remembered it all,
The pain, fear, chases
And flights up stairs,
Only to have her catch me,
And feel the pummeling fists
Like a mad horse’s hooves,
Treading me down.
Back in the present,
My father was admiring trees
As we buzzed past them,
Unaware of the storm beside him.
She wore him down too
In a different way,
With constant denigration.
Over the years I watched
As he shrank way to
A painful, infested brain.
Unlike me, he had no defense,
Loving her as he still did.
It was as if he chose cancer
instead of anger or rebellion.
I had raged against her
And stood tall from childhood
To the now, when thunderheads
Rose from me above her.
Long ago, she had been
The random bolts from the blue,
Causing pain but not killing.
Now I am the storm,
Gathering over years,
Sweeping up heat and vapor
Sending and receiving energy.
The lightning bolts are truth
And their pain is admission,
Though never bringing remorse.
I am the storm warning her to run,
While knowing that she never will.

Edited October 2, 2021

A Beautiful and A Bitter Shroud

When I was little, I found a magic box,
tucked under the eaves where
we were told not to go.
Something compelling about the
forbidden, triangular space,
sealed off by lath and plaster,
made me resolved, beyond curious.
I kicked and pulled until plaster shattered
and wood cracked, delightfully.
The large box was filled
with silk, organza and tulle,
the proud-worn gowns
of my mother's college days.
At those ***** she danced
in them, hair coiled up
and earrings sparkling.
It was not about the men, I knew,
but her need to be admired.
I don't recall a punishment
for opening the box
but she relented and allowed
my sister and I to put on
her finery and pretend.
We wrapped them round us
and twirled to imaginary waltzes,
stepping on long hems so many times
that  the gowns all came undone.
The rags were put away
and the room sealed up.
In my youth I recall but a few
times Mother gave in
and let us be children
or fairy princesses for a while.
Now she is old and finally
trying to wrap me in her shroud,
to make resentment drag me down
and envy of me, crippled with self-hate.
But that no longer works
and I tell her, finally grown
that this is not allowed.
I summon up pity and vague sympathy,
even if love left long ago.
I tell myself that
everyone dies alone.

Children of Louisiana,
Swept away and drowned,
In the river’s flood
And the ocean surge.
Never have recovered
Fully from the rain falling down,
And of a city that was purged.
Ignored by the government
And its fellow man,
Follow in a long line of sufferers
Since the melting, ice age glaciers
And even a tsunami in the North Sea
That wiped out Doggerland.
Dark Ages got darker as people ran
And Britain’s white cliffs were sheared.
Times got better and then got worse,
But the people carried on.
Now, the floods are a weekly thing,
A blip on a newscast,
As lost as the victims in a mess
Of other disasters,
Of wildfires, droughts and don’t
Even mention the quaking earth
Or volcanoes! We can’t take credit
For causing those!
Rich men in their castles,
Feasting and clapping each other
On their fatty backs,
Rolling in the spoils and spills
Of oil, on the flaming water of
The American plains.
Sheikhs in old Mesopotamia
Whine about oil pipelines,
Promised to them by President Cheney,
While the people starve.
Bloated oligarchs spread destruction
All over the world, from
The Congo to Chernobyl,
Melting icecaps and raising the sea,
Sinking islands where they don’t live,
Vacationing in the Maldives,
On special rates before those go under.
They won’t fix Miami, but let it sink,
But not before they plunder
The empty towers built on foolish dreams.
Of course, they’ll be the last to go,
Crammed into mansions up in the Alps,
Fighting with the European nobles
Over who gets a crumbling palace
Now sitting on the last ice floe.
A few American cousins round each other up
To catch the Dixie Flyer down to New Orleans,
Trying to hide from the polar vortex,
A dazzling case of ignorance and greed,
Only to find the tracks buried in the sea…
Down in the mud of the deep, brown sea.

Twilight washes the bedlinens blue
And striped with flickering light they seem to move
And beckon us to lie in their folds,
Drawing away our clothes,
Pushing some to the floor.
Who are we to resist,
As the pretty song of strings off-key,
Winding through the forest rain
Like a goddess shedding robes,
Manipulates our minds and skins,
Only appeased by the union of
Heaven and Earth, of you and I?
Let us oblige them with our bodies,
You descending like the rain upon me
And I rising to you as the urgent river in waves
Beneath you until we are One?
If only for a night, in the Indonesian dark,
The tinkling droplets on the roof,
The flickering fires, the clouded desires.
We will send our lust into the mist and air,
So that it knows us when we are done at last,
And in every night until the world ends.

Yes, I see the blossom illuminated
Between sunlight and shade;
I can even see the crenulated
Line they have made
Between late and high summer
And the evening’s waiting shade.

It is a Rose of Sharon, lavender and fair,
Hibiscus syriaca, a northern guest,
As if gracing some maiden’s hair.
Nearby Lilies dying of strange pests
Divert my vague attention to their neighbor
In the post-monsoonal air.

Down your blossoms weary with days of rain,
Drag low on the heavy boughs.
I have let them grow too high; they are vain!
Sending out showy blooms,
Into the sodden air, yet flimsy and thin,
Fit only for vases in rooms.

Ötzi

Even in my long sleep,
I dreamed of this.
A waking by strangers
A grasping of my wrist
And I wrench it back from them!

My dreams beneath the ice
Were warm, in summer vales,
Where children played
Under my watch, old but hale.
An easy thing, my guard was then.

I tend sore limbs as supper warms,
And aching joints inflamed,
And muscles tough as ibex horn;
For a while I can be lame.
And see my copper ax in the red-gold flame.

I dream of how it came to me,
After vanquishing a headsman.
Intruders fell before me!
And I earned this talisman.
Weapon, scepter, power of my clan!

Then I was sent across the mountain,
A lone journey I knew well.
To trade with kinsmen in a the northern glen,
With gifts, arrow shafts and tales to tell,
Never guessing betrayal that walked behind.

Alone upon the highest peak
I ate my last meal by the fire.
To me the gods seemed trying to speak,
As men I knew climbed higher.
We had words, but they were my kin!

In my long sleep I wonder why
These false friends turned to hate.
I’d watched over them, yet they cried
That my rule was done, and it was too late,
So I turned from them and faced my doom.

I crossed the last protruding rock
And now felt safe from them.
But then a blow, beneath my heart: a shock!
I fell in a soft, snowy glen,
And then a dull pain in my skull…and black.

Beneath me, I can feel the ax;
They’d never take that from me!
Nor my arrows, quivers and packs;
And risk the fury of the gods.
They’d taken my power and left a naked soul.

Five-thousand years I spent beneath the frost,
Until I was found and freed.
My scattered ions watched, angry and lost.
They dragged my body from its bed
And my soul from another life.

Now part of me lies in a crypt
Another frozen tomb.
If only I hadn’t run and slipped,
All those ages ago,
I would now lie in sacred ground,
Back in the earth to which all are bound.

You come to me each night
After all the crowds have left.
Never telling me your name.
And I, having stood for hours,
Begin closing down in the glow
Of blues, vermilion and rose
Reflected in plate glass,
From neon names of luxury.
I move to synthetic music
On an old stereo and let my
Eyes play tricks with the light,
The vivid letters and logos
Snake round and dance
Against the incipient night.
Just as I relax, you arrive,
The last one here every time,
As you were on the first.
You no longer pretend to consider
A preference, nor wander
Around, feigning interest in
Things you might not want.
Last night you brought flowers,
Twelve lilies in a Venetian vase.
Now this night you say I should
Dine with you somewhere,
But dinner is a euphemism.
You stand close, even as I turn away,
Occupying my eyes, though still,
I see your dark hair, straight shoulders
And the lean, solid strength of you.
I try not to think of your lion eyes,
Almond-shaped and topaz, that glow
With desire and will show a certainty
About me, lessening your need to ask.
As another song starts, I turn around
And you wait, amused almost.
“I have something for you,”
You say, conspiring with Venus,
And hand me a gift.
“You shouldn’t have,” is automatic
But I unwrap it while suspicion taps
On my shoulder, like a tiny demon.
Surprised, a cascade of softness falls
Through my hands, like pouring cream.
Holding it up, I see an evening gown
And think how strange a gift it is.
But it is as alluring as you,
The cloth is the blush of a thousand
Sunsets that sigh like silk
Dragged across a lover’s limbs

I ignore the thought that this color,
So full of innocence and petal-shades,
Clashes with your dark, consuming insistence
That I feel your desire and can’t turn you away.
You can blend kindness with tenacity,
So I am apt to let you in.
Agreeing to your proposition,
I suggest a dance with me.
I want to hear all the music in the world:
Pianos, violins, qanuns, sitars and humming bass,
With luscious voices luring the darkness inside,
Causing the lights to dance and our feet to move
Into that zone of heat that is riotous now,
That I felt all day, knowing you would come
To me again and I know now what will ensue.
And yet, as my body moves toward you
Without moving, my mind holds back,
Delighting in the wish, prolonging the unfulfilled
And I see in your pained gaze,
Under lids heavy with lust; you feel it too.
Why is it that we think of lovers
More intensely when they are far away,
And are closer to us on a distant shore,
Then, when their arms close round us,
We wish almost to be apart,
So they could reach for us once more?

Based on a dream
March 4, 2021, 12:50 AM

Now that it’s over, or so you say,
I feel compelled to wait another day,
For you to cry, for you to miss me.
I have visions that you kiss me
And forget about how I hurt you
But even that aches; I still desert you,
On every single day.

You said you want me gone,
That all is lost and you’re alone.
Yet somewhere deep behind my shame,
I hear you whispering my name.
I tell you in absentia: “I never meant to hurt you.”
That I was deserting my old self and not you.
And yet I come back and you’re still gone.

Would it help if I said it was never about you?
Or does that hurt because it really was?
Would you understand that I didn’t yet deserve you?
Or does it feel too much like a stumbling pause
Between the beauty thing that was you and me
And the pull of a deserted house, a dangerous key?

I was sick and lost for so many years,
Drying my own sorrow with another’s tears.
The emptiness I felt inside was hidden,
Behind another’s hell.
I looked in the mirror to find myself
And saw a backward road on a path I knew too well.
Trying to escape—it was not love but addiction
That pulled me back to a tragic fiction.

And now I live in a no-man’s land.
I reach out in the night to grasp your hand,
Expecting to feel you there,
Imagining climbing up the stair
To reach you in the light,
As I used to do when things were right.
But now it’s over,
We’re nowhere now.
I’m sorry, so sorry my love!
I still will find you somehow.

Half a mile downstream from the crumbling bridge,
The river began to break up too,
Into washouts and rock-bound pools.

Aged promontories, sandy shores, from
Primeval rivers, compressed by time
From granite, stood sentinel over the rush.
Against these broke hurtling, grey-green waves,
Spitting high in defiance at the rocks’ impasse,
Slowing but briefly, swirling angrily
On their way back to the waiting sea.

Upon a high outcrop, I took up my post
Rod in hand, watching the helpless worm
On his way to death, by whatever claimed him first.
I had not put him there, being squeamish,
“Mindless flesh,” a poet friend had dubbed them.
Still, my companions rigged him on the hook,
In exchange for keeping their joints burning.
Not smoking, I thought, but taking puff after puff,
As my bait was laid on the rack for sacrifice.

We scattered after all our poles were baited,
Claiming ancient pools and all inside them as our own.
I stood highest, near the fiercest waters that shook the rock,
Braced in the March air against the icy spray.
I was there, I told myself, because two men
Needed to catch a fish and prove themselves.
Yet they faded like ghosts into the gloam of evenfall,
As absorption overtook me, and I began to care.
Cast after cast into the roiling waters
Just where the waterfall fumed and broke.

Soon, it was only my goal, and nothing else,
To wage an age-old war against a artful foe.
Each strike brought me hope and each loss determination
Not anger but resolve to outwit them at a game
Invented eons ago by humankind,
And learned by trout to save themselves.
What happened after was of no concern to me,
But let me catch them for the sake of having it be.
The contest alone was all to me, it seemed,
Yet winning the only outcome I could see.

I had pulled three young trout from the churning water,
Energized despite their mediocre size,
When there came a tug just beneath my perch that taunted,
Promising the battle I craved.
So I cast the remnants of my sacrificial bait
Upstream, where currents swept it beneath my feet,
And there he was! No doubt the oldest trout in the hills,
Lingering below me to tease my newfound lust.
I set the hook well, so I thought, and reeled him high,
Fifteen inches long and heavy as he twisted in mid-air.
He thrashed like a madman above the rock,
Just beyond my reach,
--Then was gone…

When all was over, I had three fingerlings, not much,
While my helpful companions had none for all their work.
I told them not to fret, that it was merely luck,
But I knew better. When they asked me what I did
To catch the few, wee fish who now sizzled in the pan,
I answered haltingly, already memories fading of my quest,
Finally telling my rivals that I knew not why
Capturing a fish meant so much on that day.
“I do,” said one with a laugh.” I asked “Why?”
“It’s easy to explain,” he said…”you were high!”

?
Sharon Talbot

Poems flow in a stream
That winds through me
As I guide them,
Through meandering, uneven
Places in my life,
Or once in a while,
The smooth runs
Where fishing seems easy.
And I collect the pretty stones
That come to rest,
Water-washed, shining,
Along the river’s bank.
And often, there is a pool,
Green-blue, with clear water
And trout shadows, swift
And still, making a brief home,
Suspended above the sand.
Those are the ones I choose,
The surface touched only
By tree-filtered sunbeams
And beckoning on summer days.
It seems sometimes to me
That poets travel backward
Up to the source of beauty,
Where the water is still pure,
After struggling up through
Rapids and waterfalls,
Or wading through swamps
Down where the stream ends
And a wide river opens up.
Giant rivers can be majestic
But they often bury the gems
Brought down from the
From mountain caves and highlands
Swallowing them to swirl,
Mixed-up with the jewels
Of other poets’ streams.
And from remembrance
We gather our dreams.
Does sorrow fill the traveler
Who reaches the dark places
Where springs emerge
From some place we cannot see?

There is one on some loves,
That flourish like summer flowers
And bring seemingly endless joy
To lovers entwined
And hypnotized by the notion
That this will bloom forever.
But as years pass, some flawless
In execution and mutual care,
The flower begins to fade,
As if its color and fluid are drained,
Perhaps by the force of love itself.
And, unknown to the two,
They glide apart slowly,
Like two ships on the tide,
Until one day, they reach a horizon.
Each looks out for the other
As they have done before,
And call out in hope, then despair,
But they are unseen, far away.
They may try to sail back,
Beating furiously against the tide,
And finally, admitting defeat.
They each collapses, crying, shouting,
Blaming life, fate and humanity.
After months spent on the rocky shore,
In tears or questioning why
And often getting no reply,
The memory of passion fades
As new flowers bloom
And life’s garden summers on.

They took shelter under a tree
During a pouring storm.
Two lightning rods pulsating
With pent-up fire and love.
Without thinking, they interwove
and the long kiss she let him share
was merely the opening to a door,
leading down a hallway
of earthly, sentient pleasures,
whose vibrating song
traveled through them both,
echoes becoming thunder
and dew on their skin turning to tears,
to the rain of passion that took days to spend.
Or, once in many times,
A lifetime.

You sleep in a golden box, it seems,
On India patterns of rose and tangerine.
The brightening sky sends amber light
Through ecru lace and lowered blinds.
I imagine your lithe limbs stretched out
Beneath the coarse blanket you love.
Your rustic side has always shied
Away from luxury and ease.
Sometimes you even refuse to eat,
So I tempt you with a favorite repast
Things meant to break unwarranted fast.
And often, I ask you to show me
Your lean limbs and boyish length.
As you poise upon the scale
That balances youth and strength.
But at night you leave our tryst
And drive a phaeton of amethyst
To a place no longer gold,
Where you make diamonds out of coal.
Where they drain you 'til day is dawning
And batter down your soul.
Yet it seems you revive each morning
In your pretty box of gold.

July, 2021

Men with weak hearts
Can still love and love well,
Often better than the rest.
That strength is betrayed in
The ability to shed tears
Where other men shed blood.
They may write poems, music,
Or paint—it does not matter if
These are masterpieces or daubs,
Forgotten pieces of passion
Someday only recalled by those
Who loved the artist as well as the man.
Their power to change lives is not
In their expression, but devotion
To the people around them.
When artists, leaders and philosophers
Are forgotten too, these men are
Remembered for their power to feel
What others do not.
To them, beauty is ever-present
And love persists in the face of
Neglect, hardship and pain.
They can gaze at a field of flowers
And feel far more than most men who
Write a symphony.
They can look at the morning sun
And love it each day, for their
Days, they know, are uncertain,
As are day lilies who flame and die.
And yet they never complain,
For they are loved as others
Are not, by wives, children and friends.
To them, one piece of daylight is a gift,
While, to the grasping, selfish and bitter,
A century is not enough.
The weak-hearted protect even as they need protection.
And they labour, since the ones they love
Are weaker, even than they.
And deep in the night,
As their own hearts tremble,
They may awake and watch
To be sure that she still breathes
And that their children are safe
Even from bad dreams.
Though not faultless, those they love
Can always be sure of them.
They would sacrifice themselves
Just to know their families will thrive.
And the sacrifice may last
A lifetime and the weak heart
Becomes weaker.
Yet in the end and after,
They are immortal;
Living on in others’ hearts

Perhaps his duality would always be
Irreconcilable,
For had he not been made this way
by genetic chance?
A hulking man with gardener's shirt
and biker's leather pants?
He might speed along a coastal highway,
Wind in his greasy hair,
Unchopped Harley shivering,
Eyes watering from the wind,
or was it because of sheer depth of soul?
As he peeled along, avoiding fatal curves,
Did his thoughts of roses blooming
keep him from launching himself
into the fog?
Were the droplets on his face,
full of salt from the sea,
the same as those he saw
in the morning dew on his flowers?
He was a not a Hunter Thompson,
who might return home to drink and write
reams of rage against the foul Effendi,
who beset him at night
after descending from their mansions.
Yet he too needed respite and beauty,
an Owl Farm in his mind,
Or a hotel on Sunset Boulevard,
Safe under the canopy, among the palms,
His security, not a typewriter
but a garden of perfect roses
that he would tend and breed,
Keeping beauty alive to feed
His hidden desire for peace and order.
Like an old man in the country,
The “rose rustler”he played
Lived in a little house,
His unassuming paradise,
with a cat, as secretive as him,
a lone goldfish in a bowl,
who looked out each day on
manicured paths and brick walls,
worthy of any English manor,
with acres of flowers,
dozens of colors...
but every single one a rose.

Dylan got it first, as he often did,
That American youth were ignorant kids,
Betrayed by the things our parents hid.
And we were insulted just a little bit
But we listened and took the plunge,
Determined to expunge
The poison and let out the Id.

It was up to us not heed the call up
And as one voice we stood up,
Saying, shouting NO!

Twenty or so legendary years for some;
While others sold out, we beat the drum.
Our peers oddly died around us but….
Even as we ‘felt those cold hands’ touch our skin,
As The Capitalists were closing in—
& Some of them were us…
We sounded the drum.

Later on some hippie-punks or is it the other way(?)
Sang about extraordinary girls & then took a fall.
Sometimes begged for Novocain
Which wouldn’t relieve psychic pain,
Like being Ramonely sedated in a concert hall.
Nobody knew what to do with them.
Except to give them fame.

(It was just as bad for them as for the Clash)…
Hell, they almost invented the mash-up.
And too many anti-hippie punks
Loaded on cheap ****** or always drunk,
Claimed all those heroes had sold out.
But Ziggy would’ve known Ash from Ash.

Then came their Blood on the Tracks;
They finally saw what Dylan saw,
Or, if they saw it before,
They got some Real Emotion back.

Nothing has changed and everything has changed,
Said The Heathen…and he should know.

But how do we see, stuck here ‘so far below’,
Not remotely in the know;
They might be on an intergalactic trip
Or as in “A.I”, nothing more than a binary blip?
But encased in virtual ice, how can we live?
Until the end…and even then…
As John wrote, we only get the love we give.

All of my life I waited
For you.
Walking on a path sometimes,
Or wandering in a mountain wood.
Even escaping to the tropics,
To let the sun burn my desire for you
This way or that.
But each time I looked behind,
There you still were,
Not fully formed at first,  
But a shadow.
Or sometimes light.
Then there was a sense
Of possibility, hiding in the air
That shivered around you,
But caused my course to veer  
Ever so slightly toward you,
Like ancient footprints in rock,
Deciding for me.
I never believed in Fate
Until I met you,
Standing in the doorway
Of a cottage, outlined  
With October’s warming sun.
I did not see your face then
But I knew.
And decades after
The same certainty abides,
Alongside any other gales
Of emotion or  
Temperate joy.
Around you a brilliance
Hovers in my soul.
Where you walk
Beyond my sight,  
My eyes still see you
And my love  
Follows in your path.

Our Dog Howling at Sunset

At sunset, the dog howls at sirens in town.
If he were snowbound in Talkeetna,
A hundred miles from nowhere,
What would he howl at instead?

I saw my husband trudging through the frost,
His blue jacket half-tinted orange and red,
“I don’t like the way you sound,” he said
As he left, deserting one who was already lost.

If I were a thousand miles from him now,
Listening to the wolves’ mournful cries,
And my beloved shunning me as he does now,
Would I pretend to believe my lover’s lies?

Or, instead, would it be enough to exist
Where the short summer dies on winter’s grist,
And true love’s a dream born on a dreamer’s mist,
And the one to stay with is the one you’ve just kissed?

If I lived in a land so cruel and hard,
Would I be bargaining with my soul?
If love’s short date were but a moon’s silver shard,
Would he be a passing thought, and my son the whole

Of any future we had scattered out on the snow,
Or caught in the rime-bound trees?
Would I see then what I already know—
That his future lies with himself and not me?

As our wolf howls a timeless wail to the air
I can listen and guess at its season.
I can comfort myself it will always be there,
Beyond human hopes, beyond reason.

Far wiser, the black-furred hound, than I,
To sing out his ancient song.
Waiting, watching, as we struggle and die,
Only to pass his wisdom along.

Waiting, hoping as he does for a touch,
He is made to think that he asks too much--
Waiting for a kind word or loving hand--
Wild and alone, in humanity’s bleak land.

A southern writer once lamented the lack
Of courage in humankind,
And suggested we borrow the strength we see
In the branches of an olive tree.

Yet there’s more courage in the dog-wolf’s cry,
Penned out on our city-cropped lawn,
As if he knows the grief of my son and I
When the man we both love is gone.

“Could we not as well” take a lesson from him,
Our wild and loyal friend?
To howl out our sorrow and loneliness,
Though the pain might never end?

Now, in the twilight I hear my lover return,
With no greeting to me, and I burn
For the summer’s newborn passion I recall.
The twilight wolf’s mourning tells it all:

That we never will have what we had before
That love can die just as well as it’s born,
That a child is the only one who restores
What is lost to the lonesome, the wolves, the forlorn.


July 6, 2001

She ran a boarding house in Boston,
But they used her size to terrorize men
And lead them to the lock-holes.
Or was she a lady clad in black ruffles,
Presented to the Queen in 1844?
Perhaps she was a racehorse
Foaled in Harlem and won a prize.
She had peddled drugs and run a gang
In the chaos of Civil War,
Black Mariah escaped from the darkness
Of Edison’s studio to roam the world,
But in it found herself re-imagined.
They named police wagons after her
It’s said, but no one knows the truth.
Did she cross the battle lines again,
To tread on civil rights?
Or swing the batons in Chicago
And fire rifles at Kent State?
She seems to take time out to charm
Gruff-voiced men who sing her praise.
She prowled the streets of Brixton,
In 1983, with truncheons at her side.
Through gas clouds, dragging men to jail.
Black Mariah is with us still,
Helping to create tyrants and traitors,
To stop the mouths of those who defy
She’s an accessory to the killing.

Before hearing about your death
I began a novel inspired by you
and your struggle with the truth--
The truth of who you were,
what you wanted of life and of me.
And it became a journey
into the past, into a life
that had happened before
we met, decades ago,
and after we parted for good,
I wove a new life out of remnants,
of things I knew or just supposed.
And like a good researcher,
I told of your parents' failings,
the darker side of love.
Of your grandmother and friends,
and even your cousin who
brought you to me,
Luring you out of the homogeneous crowd
and into our perfect valley--
"the land of spires and dreams".
I even spoke warmly of our artless love
and our drifting apart like ghost ships.
After our second parting,
when you left the mortal coil,
I tried not to reminisce about us,
for the story was yours, not mine,
But I fear that a mirror kept
cropping up behind me and
around corners, erasing mystery.
Narcissus caught me time and again.
Even so, I created times for you
that I had never seen or heard.
I have you swimming off La Jolla,
traipsing on mountain paths
in the wilds of British Columbia,
or arguing with your wife
in that mansion you dreamed of.
I invented a girl you would like
and two kids who loved you
in spite of everything.
Your memories of me became
less urgent, locked in a chess box,
in songs or on film, hidden away.
I analyzed your youth, your vanity,
lust, boredom, mistakes and age.
And when it came time for you
to make a decision: to stay or go
again, either west or east,
I stopped and looked over your life,
rolled out flat, like the American plain
from western crags to eastern city
and like a broken record,
the choice shuttled back and forth,
not letting me decide for you.
Glancing at a photo
of your childhood home,
I realized at last,
not that you had died too soon,
but that I really never knew you.

When we were children
My sister and I rejected
The role of princess.
They were pretty but weak--
Always needing to be rescued!
And we preferred the chiseled faces
The greater command of queens.
We stood on our beds at night,
Wool blankets turned to velvet capes.
And we declared our power
In broad, silly proclamations
Such as “Queen of the Dolls”!
Or Rulers of the Woods
That stretched off to the east
Of our little house,
That became a castle
Guarded by hooting owls
and Baskerville hounds.
Arms outstretched, our capes
Made leaping sparks
And we shouted in our glory.
After tiring of commands
We launched ourselves into the air
And for a moment, ruled the earth,
Suspended above our queendom
Until we fell onto our beds
And laughed with joy,
For were we not landing
On stacks of feathers,
Piled high to avoid a pea,
Laid there just for us?

I recalled the smell of junipers warming in the sun,
Or maybe mice nesting under the cupboard.
Or bleached linen hung out by Mum,
Reminds me of something about Dad from long ago,
You ask me…to say if it was gin;
There are things I can’t tell you, Son.
Some people think that it’s a sin;
So just use your imagination.

Another time I smelled crushed daisies of
The housemaids, I remember from Kleßheim.
Thunderstorms rolled down from the Alps at night,
Then turned at morning into clarified, buttered sun.
They remind me of someone’s blonde hair,
I just can’t tell you when or where,
So use your imagination.

Scent is the most potent mnemonic,
Triggering mystical cells inside,
Creating a stream of biophotonics,
Rapture returns in histrionics,
Tracking things from skin and hair,
To lips and eyes, to a groan, an intrigued stare.
Things we can never tell another, even if
He or she or they were there
What happened in those brilliant days?
Only imagination can say.

Crystal hanging in the window at nine o’clock,
Rays strike the glass, opening up the past.
Before me spreads a wide, green lawn,
Ladies and lords stroll with their finery on.
I sit and watch, while the procession advances,
Tricornes doffed and stays undone in dances.
Until the satin, silk and brocades lie on the ground,
Gavotte kisses become tender, sensual rounds
And naked, youth flees into woods.
And everything is happening;
Everything is good.

How do you tell if she’s a lady,
When she’s turning eighty five?
She doesn’t wear much jewelry
No furs or fancy styles.

She doesn’t play croquet,
But likes to root instead through dirt.
Her uniform’s a crumpled hat,
Old shoes and a muddy shirt.

You can find her on any sunny day,
Outside in all weather,
Stacking stone and hauling hay.
Collecting white stones & robin feathers.

But don’t dare swear or she’ll object!
Don’t watch **** TV or
She’ll tell you what to do instead:
“Rake some leaves or sweep this floor!”


She might strike you as old Rose Sayer,
Prim, proper and cold.
And to God each night she’ll say a prayer,
“Jesus please, don’t let me get old!”

Dedicated to Mom, Who Believes in Living Forever

Old Harold lived on the second floor
In a darkened room with an old locked door.
My cousins and I used to tease him there,
And he’d chase us out, give us a scare.
I didn’t know exactly who  he was,
“He’s a mean old man,” said my favorite cos’.
“Grandma let him live here after Grandpa died.
She doesn’t even like him and we don’t know why.”
When he was out we would take a peek.
Around the ocher walls and his bed we’d sneak.
There was nothing but an iron bunk
And a glass-front chest filled with lots of junk.
One day Old Harold must have complained
About our pestering…we really were pains!
But no parent’s lecture could keep us away.
And Grandma’s yelling at him not to stay.

Old Uncle Harold disappeared for years.
We would make up stories for littler ears.
But one day my father had news of him.
He lived with “a harlot” and his checks she’d skim.
I was old enough to know what it meant
And asked Dad why uncle Harold seemed bent.
“He was gassed in the War in a field at Verdun.”
Dad told me in a tone that left me stunned;
“And was then sent around to pick up the dead.
With the gas and the horror, his mind just went.”

Now I recalled all the times we had teased
And agonized him when we should have pleased.
But now it was too late to apologize,
He was so lost, he wouldn’t recognize
His grown tormentors, when he hardly
Knew my father, the kindly mentor,
Who visited him every week,
Who paid for anything to make him last,
And reminded him of better times past;
Telling him of the time he caught a butterfly
And brought it to show the girls and guys.
How he wanted to let it fly away,
But when the boys had killed it anyway.
He cried and was called a coward then,
And as my father spoke and wept again.

Old Uncle Harold died alone
In a sterile, cold-floored nursing home.
None but Dad came to grieve
And I, only an hour away, shunned
the feeling and just felt numb,
Until Dad called and told me the story
Of Harold’s death and only then
Could I say, “I’m sorry!” to his ghost.
I should have said it long ago; the one who
Maddened him least repented the most.
If I could say “Sorry” for the times we made him shout.
I realised he’d just have yelled, “Get the hell out!”

Under the surface sheen
In the carousel of the surf
And the churned-up foam
Turquoise-coloured drink
And beige dust storm
Swirling down
Brushing against
Corals and polyps
That will die too and
Join the round bodies
Of diatoms.
Stars of the sea,
Celestial show in the deep.
Dancing as they descend,
Toward the inevitable end,
The boundless dark
A plain of mud
Made ghostly by their larks.

We live on the dark street at night,
Rows of old houses huddled in the cold.
Only one small door has a hesitant light
Glowing yellow against wooden gold.

Flowers and weeds are crushed and dry,
Wreathing withered, brown, grass yards.
Frozen blades crack as feet walk by,
Only wild things cross the hay-like swards.

Old people huddle near the wood stove
Or bake bread and pies in the oven.
Their little dogs are let out for a minute’s rove.
Even they shy away from a world so frozen.

The world of black and white
Dims sight and stultifies the senses
It dulls imagination.
So one goes to sleep and waits.

Waits for morning and
The first ray of sun
Reminding one of spring
And the light, warming the street.

December 2020

Lost on the plains of ancient  Ílion,
Treading the windswept soil and stone,
I sense the ghosts of warriors and horsemen,
Of dark-eyed women and jealous kings.
Their history scattered, burned and ruined,
Pressed by time and scavenging hordes,
Yet restored to life in song and verse.
When poets and imagining hearts were stirred
To find heroes among brutal soldiers
And reasons for violence masked as greed.

Shades of blue lost to time reappear.
In their winding brains goddesses walked,
Holding an aegis made that bore a Gorgon’s face
Or gods who guided arrows and chose the dead.
Bards ever kept alive the rival gods
Before whom King Priam bowed and Achilles defiled.

Across the grape-blood waters of the Hellespont,
Aphrodite savored her own victory and watched
As Paris still kept the women she had given him.
Love was not among her calculations
Nor those of Zeus when he forbade hindrance
By the gods, who yet battled among themselves.

As mortal enemies fought the coming of allies.
For ten years, ships and horses swarmed to aid
The unbowed city, even Memnon and Penthesilia,
Both slain by the sword for reasons then forgot,
So their sacrifices failed to dent a lust for blood.

Yet armies tired and war ended, as all wars do,
Through fatigue or fire or the scattering of slaves.
Now time has whitened the ruins and sands
And Boreas sweeps away the shards of stain
That dyed the cities’ walls and columns.

The scarlet buried below Herculaneum is gone,
And saffron gowns on dancing virgins,
All the horses’ indigo manes and hyakinthos
Sandals of Achilles, whose mother dyed them
Before he sailed, forgetting his Stygian bath.

He was clad in red to hide his blood,
So when wounded, his men would not cower.
Yet one arrow alone took his life; how telling
That more valiant men lost theirs closer to the soul!

Gone are the sheep, red-fleeced with madder
And argamon robes of brides and Cybele’s priests.
No sacrificial lambs or holy men walk here now,
On the bone white land and relics of a kingdom,
Yet the north wind, the lone god, continues to wail.

March 5, 2020

A haggard angel
Stands behind my back.
Is it me or you?
For three decades
She had graced me
With words of love
And fits of anger.
I helped create her
And yet hurt her .
And suddenly, she turns
Away from me,
Still loving me, I think.
But all she wants,
She tells me bitterly,
Is to be alone.
She leaves and I wonder
If she will ever return.
I stand on a garish train,
Thunderstruck, unmoving,
As I watch her storm away.
Suddenly, I feel what she does—
The pain and sadness.
I created her long ago
And know why she is livid.
And now she returns the hurt,
Leaving me as the empty one,
My insides vacuum up sorrow.
Am I now the angel,
Fallen and haggard?

Kalanchoë, finally you bloom!
Welcome little foreigner,
To the corner of my room.
With frangipani flame
And crocus-gold effulgent.
Strains past succulent skin
Joyous, ebullient!
Though your petals grow
Just to hold it in,
Fiery blood escapes
Past watery blocks of ester-swell
And you exult with me
In a wintry cell.

Vast the landscape I watch that rolls out, ragged,
Before my eyes, hurt words describing, haggard.
Moby soothes me but a little as I watch still fractured sights
Of what was and is in Chernobyl.
Marshlands filled with death and mutation,
Homely houses putrid with abandonment and radiation.

Broken tokens of people’s former lives and loves –
Where are they now?
Their hairless dolls, sitting in the middle of rooms,
Bathtubs, broken and oblique, empty.
Soap washes memory and nothing else away.
The sky has spoken; it is broken.

Push the poison out to sea. To see
They hadn’t time to leave a memory,
But ran, already dead while living,
Not allowed to gather souvenirs.
There’s nothing left for them here.
But did they die?
Nobody told us where they went,
Or why
This happened.

They are gone now, dispersed in Eurasia I suppose,
Like ash in the wind, like their future or past ghosts.
They haunt the places, the buildings and the waters,
Engulfing fish, and drying fungus on the northern trees,
Watching wolves still move through winter freeze,
Still beautiful in the taiga sun.
Tainted yet rife with energy not destroyed,
Trying to paint its passion on the sides of walls,
To venerate the people here and their lives,
Their animals, their clothing only frozen.

Where do people go
When they are dispossessed?
When the home they know
Is no longer seen as theirs,
When their beds are tossed out,
And those boxes beneath the stairs
Regarded as trash by the soulless ****
Whose only motive is greed?
I have seen images of them in a group,
Walking down a road to nowhere,
Or out on desert sand, wandering.
Where can they go and not be harassed
By owners with no sympathy?
What boat will carry them to another shore
Where they are met with friendship
And not seen as enemies?
How strange and terrible to see them,
All walking in the same way,
Heads down and shoulders bent,
Many carrying a child
Or remnants of a home enfolded.
When they reach borders,
They are stopped and questioned,
Crowded, as are sheep in a pen.
So many are turned away
And some, desperate they become,
Board small boats with promises
To take them to freedom,
Only to founder and sink,
So that the sea becomes
Their last, dark home.
Others consider themselves lucky
To find a tent or metal van
Which they must take away
From those with property,
And keep moving, herded
Like those same sheep,
Yet now almost wild,
Huddling together with strangers
Near a fire in vast and empty lands
That play slow and vivid sunsets
To soothe the rootless host?
They tell each other stories
Of their home or hard journeys,
Give counsel to evade the dogs
That prey on those who wander.
And on those nights in endless lands,
And a dome not veiled by earthly light,
But dazzling the wanderers
With millions of shimmering stars,
That sends dreams of others gone astray
And they lament their fate as their own,
As unknown brothers and sisters,
Who, bewildered, weep for them as well.

The former Chilean soldier,
sits with a straight back,
eating Paila marina,
the same thing he makes
every Sunday, although
his wife and children are gone.
He delights in the long-ago flavors,
the rich swirl of saffron fire,
the unlocked mussel shells,
ginger-skinned shrimp
and floating onion slivers.
"Served without pretension,"
the saying rings in his memory,
the deep voice of his abuela,
as she stirs the liquid gems
in her wide, copper ***,
shining on a darkened stove.
“Only some things really matter,”
She often explains.

He always waits silently,
squatting nearby, inhaling the scent,
mouth watering, eyes catching
the lift of her great ladle.
She will turn and smile at him,
the way no one ever has.
He is warmed and fed already,
before even tasting the meal.

Now he is rich, wanting nothing,
sitting in his well-appointed house,
sipping the best wine
and listening to soft music.
Yet he sees and hears none of it.
Only the world in his bowl
is real to him now.

How many heroes have chosen this path,
Of least or no resistance?
In the face of overwhelming odds,
Or staring at cubicular, corporate submission;
Elect instead the stance
Of simply
Doing
Nothing?

Victorian ladies thought it amusing;
20th Century Centurions and Puritans condemned it.
The spoon-fed rich live it and lose nothing.
Russian aristocrats sometimes recommend it…
When spurned in love & up against it.

Oblomov, for instance, whiled his time away,
In bed, or staring out at the wood,
Writing meaningless letters and ignoring the day,
Yet it still did him some good.

Marat in his bathtub, Proust in his bed,
Still accomplished SOMETHING
Or we’d have forgotten them instead.
Is there still no virtue in doing nothing?

Against the tide of corporate work,
Aquarians rebelled with dance.
Later on, Generation X
Came to work in a greedy trance.

Peter Gibbons was hypnotized,
To escape his lifeless job,
Destroyed the office as it was downsized,
But was promoted by “the Bobs”.

Some lesson there, for those who strive,
That work alone is not enough.
Attitude is more important to our lives,
That revolt by nothingness is not that tough.

Abbie Hoffman was thrown through windows,
While preaching peace instead of wrath.
Despite nobility of cause, does humanity still go,
The inexorable way of sloth?

Sharon Talbot

I will not leave anything
So mean as a promise to you.
Nor with trifles, stand trembling
And suffer penance
Below your bastion box.

But I am now hard-put
And sweet meats the dearer to me for it.

The lamps in the parlour are doused;
She has emptied them of gas--
Critical, unforgiving crone!
And left me alone in the house.
Does she mean this be for good?

She has called me “disgraced”
And thinks that her going
Will “purge this taint”
From my soul.
But I shall go on as I have,
Doing the right things
At the wrong time,
As is my genius,
Until the chloral takes me,
You forgive me,
Or night falls.