Green night in the middle of the day…
Fire rising to ****** the moon,
Uncle Sam’s praying in my room
And the 8-ball will not say

Why a woman holds a gun
To her husband’s sleeping head;
Does she play or just wish him dead?
An armadillo’s included for fun.

Uncle Sam’s lost his hat in the fire
Maybe that’s why he’s praying.
Not for the country he should be saving
While we are conquered by liars.

I’ve tried to make sense of this before:
Masked fiddlers strum in the conflagration,
Dead books, butterflies and chimps run the nation,
…there is luggage on the floor.

Should I run from the scene,
Or stay and try to fight?
I can’t read my books in the deepening night
And there’s a skull waiting just to scream.

The man sleeps on with a gun at his head
And I see another skull by his side.
It must be a sign saying: “run and hide”.
But why can’t I do it?
There’s no way to get through it,
But I must wake up and fight or I’m dead.

June 1, 2006

We were born in the jungle,
Living in the shadows,
Clinging to our families
In the dark, under the trees.
Life was good then,
We had picked fruit from branches
And swung on them for joy.
And there was no greed
Or jealousy.
Over millions of years,
We lived in harmony,
Until the forest changed;
The garden shriveled and
Faded away as we watched.

Our lives were rearranged.
Some among us ventured out.
Giving to our sin: curiosity.
Down in the street
Canyons of concrete and steel
The powerful gather
Hors d’oeuvres are served,
Placating the hunger of the powerful,
This is never stated;
They will keep taking
As long as we allow it.
One day, some loner, a rebel
May emerge from the shadows,
Dark-clad, filled with inchoate rage*.
He will find like-minded souls
Who use the new inventions
To topple the oligarchs,
Empty their accounts
And give them to the world.
Chaos may follow,
But out of it a new humanity
Might arise.

I wake up from a drugged sleep just at sunset.
It allowed me the luxury not to suppose
That I felt our love dying in the bright sun,
Your need fading with the oncoming dusk,
But could see myself resurrected in the rose:

That transient swath beneath the glow,
Just above the horizon.
It reminds me of times that were,
When I was myself and didn’t know you.
It is harder to remember than you know.

What a blessing to imagine I don’t care at all.
I’d forgotten how warming.
To breeze through the day in a comfortable way;
No more skating on glass, but letting them pass,
All the things that once were alarming.

Perhaps I’ll awake on some fresh morning,
Done now skirting the old and new
And you’ll come striding through the rising sun.
I’ll be myself again and you will be you
And we’ll go strolling as we once did, into the blue.

August 9, 2016

Like a slattern in a string bikini,                     
Stretch marks bared to the public,                                                            
So does July show her wares                                                              
If she is scorned.
                                               
Sprawling, ugly, no doubt in heat,                                                      
An old sow past her prime                 
Suffocates
All who pass her by.             
  
Any who see Demeter
In each summer day
Have not seen her dark side,
When men refuse to play.

She is full of hot wrath,
If unspent for weeks on end.
Or cold doldrums, when denied:
Raw, frigid mistress of grey.

Yet, in a good year, she might
Swing Sun’s brazen shield
High above, shedding welcome beams,
And let us bask in its bright rays.

July, you sometime traitor,
When we expect you to behave,
Spend promises of warm weather,
No doubt you demur on that alone.

We await your pleasure,
As brides gnaw manicured nails in
Helpless wonderment at your
Selfish woes.

Month of Caesar, choose one attitude or the other!
Either thirty-one days of rain-soaked sulking
Or, better, allow one of selfless, sun-baked joy…
This might even please poor you!

A prim, lavender skirt and a napkin on it,
Tells me this is serious, and I mustn’t
Rain upon it, not say what I think,
And much less what I feel.
You have found a lover
And she isn’t me,
I wish I was an eel
That could glide away
Into the primordial sea.

On second thought, it makes me
Wish that we had never met,
That I’d never looked at you and loved,
Or at least never brought you home.
It was there that it all began;
I assumed your were mine alone,
And now I am empty man.

Oh, my love,
For the first time in my life!
You did this to me,
Without knowing, charmed me
Until I was undone.
But accidents will happen;
It was only hit and run;
Such investigative fun!
Don’t tell the other one I feel this way.

On second thought let him…..
Follow me into danger
Since a gamble is good as a rest,
Or the off chance I’ll get shot.
After all, this admirer’s the best
Of a mediocre lot.

But he knows about me, I’m sure.
He’s gets so little reward,
But takes credit for what I do
And hangs upon my every word.
He listens to me in the dead of night
As you used to do.
It’s comforting that he’s not you.

-Unfinished Lament

"A blue and gold mistake",
Wrote Emily from inside her room,
A self-inflicted tomb,
About a path she could not take,
Into the month of June.

Let others stroll beneath its cerulean sky
And thank the sward, on which they lie,
A lunging into voluptuous play,
Yet blinded to the rushing by
Of sultry month and jovial day.

Did the poet’s being kept apart
From worldly joys well-made,
Or from crystal pools and glaucous glades,
From brilliant sun that fashions shade,
Embitter her admiring heart
To look askance at anything that fades?

Did she not care that
One month, though doomed to end,
Was also made to reappear
After the long march of winter’s year
As the sun came round again,
To loose us from our unlocked pens?

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.

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.

Knock on any door
And you may hear the cries
Of children, deep within a house,
Whose parents smile at you
With that eroded grin we all know
Like the stony leer of a gargoyle.
And yet you can do nothing.
Not yet…

Visit any friend at their house
And hear the silent pleas
Of a wife and mother
Who endures the fear and pain
For reasons the mystify us.
At least now.

Walk the floor of any factory or boardroom
And you will see the man who bows to his master
While, at home, he treats his family as slaves.

Visit the mansion of any president,
Minister or king
And you may see the ragged masses
Of those who built the walls yet have no home,
Who work the farms and have no food,
Who tend a country and are refugees.

Thus, in the cry of any child,
The fear in a mother’s face or
Silent rage in a worker-slave
Or immigrant dispossessed
And you will see the tyrants who rule,
The fathers who strike and bosses who fire,

Yet all of these serve one master
With many names:
Property,
Greed,
Violence,
Primeval rank and…
Power.

To this power,
There is only one answer
And to alleviate the suffering,
of those oppressed,
Only one thing.

Rampant, errant fog
Along a river’s shore,
Once caressing silt and log,
But it vanished just before

The stolen, wayward plumes
Along the glistening sand,
Kissed and missed the ground,
Then fled into a different land.

Mist surrendered fast,
Beneath spears of lowering light,
And silver swords that fight,
Shivering silver into glass.
And Dawn lay down at last.

The faded beauty,
a desiccated blush
Still seen by you and me
was evidence of
a scarlet flush.

But the season is over
And the mating done.
Splendor still hovers
Until the two are one.

But who are we to stand and gawk,
Though they rest in shade and know us not?

Their hour is spent in the maiden sun,
And we arrive after the race is won.

Stoop low to gather useless information
about magnetism and procreation.
We are nothing more than nature's shields
And the guardians of whatever she yields.

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.

What is our maker, why does it put us here to die
What is Life if it must end,
What of our sense of beauty,
Of mesmeric minster air?
Or the way light bends on a summer afternoon,
The way the mourning dove croons,
If it must be taken all away,
When some of us must go and some of us to stay?

What is the love we feel,
For one another—deep, fearsome and real?
Why put it there for us to overcome,
Since the tension of love is not for some.
Or why take it into our hearts,
Only to wrench and stab us as we part?

Especially those who love only a few?
They open themselves to one or two—
Pour every part of their being into one soul,
Ignoring those who can't make us whole,
If only to watch it drain, or disappear as they depart?
Taking with them all our mind and heart?

Why do we expect an explanation
Of this cruel phenomenon,
The findings, trials and accommodation
That we build our lives upon?

And yet, with hope, however weak,
Stanching up our wavering hearts,
We tell ourselves we’ve found what we seek,
Something deeper than knowledge or art,
Until we are torn apart.

No religion can explain it.
Psychology tries and fails to name it.
We are creatures of mist and desire,
Of logic and deliberation,
Whose desperate brains whisper “Find a cure!”
And we wait only to have experts demur.

But deep within our harrowed souls,
We know that, for only a few,
Does this equation work,
And for the rest of us, it pales.
We plummet toward the hangman’s ****
And yet thank him for his gruesome work.

For our few bittersweet tales of life,
And that relief we feel comes at last,
Though we’ve no reason to believe it so.
We merely seek an end to the heartrending past,
Even if it just marks us as life slows.
And watches us as we go.

Does anyone care what happens to the lonely,
Or especially the aggrieved?
I doubt they do; they care about only
Themselves, their desires and taking leave.
Then they swiftly exit, and discard us—the bereaved.

Sharon Talbot
August 11, 2015

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.

Time slips backward over little slivers
Of love and broken lives,
Gathering them up, using the soft mess
Of once-blessed feeling mixed with
Grand passion,
Until it knits together the pieces of
Hate and love like a potion:
Unseemly, neither black nor white...
And we refuse to see it.

Time rolls forward as we ignore it,
Over hurt as well as joy,
For we have taught ourselves to lie,
To say that nothing matters in
The “grand scheme of things”...
And so our life passes us by.

Until, one day, we discover
We are alone even as we stand
Beside those we love.
And we know them not.
Where love resides,
There loathing and resentment
Peek from amidst the ruinous
Muddle, which we created,
Simply unaware.

We two may stare into each others’ eyes,
As if two strangers,
Wary of false hopes and lies.
Stale passion bonded to forgotten vows
Leave us helpless, caught in a patterned
Web of half-truths and hidden threat.

Soon we are reduced to stiff civility,
“Sly apologies and polite regrets”.
Love dies more slowly than the ability
To end the dance or forget.
We settle in, like corpses in a crypt,
To the slow departure of ourselves.

As the mind rises up above the scene,
We take it in, gawkers on a highway,
Aghast yet unable to refrain
From still more self-flagellation.
Another empty day drags by
And in our lonely, separate prisons…we stay.


Rediscovered on January 20, 2019

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

Two men from the city are lost
In the northern woods,
on Christmas Eve.
Fear has not set in yet
and they wonder at
the paper-thin trees,
that seem painted on parchment
in the mist and moonlight.
One absorbs it in silence
while the other sings as he walks:
“Jul, jul strålande jul.”
"It's a Christmas song,"
he tells his companion,
who tries to shut him up.
How differently two people can react
to magic and moonlight,
to loneliness and mist.
One sings on in silence:
“***** över vita skogar,”
While the other’s head is filled
With numbers and plans
and dreams of saving of the world!
But little does the singer know
how much the redeemer wants
to know that streaming light,
that unfettered joy.
That comes with a struggle,
Not just to survive,
But to right the world for all.

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.

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

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.

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

His plane sailed into a milk-white sky,
white mare's tails spiraling in pale water.
Mind and time became elastic as he
vanished away and then returned.
I look for days like this in winter,
with hints of soft sunshine
and opalescent clouds.
Sometimes the harshest season
is the kindest, and paints a scene
that soothes artist and lover,
when wishing hands part the cloth
of reality with dream.
Or when the earth itself
Seems to remember soft interglacials
And seasons seemingly spun
Like cotton candy to soothe
The wounds inflicted by us.
Earth is like the mother spider,
eaten by its young.

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.

Sitting on a throne of stacks made of poems,
He rules, or thinks he does, up on his mountain.
He hates a rhyme more than
The buzzing of a fly or scuttle of a rat.
They remind him of his paucity of skill.
He rolls a magazine tight
Swings it at the rhyme, “****, ****!”
He shouts.

Up on the throne, he rambles onto paper
Vers libre, je crois.
Looking down, he sees thousands of admirers,
Coming to hear him read
His old poems of war and death, and lost love.
Only a daughter, who is “hot”, for him to ogle.
They pick up girls and eat chicken.

The past is a patchwork quilt to him,
Ragged, frayed and faded.
He screeches out memories!
Then doodles them onto the cloud,
He loves to brag
About his computers, his awards and his printed stuff.
It is all he has.

Old man staring out at the oil rigs
Of Bakersfield, he can’t rhyme about that,
The run-down houses and cracked streets.
Browned like toast by the driest air!
But he has been places, studied things,
Allegedly—what does he remember?
So he is proud, insolent in his old age.
Who can tell him what to write?
Only his publisher.

I am lately entranced by neo-noir,
The criminal mysteries of Europe
And the wilds of Canada and Britain.
There is rarely running, screaming
Or endless car chases through
London, Ottawa or Ystad,
Unlike the reckless pursuits
In Manhattan or L.A. streets.
These detectives don’t sashay
In long coats or wear black leather,
(Except for a couple).
They wake up hung over,
Like Wallander, or grieving
Like Perez from Fair Isle
And Matthias, self-exiled to Wales.

Bodies surface or are found
In gorgeous forests.
The detectives overcome depression
To quarrel with irrational superiors
(Who may themselves be guilty),
Yet they don’t yell like sergeants
In the gritty precincts of NYC.
They drive their Volvos through
Rolling fields of rye and rapeseed.
And even the mysterious quarries
Where bodies are found in Poland and Wales
Are beautiful—not like the junkyards
Of Barstow or east coast borderlands.
Some detectives are lucky, like Matthias,
In hiding in Hinterland.
He walks the shores of Aberstwyth
As Wallander does the fields of Malmo.
When suspects are caught, they aren’t beaten.
Their jails are neat and clean;
The prisoners get mattresses, pillows and TV!
The police question suspects casually,
As if they would rather be in bed.
The female cops are clever and quiet;
They rarely show their anger
When chided or ignored,
But carry on with dignity
And show the others
How work is really done.

At last, the assailant is charged,
Sun sets through the mist,
Sheep graze on manicured fields.
Village streets glow with low light
Reflected off rain-washed stone.
But despite the ambiance, people die
In weird ways: falling off of towers,
Shot while picnicking in costumes,
Lynched by a group of church goers
Floating past in a lake or river,
Or set on fire in a flowery field.
It’s as if the deaths are staged,
To match the serenity of the old world.
The slow machinations of justice
And drained eyes of the officers
Comfort me like a sedative
Always there, watching over their flock
As soothing as a soft, wool blanket
Hiding a frightened child.
When I am asleep, let
Matthias run along the cliff,
Let Wallander drink his wine
While Endeavour swoons to opera
And Cardinal stands in the birch grove,
All as semi-sedated sentinels
In the dusk or midnight sun.
I only ask that American blues
Take a page from these good constables
Across the sea or north of the border;
Imagine the settling peace
In the wide, new world,
If people of color were never smothered,
Or shot when carrying a phone
And people protesting were not gassed,
But spoken to with weary eyes
And a mind prompting peace officers
To listen, protect and serve.

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

“Angelica arguta”,
He shows her wildflowers
Angelica Susannah.
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.

One son of One Stab,
He brings wildness from the mountains.
Lovely woman from the East,
Fascinated by her,
His passions.
Revels in her bridal bower,
To stop her
Loving any other.

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.

One son gone,
The other lost and mad.
Years pass and
Happiness found
Is felt too soon.
He loves another,
But Angelica is his doom.

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!”

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.

Choices, so many choices:
Nordic noir or French comedies.
Bluegrass but not country.
Right wing or left wing:
What is useful and what is not?
Random violence doesn't help the plot.
Summer but not autumn
Moss gardens but not lawns.
The grass isn’t always greener,
Or didn’t you know?
British country houses or French chateaux.
Fishing for trout but not bass.
Sailing but no boats with gas.
Cycling but not motorcycles.
So many choices on which to pass.
San Francisco but not Las Vegas.
The Caribbean but not Florida.
Watching films of the desert but not being there.
Admiring the stars but not flying there.
Impressed by the horseman but not the cavalry.
Settling for Ubuntu but too tired for Kali.
Lumping things together is a bad recipe.
Living in Boston but not New York.
Eating peas with a spoon and not a fork.
Living like Dickinson but reading Walt Whitman.
Staying inside is nice; but run outside, shouting if you can.
Watching Downton Abbey on TV but not the screen.
Drinking mocha latte coffee but not tea with cream.
Loving travel round the world but hating the trip.
You can go exploring with your eyes but not your lips.
Deciding what's worthwhile isn't hard; just be resolved.
Critics tell you this or that, but can’t decide what's art or trash.
East or West Coast—why get involved?
Shuttle between them in electric hot rods.
Don't get bogged down with picking a god.
Followers always end up dead and all that matters
Is where they bury or burn you or scatter,
Whether you are declared saint or sinner.

But if I were one of them I would reconsider:
You can be a prophet, the calf that’s golden,
If enough of your votes are stolen.
You can even rule the world
If you ruin lives, steal countries and hurl
Thousands of lies online. These are the stakes.
"Lawyers, guns and money": that's all it takes.
The only real price will be your soul.
But do you believe in it when you get old?
Better make a simple choice.
Speak simply in a honeyed voice.
I read the news today,
Telling me which words to shout,
Make people ignore that time is running out.
Learn to step on them and which crimes to flaunt.
And how to get everything I want,
Then I can enjoy it as the storms rage round,
Live on the mountain as the sea waters drown
Everyone else—do I only need to save myself?
I've got a bombproof mansion underground.
I can hold out fifty years in such a spot....
I would be safe and comfortable,
But then, maybe not...

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.

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

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.

Scream, Memory

Accidents don't happen on holiday,
do they?
Standing in the shower, I stare out of
a tiny window at the setting sunlight.
In a row, children on a rustic bench
chatter through their colored ices
and kick their sandaled feet.
Soon, a tall, bland man appears
with smiles for all--this is his family
and he is happy.
His ambiance is like a drug so I leave
my caravan, barely dry,
Wanting to speak to him and not knowing why.
His good fortune draws one to him,
Yet I find another reason.
He directs me without words
to a desolate room and a gown.
And I remember...that I have not remembered
lately. And my collection of names is dwindling,
memory leaking like a wire basket.
Even before I don the ugly robe and lie down
on a cold, plastic bench,
I know what the diagnosis will be.
The cylindrical tunnel looms and his nurse or wife
motions to it as he still smiles.
The machine roars like time passing
And I emerge carefully, not wanting to know.
Seeing my expression, he turns on me:
"It is bad news, but also sad."
He tilts his head like a bird, self-satisfied.
His vacuous delight belies the words.
What the hell is the difference, I think.
And like a falling tree, reality splits the dream
And knocks down my life.
I weep, uncontrolled.
It does not help to swear
nor to hit the wall with my fist.
But would it help to slap the doctor?
People crowd around and tell me to stop
but, as I had to when my father died,
I continue to rave.
For, what is simple to them
I will not make so to me.
I will mourn and censure Fate!
And if I still must,
I will not go gently
But scream all that I remember
Into the fading light.

April 19, 2019

I’m fading away, backing off from life.
Echoes of joy and faults pass like falling stars.
Every day has a few drops less of strife.
Silent shrapnel crashes in soft and witless shards.
And I’m shrinking from the Now;
I couldn’t even tell you how.

Moments of ecstasy and pain are sealed,
Like shrines to a life I still know.
Etched in summer’s softness or in steel.
I am vanishing, but I don’t know where I’ll go.
My once-beloved and my son are here.
One ignores me, while the other
Watches in helpless fear.

Five A.M and I am by myself…again.
Sun washes in with sorrow in its face.
For the thousands of times, I have slept alone,
I feel like a stranger in this place,
I once called our home.
Now it’s a cage to me,
Filled with broken promises and mis-matched lace.

I am going now, heading toward the West.
Leaving memories and pain behind with a sleeping wife..
Every day brings me closer to an end
Leaves fly in the road behind me, remnants of a life.
I am crying for the misspent years.
But no more of those; I am changing, switching gears.

September 17, 2010
Edited – January 5, 2016

I woke up on your sixtieth birthday
And realized I’ve been with you
For half your life!
Yet to me it seems sometimes
No more than the blink of an eye,
No more surprising than a sigh.
Yet then, I think of the joy
The kindness and love
You have given me as naturally
As you might breathe.
Then the aching passion that began
Long ago, now burnished with time
Still burns like the fire inside a jewel!
And each day seems like a hundred years
In which I hold you even when you aren’t near.
I would wish for another half of all you are,
But then I realize, that would never
Be enough.

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”?

A virus lives quietly
Until one day it appears
As suddenly as a madman
Raging in the desert
In quest of methamphetamine.
Or an outlaw on *****,
Shooting up streets
And striking people down.
It has no origin we can see,
No place that it calls home,
But ravages civilizations
And adopts their clothing,
Wears their armour
And steals their ships,
Like the Sea Peoples
Of ancient times.
Feared even by god-like Pharaohs,
The kings of Knossos and
The Mycenaean warlords.
It attacks the very essence
Of its victims, becoming like them.
Walking through their streets,
Dancing as they do and
Welcomed into their houses—
Hiding in plain sight.
It drifts down as they sleep,
And bonds with their cells at night.

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.

The rain is falling, coalescing now
Off the roof onto new blooms.
Dusk slips in with its indigo shroud
And I watch it kiss the purple,
Of the Rhododendron’s earliest flower,
Plucking away Azalea’s last veil,
Hiding her into a bower,

Where summer never ends
And the rain falls when it will;
I would have this all year instead of an end
Where these soft mists know nothing of a chill
But heat and rain,
Sun and shower.

I can still hear raindrops drumming
On a Chinese rebel’s tin roof,
Outside Jakarta and the red guard coming,
We could lapse into hypnosis,
Rapt senses gently humming.

Despite our temperate flowers and leaves
That droop under the deluge.
Their color seems to strengthen as they grieve,
And they cluster, seeking refuge,
Yet from our New England loggia,
A stream turns them darker, a humid green.

And in the slowly deepening dusk,
The trees’ heads toss, agitated,
Like elegant women whose gowns have cost
A tidy sum and now are saturated.
Their full, green plumage lost.

I love the mockingbirds’ changing cries,
Announcing from to squeal to carillon.
Cardinals’ song change from pleasure to pain
Flashing coats of taupe to vermilion.
As the evening slowly dies.

It ends and begins with summer, summer,
Soundless footsteps in the rain.
A prismatic wakening from slumber,
A season with no name.

The first one happened in the dark,
On an awkward bed in too much haste;
It was not really what I wanted,
Not a meal but just a taste.
The second and third were foggy at best,
A handsome face or long, blond hair,
The connections, sweat and smooth chest,
But the memories are still fair.
The fourth one kept hailing me
And I almost saw him there,
But his pursuit was like a drug
Too flattering sweet to miss;
Unknowing pain dispelled with a winter kiss.

Other trysts would follow:
In an empty room, on a stripped-down bed,
In a forest that covered a hill,
Inside a corner room,
With nights in white
Cotton and you missing still,
While floating snow fell.
I saw your face out in the storm.
No one there to keep you warm.

A summer lad was tall and fair,
His arrogance disguised as a dare,
Flaunting traits you wish weren’t there,
But a bacchanal makes up for OCD.
Until his obsession is directed at me.
Imagine Apollo in a haze of J.D.!

He took me home (unsuspecting) in his car,
Across the Valley, but it wasn’t far
Enough for me to endure his howls
About my lack of even temper
When he inspected other girls.
I stopped his rant and smashed a car door.
Yet he called the next morning,
Insanely wanting more.
And I told him that:
If a ten ton truck had crashed
Into his tin VW and we were mashed,
I couldn’t think of a worse way to die,
Than to be pinned there by his side!

So to you and all the others I bemoan:
Don’t take me back to your home.
I have no use for your romance,
I don’t need your wants,
And you don’t want what I need.
There’s a bed of my own where I prefer to sleep
And in the sunrise I will keep
A sweet liaison with coffee and birdsong,
Of synthesized music all morning long.
With a new gold dream beside me.
And summertime inside me.
There is a light and it never goes out;
Those who don’t see it have been shown out.

Ten years of sunshine, fantasies, and song.
Nothing was right; nothing was wrong.
Suddenly you’re up against a wall.
It seems like everything or nothing at all.

When you were younger, things were what they seemed;
Bedtime stories and parent’s esteem.
Everyone said you were funny and enchanting.
You didn’t despair, were never wanting.

What happened to that perfect world?
Why are you now so scared?
Did it vanish in the morning?
Like a wistful vision, without warning…
Or was it taken from you by
A cold and pitiless world?
Did it make you shun the things that you once dared?

At sixteen, you’re just a little bit older;
The world seems much  harsher and it feels much colder.
But it’s still the same place,
Then why the sorrow in your face?
Do you think you should have been told?
Think anyone told him or her?
But it’s the same place it’s always been.
Ask your mother and father how they fit in!

It’s not easy on the outside, looking in,
You seek it for comfort, but that’s hollow and thin.
You’re a loner, despite all your friends,
And your pain doesn’t stop where the loneliness ends.
You can try all you want, to be one of them,
Yet you’re still just yourself in the end.

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.

He drives into the desert in a Toronado,
Dust in his eyes from the open window,
Sun on the burned skin and black mascara
That augments his vivid gaze.
Black orbs that stare at the burning sand,
His mouth is defiant and morose,
He turns off the path into the sage and saguaro.
The car is like a black beetle on a carpet of tan.
He lifts a shovel from the trunk, looking crazed.
Digs a shallow grave in the sand,
He rips a talisman from his neck
And declares he is looking for something
Unclear and he slurs a chant.
“Something is coming”, he seems to say.
He buries the necklace and drives away.
Will he come back for it or leave it
for the spirits of the desert?
No, he will come for it every day
Bury it again and again
Until the spell wears down,
The perfumed season is done,
Or perhaps the spring floods
Wash it all away.

Night so often brings a lack of force,
But in this other world
That hums alongside ours,
There is a golden line riding in the sky,
A horizontal meridian
That runs like a road,
Across the plains
Where invaders roam
And you should not travel
On your own.
So hang onto the line and fly
Above despair or fear,
Until you reach a darker cliff
And enter the realm
Of Pythagoras.
Along with his elfin helper,
Who spun the golden line
Steered by Pegasus.
And slung below the stars,
Thin as a spider’s web
And strong as steel,
He gives frail dreamers
Safe passage from world to world.
Above the winding roads
And forests of dark mist,
Those of Eriador, Earthsea and Hyrule
Sail like Odysseus past rock-bound isles
And Sirens’ songs and Loki’s smiles.
But what lies beyond those hills,
The dubious mortal asks.
To which the winged horse replies,
“Only those who dare
And trust me safely to consign
Will ever know where leads
The Meridian of Pythagoras,
The endless, golden line.”

There is a bay on the Oregon coast,
Shaped like a scallop shell
And ringed by rounded stones.
And from the darkening sky
Droop billows of blue and gray
Hanging and lit like Chinese lanterns.
Humans in the damp Northwest
Appear to drip from the clouds
In rain-washed colors
Of blue and violet,
Whose tattered clothes
Are softened and soaked
From ragged wool into rich satin.
Still others bask on shores
Of pebbles rolled by the sea,
Bone white and cloud-gray.
Down and up, down again
The light rays vault,
Painting bipeds into the land.
There are no reflections
But rather water in the air,
Looking like rain
Even on cloudless days.
Their world is saturated
Like the scarlet gowns
Of Waterhouse’s Ariadne
And the ponds of Monet,
Green as the British Isles,
Blue as the Aegean
And white as the Pantheon ruins .
Much like an ancient tomb,
The majesty of mortal lives
Commemorated in stone
Is here splashed in the air
And in every forest or cliff.
Hushing people into silence,
So they conduct the most
Serious customs in whispers,
Knowing how voices echo along
Water droplets
And mountain shadows.

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

The secret of love,
Of remaining together...
Is not what everyone supposes.
It is not always the bringing of gifts,
The candlelight dinners
Or bouquets of roses.
After the bloom is off
these loving flowers,
Irritations and troubles arise.
There are clashes
Over little things.
And lovers forget
The vows they made so easily,
Violating them with anger.
Old resentments from the past
Rise up to poison with enmity,
The nearness that will not last.
Those with wisdom shun these fights,
The sad agony of lonely nights,
Lying awake and wondering
If love still exists, or if one matters,
To the other, if one cares at all.
Over time, self-protection grows,
And the lover builds a rancorous wall
Where weeds choke sunlight from the rose
And the other cannot hurt you.
But the play still goes on,
Like a song that still repeats,
Over and over unnoticed.
And a pantomime of caring
Begins to form, with hollow smiles
And half-hearted promises.
The Rose now lists against the wall,
Pale and tamed, like a common plant,
A vegetable in a kitchen garden.
And lovers expect passion
From a dreary fruit like this?
But once in a thousand times,
Deep roots that began long ago,
Giving rise to the first flower of love,
Last beyond boredom, thirst and drought.
Thorns pierce their hearts through the wall,
Bringing tears of surprise and recall.
The lovers find after the rain:
They have what they have sought.
And that which they sought is all.

Summer 2018

I never knew until now,
Dear Dad, though
I listened to the stories you told,
Of War that re-ignited after the one supposed,
To end all wars, or so it was proclaimed.

You went abroad, your Varsity
Stalled, dreams put aside,
Long before I was born,
Before you met my mother or I was named.

Instead, you wanted to fly,
High above the Bay of Bengal
And the Andaman Sea,
Above the carnage, or so you said.
And that must have seemed a way to save
That sanity
You needed to take you through,
To come back and marry a beloved girl.

I watch the newsreels now,
They are old, with time and victory ingrained.

I can see you flying that high,
Himalayan peaks shining in your eyes,
Cold death above and horror below.
You told me stories, I recall,
Too young for me to imagine.
Now too old for me to hear them all.

You never piloted again
Except in your nightmares.
On a road between moon and sun
In your own history you flew
The infamous, undying path
Of The Burma Run.