On a dock near St. Petersburg
they played “America the Beautiful”.
Old men in ill-fitting uniforms.
A cigar box for coins.
“How pathetic”, my teenage son said.
Was it their appearance,
their pandering,
the shame of Russia
toothlessly smiling,
loving *****?
Mighty Russia
in days gone?

A cigar under the night sky
is a friend who listens,
and knows.
The power of a cigar
is its company.
When the smoke is finished
the essence remains
as life does.
If smoking a cigar does not inspire,
then the cigar is not a cigar.

When nothing in the world
I turn to for distraction,
not a book, movie, scene or symphony
has an appeal like the silence of God,
how can I not be still
while pushing the plow,
and look to see or feel Him
with my heart.
Then a bursting of something within
that I don’t have a name for
but know Who it Is,
the One I’ve always known.
The Lover of All!
Waiting for me.
Always waiting.
Silent.
But that doesn’t mean
I don’t know what He has to say.
I just want to listen all day,
care not for visions,
and let the world think me a fool.

Was it a dream or a memory?
I’m not sure.
But I saw a place somewhere,
where there were shops and houses without doors.
In the poetry shop
Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, Gerard Manly Hopkins and Sylvia Plath were seated around a table
enchanted with the magic of words.
Ogden Nash came in with a dish of P’s and Q’s.
They all broke out with laughter.
I walked in and they offered me a chair.
As an amateur poet I was out of my mind with the occasion.
In the science shop
Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein and the sage who discovered the wheel
were standing around a telescope.
I showed them my cell phone.
They threw up their hands and said: “What Now?”
Michelangelo, Picasso, Raphael, Norman Rockwell and Andy Warhol
were standing by the art shop looking at a cloud.
Andy said: “Not even Michelangelo can paint a cloud.”
Michelangelo laughed and said: “Who do you think I am, God?”
I remembered his sculpture of David and thought to myself
that it is as perfect as a cloud.
There were so many other shops
for everything imaginable.
I noticed the largest building,
the “Sinners Anonymous Club”.
The sign read: “All Sinners are Welcome”.
I walked in and they recognized me.
Adolph, Genghis, Judas and Pontius
and a lot of other famous and ordinary sinners
were having their 12-step fellowship.
In their midst was Jesus who said:
“This is my favorite place.”
“This is where I’m welcome, appreciated and needed.”
I stayed a good while.
The crowd swelled.
Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, atheists,
and more sinners poured in.
Presidents, generals, movie stars, sports greats, religious leaders, composers of great music, great doers of the world.
I couldn’t believe it.
In my selfish heart I wished that I had brought a baseball
for autographs, at least the Babe’s.
I’ll never forget Jesus smiling and laughing.
It seemed like the place was filled with grace.
I had the ironic feeling that it was almost
like being in church.

Lord, let me have an independent spirit,
but nurture and form it.
Let my poems reconcile
my darkness and your light.

Let me only make what you create.
But let me be original like you.

Let my poems be new,
but old like your lilies.
Let them be hard surfaced,
but deep like your sapphires.
Let my poems be well crafted,
but truthful like your prophets.

Let my poems strike at what is wrong,
but let them heal the soul
like your grace.

The daffodils sang a  
song in the churchyard.

So did the early robins
scratching among the graves.

I thought I  heard the wind say:
“It’s time! Rise!”

Walking can’t happen without a thought,
but running can happen by impulse
yet they seem the same,
whether thought or impulse.
A sudden noise can be the same.
Someone can pull a trigger without thought,
intent, or even impulse.
But holding the gun foresees the act,
sets the stage,
and owns the blast.

In autumn the trees sway low
and crickets sing bass.
My soul remembers something
old and cavernous.
The leaves fall like shrouds.
The birds are too occupied to sing
in the last summer days.
The earth whispers:
Now.

I wrestle with her song
like a reservoir,
since it mocks the veritable sea.
Its mysteries, unconceived,
she’s robbed of their virginity.
I flew to a galaxy
near the beginning,
and she also found me there
beneath the surface, under the deep air.
Waiting before an impenetrable secret  
I couldn’t escape her song,
her Siren song.
Her sweet words  
enveloped and bound,
like chords wrapped around me
to tame and name.
An infinite darkness of mind vanished
wordless into the unknowing
womb of creation.
And I, banished to an inner wasteland,
heard a voice of genius singing
a base rhythm to her song.
It was plain and blue.
The words were formless but
rose from the bottom of the world.
I am enchanted by an old song
and an older place,
seeming enemies.
Whether by seduction or
will for words
I will be undone.
I must have both
or be without my song.

My footprints stretch
from here to the end of
the last beach.
But my tracks have smoothed away.
The sand is perpetually so.
But If the beaches have a memory
of all the passengers thereon
they could tell the history of the world.

The sun blinding
sits on the river.
I descend to the valley.
I can’t escape,
I’ll l be lost.
I’m  gravity.
My outcome so sure
as the ocean where I head.  
So set on flowing,
and longing to break free
and return.

I was an old child
Not knowing from whence I came
or where I was going.

I left home at fourteen,
and pursued a calling,
then another,
and wandered for forty years.
Whatever I found,
was good for the journey.
Wherever I stopped, my body was at home,
but my soul still wandered.

I grew a beard
and lost some hair;
but my soul
still wandered.

When I made another home I planted my wandering stick
It rooted, and its branches bore fruit
and my soul still heard the ancient call.

Now I am old,
formed like the world
recalling from whence I came
and won’t be deterred
from where I’m going.

She was manic before court that day.
I told her we only had five minute to wait,
but she said she had to leave.
That was before she used the bad bag.
At the mortuary they thought she had
a frown on her face.
Her family from out of town just came to see
that she was dead,
then they left.
Her teenage daughter couldn’t stay.
She left in a car full of friends.
I looked at the corpse.
It did frown.

A boy stands before the ocean
with a stick, and a hook on a string.
He casts his hook to catch a whale
a whale as big as the moon.

The ocean is great and dark.
It’s where the great whale lives
The boy waits for the whale to appear
in the heavy rolling waves

The whale sees the boy
standing on the shore,
a boy as small as the moon.
The whale laughs and asks:

Can you catch a whale with a hook?
He turns toward the deep.
The boy returns home
and dreams of the moon.

He looked downcast,
long face, sad eyes.
He said: “I’ve nothing to live for:
I take pills and sit,
Tell me a funny joke.”
I said: “I can’t tell a joke
very well.”
So he tells one,
in poor taste.
I laugh to be polite.
He looks downcast,
long face, sad eyes.
Cancer took him,
but smallness of heart never did.

City of Dreams

I knew I had to be somewhere.
But wherever I turned there was
enchantment,
like when I was a child
and everything new was exciting.
Every building invited me
and every turn drew me in.
Every choice was perfect.
I had no inner GPS telling me
where I had to end up,
how to get there,
or how far I was from it.
But I didn’t care
because I was free
for the moment,
and I didn’t want
to wake up.

How do I begin
to speak when words alone
cannot,
as noise comes from
lips accustomed to common lies,
to leap from my experience
to yours.
Our lives are foreign lands
and we are full strangers.
But I watch your eyes
and every gesture
to detect a clue
that I might take the risk
of speaking the truth to you.

We leave many things behind
when we a cross a bridge.  
On the other side people look at us
and wonder how we see them.
We wonder, too,
how they see us.
But once we’re there
We see that we are the same.
If we look back we see the deep river
that divided us,
and the bridge that made us one.

A crow’s frightened unsure eyes
look toward smaller black birds
chasing him
from one branch to another.
He flees, wishing he were a dove.

We first met at coffee and dessert:
“He is a fine poet, and an engineer by trade.”
In this morning’s paper I read one of his poems,
autobiographical, and one to remember.
I can see him in it, and also the rest of men
but for this:
He was the quiet one at the table,
yet his quietness had presence.
Attentiveness inclined his eyes and posture,
not necessarily as a learner.
He noted all that was said
but he didn’t often comment
and never intruded.
When he spoke, he was reserved, deliberate.
Here was authority
in his silence and his speech.
It comes out in his poem.
His are not the soft thoughts
of the speculative metaphysician.
They are irrelevantly relevant,
much as the metaphor is,
the unessential figure that becomes essential
resting finally on granite,
and as sturdy as a pyramid.

I roamed with nomads

on desert sand.

We lived with tents and sandalwood.

We were dark-skinned, and dark-eyed.

We sang and danced

to strings and drums  

ancient tales of love.

The stars at night

were our spirits.

We lived in a timeless way

on plateaus of horses and night fires.

We drank goat milk,

and ate wild meat.

And wisdom came at night

like a goat on young legs.

The telephone rings.
It’s the doctor’s office.
The nurse’s voice is soft
and sympathetic.
“Good morning,
we received the biopsy results.”
“I’m sorry, but the news
Isn’t good.”
“They’re positive for
invasive cancer.”
Silence….
“We have the name of a surgeon.”
“You should call this morning
and make an appointment.”
“We’re so sorry.”
Silence..,
“What’s that number again?”

I wait for your words
as I wait for the dogwoods
in the spring,
and their buds to flower
chalky in the wild woods.

I dreamt that she was gone.
To where, there was no clue.
In the dream of panic
I felt lost.
There was no way to stop the dream.
I had to see through
all it’s insane and terrifying
turns of gloom.
Sweating I must have turned
in the sheets that slowed my efforts
to do what the insane attempt to do.
When I awoke my still-startled mind
had a weak grasp of another day.
The unreal reality of the dream
still held its dreadful terror.
But She was still there,
asleep beside me,
still breathing.
But I don’t know
if I terrified myself,
or if some warning messenger
came to me,
a part of myself, perhaps,
that sees the road ahead
beyond where my headlights
lighten the dark,
the terror of the blind
being a kind of sight.

Out of nowhere it came
in the night.
A thought unlike my own.
Like a ghost I would shun.
A frightful thought to be sure.
How could my mind conjure it?
Is there a demon in me
that would think such a thng?
Or am I a stranger to myself,
a cauldron of the vilest kind?
Oh rid me of
my unconscious mind!

John Hayes

It’s an early morning to late-at-night drive
From Pittsburgh to Jacksonville.
Half-way to Bradenton Beach,
through rough West Virginia roads
then Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia,
till the final push to our half-way motel.
Your company makes it a ride rather than a drive.
I’d drive to China with you.

My friend left me a message yesterday
and died before I got the message.
Now the message means more
than it was meant to mean
How strange it is when one’s last words
aren’t meant to be so unforgettable.

You thought you wanted freedom,
so they took your children away
and gave them to your sister.
Your children forgot you
and found their own freedom.
All you found were closed doors
and too much time,
weighing you down
until a noose broke your neck.

I always wanted freedom,
not being told what to do.
But I broke the law,
got caught and sent to jail.
My children were taken away.
And no one brings them to see me
while I serve time.
People I thought I knew
are now strangers.
My children have forgotten me,
but I haven’t forgotten them.
Catching up is the hardest thing
when you're in jail
and doors on the outside are still closed.
I want to push my daughter on a swing.
I want to hold my son’s hand
and walk down the street.
The law is a barbed wire
around my life,
a noose that uses the weight
of my past against me.

I saw a feather lying on the snow
more incongruous
than a Picasso.
A delicate wind made its down ripple  
lightly.
There was a universe in its shaft
and fluffy plume,
too powerful,
for a poem.

You will come like a breeze
with an airy whispiness
on a day with no hours,
when the sun doesn’t burn my skin,
and in long afternoons to wander
with time to think, and write poetry;
with time to love in the afternoon
and dine in the evening.
Or you may not come like that,
but in the din of strife
in a world gone mad
Where the poor and the sick lie needy,
and never stop coming
though I’m drained from listening
to their stories,
until I find myself among them.

thin rain ,
a flame licking a log,
the sun warming a rock,
a deer gliding,
a breeze rufflng a pond,  
a penny dropping on the floor,
God whispering my name.

I can’t dance.  
But you can dance for me!
I can’t compose a symphony.
But Beethoven composed many for us!
A sage discovered the wheel
and Shakespeare wrote plays
for us.
I’ll do everything I can for you
with my gifts,
and all things you do,
please do them for me.
Gifts seem random,
uneven and unfair.
But it only seems
that way,
since they are lessons
in sharing.
The best gift received of all
is the giving.

They say there is no God.
How can I answer them
when God is the only answer?
What can I point to
when God is everywhere?
How can Who just Is be more?
How can I speak of God
as if God were a thing?
How can words mean
What can’t be spoken of?
How can God not be
when God is Being?
So I will not speak of,
but simply be a part of, God.
And let that be my answer.

Do your best
when it looks impossible.
Show up
when the task appears overwhelming.
Say yes.
when saying no would be easy.
Step forward
when you could be anonymous.
Act
when it would be easy to do nothing.
Choices are inopportune,
and pass instantly.
So does life.
So, carpe diem
while it can be carped.

Standing beside this seagull
motionless in air and eyeing me,
I lean against the pilot’s cabin
and follow water lines, distant, silent and still
pouring down from mountain lakes.

From these narrow fiords, deep
as mountains, glacier-cut in eons,
I look for the Viking ship to round a bend,
loud and frightening;
or were they not long dead,
and their boats long decayed?
It was only ghosts.
But they were there.
Grieg could see them too.

In summer’s last days
of late September
with the sun in frozen clouds,
a flock of birds flew southwest.
The world was in turmoil
but took no notice
of clouds and sky.
Yet something there
caused wings of joy
to flow again as it did once
when I was one with the sun
and the clouds and the birds.

All the leaves are flying, fleeing, falling;
No more rustling, whistling, swerling.
They’ll rise no highbud till the spring,
Leaves without sound, but sense
they have not died. They’re only in suspense.

Leaves of air fall windsail to the ground
by year down, timefall to terms with God,
as every man and womankind is bound,
kindbound, freebound all, to worms downsod.

Begin your benediction,
In blazes of mother-tree glory,
and end the shame, the contradiction,
leave her stripped, wretched, hoary,
through the winter, blowing, snowing,
all her dark days unknowing.

Leavelost she bares her billion Y’s.
In a billion questions her form is laced.
The leaves had only told her lies
And by sprouting buds they are replaced.

Now rustle not, and rest till spring
When you shall rise from rooting
Seeds, all newness coming forth for good
from melting snow and living wood.
Let darkness fall, there will be light
to brew up morning from the night.

Light hangs on a cloud
like the shy glance of John Wayne,
and wings that fly.
It came to my mind
in a flash and then was gone,
but the world changed.
Four crows were flying west.
Sunlight reflected off one crow’s wing.
The flash came and went.
I didn’t see the earth turning.
But it did.

John Hayes

Who was this homely man?
So ugly, so beautiful.
His arms were so long,
and strong. Wasn’t he an ape?.
His jokes, abiding as they were,
had the metal
of science.
He was the saddest
and funniest sage
ever looked on
as a father.
Those lines and caverns in his face
and hollows of his eyes,
were everyone’s sorrows.

The Lord is my true mind.
He has given me a universe for my home.
He gives me a thousand beautiful things
to calm my anxieties.
He leads me in His ways.
Even when I am surrounded by disasters
and cruel people, his angels guide me
to His safe places.
He heals my scars of life with wisdom.
His blessings flow over the errors I have made
and the wounds I have inflicted.
He follows my wayward steps with his goodness and love.
And I and all my brothers and sisters
are one with Him forever.

The higher mind
is a highway to everywhere at once
to all beauty and truth
where peace and joy are constant
and everything is good.

It’s hidden in the lower mind
full of noisy obsessions
that slide along its syllogisms
like lazy snakes,
blind and fearful,
and thinks up a crazy world.

We hover in the dark between,
waiting for pain to cease
and time to end,
desiring a higher mind
or some compromise for less.

The first man, the Bible says, had no mother
He’s the only exception to the rule
that everyone has a mom.
Not only the good daughter
who plans ahead,
but even the wandering, curious pup
the predator swallows,
and even millions of babies who die
of shadowy diseases in ignorance,
all have mothers

The dictator who sent millions
to gas showers had a mother,
someone to see and hear for him
when his eyes and ears could not,
to think before his small mind had a thought,
to tell him stories of the dark universe,
to turn on the light and open the world.

I’ve seen mothers in skirts and pants,
scrubs, fatigues and prison clothes.
I’ve seen them with cigarettes, *****,
crack and rosaries,
with and without rules,
smart, slow, some just children.
Then there’s Sarah, “beyond childbearing years.”

They’ll never unite since no two are alike
except in making men fathers, be they princes
or rogues, and giving everyone life.
But isn’t that the whole world?
Is there anything bigger than being a mother?

Who else can make a child special,
more a person than merely unique,
fully forgiven for the guilt of being born,
accepted as the essential child
by the responsible maker holding life
in her hands?  
Who else can be the face of the world first appearing?
Is cleaning your room the ultimate point,
or is it to love or not to love?
Ask any mother.

The difference between me and my dog, is  
That she lives in the moment
And doesn’t dwell on the past or the future,
she’s always ready to love now.
I try to become more like my dog.
That’s is my secret,
Don’t tell.

When I looked out one morning
The world had changed.
My neighbor and I were at war.
The same was so for my brother.
My country was going mad.
The politicians were at war
and couldn’t agree on anything
that mattered,
The center was giving away.
Even the earth was in its death throes
but our own dying was more pressing.
I remembered our church days,
how we prayed for one another,
but the pews have thinned out.
Nietzsche was still raging from his grave:
“God is Dead”.
I yelled to God: “No!’
But I was still baffled
in the dead silence.
And I looked out on a world
my own soul could not
recognize.

She had lots of attitude,
bounding across the street,
loving her own beauty,
feeling her black skin
like priceless gemstone.
When she ran away it was because
she needed time.
She’s back now like rain
beating on the window.
Her father’s eyes open like a meadow
wide in the midst of a wasted hood.

The sky seems near tonight
The stars don’t seem so far away
I lose my place in them.

The earth seems further away than the stars.
But the night and sky are one.
I’ll stay all night and have the whole of it.

I don’t really love the stars,
But we are farther apart than they.

He speaks of youth,
of a sky of wondrous clouds,
and eats from a blackberry bush.
He lives where grass is wild.
Time makes him rich.
He laughs at impotence.
He has seen great stones dissemble
and disappear as sand.
He is young like ocean spray,
Imperfect enough to laugh.

From a far city
of little heart,
a beat begins.
Its heaviness moves
and unfolds in memos.
A blade cuts faceless names:
"There must be casualties
for the good of us all,
for the bottom line."
The unseen ax
is without malice,
without disruption.
Only bare offices,
and boxes of effects,
show the antisepsis.
Silence guards the halls.
Eyes fail to meet.
Only whispers and rumors
behind doors.

I see a casket coming down the steps,
carried by two men.
A small and lonely church.
Then I realized who lay inside.

I always knew the day would come,
but I expected a larger gathering,
and a respectable line of cars,
not just a hearse, a driver and the extra man.

All my assets are listed in my Will.
Gone now to my heirs.
My wealth is nothing to me now
There’s a casket, these clothes and a small headstone.

But who is this standing by my grave?
The man I once saved from hunger
at no great cost to me;
certainly nothing I thought much of.

Now this friend’s my only treasure,
my true wealth discovered so late.
I’m a fool poorly graved,
my savior this poor man I saved.

John Hayes