The old dog drags his tired, sore
body into his familiar curl beside
my chair, sighs heavily and enters
once again that dream where
he runs carefree and painlessly
through the sweet meadow grass,
a meadow known only to him
and the newly-young man following.

--

There's a brisk autumn wind sweeping the ochre
and rust farm fields and that late summer hazy
that had hung above the valley for weeks, warm
and comforting, leaves with the scudding clouds.
The fragrance of burning fields, pungent but
yet somehow sweet-smelling and mildly
memory-provoking, charges the senses as it weaves
among the parched, plucked corn stalks, while from a
distant corner of the field an animated scarecrow,
clad in shredded polyester, has reign over the field
but instead flags a ride with the north wind.
It too seems to sense time calls for it to move along.

--

Here is Cedar Draw, a stream which
spills free from the dam upstream
and then slowly licks its way westerly
among the billowing cottonwood
and volcanic boulders that still appear red-hot,
flattening out, pooling here and there
where fat trout and perch can feed
on luckless grasshoppers and mayflies
blown into the water by the wind.

Here is Cedar Draw, widening into
lush shallows with bulrush and cat-tails
clicking in the wind, showy red-winged
blackbirds clinging to stalks high above
the waterline, and where snowy egrets
ply the mossy banks for frogs. The
only sound heard is the chittering of
birds and that warm summer breeze
softly moaning and sighing for you alone.

Here is Cedar Draw, as fine a place
a poet could every hope to find to relax,
meditate, sip a little port wine, tease the
iridescent-blue damselflies that abound
here, cool one's feet at water's edge,
scribble in a notebook disjointed thoughts
that may or may not make it into a poem,
perhaps to doze a little and finally to
rouse up and thank your muse for such
a great day and such a splendid spot.

--

A fly, aware of possibilities
beyond the picture window,
taps incessantly on the glass
but cannot reach them.
The older I become the more
I feel like a miserable fly
at an impossible window. How
unfair it is, this aging process,
this melting down of tissue and
disintegration of bone and sinew,
this deterioration, cell by cell;
this loss of vigor and ambition.

--

Hear it, feel it! Above the live oak
and Spanish moss, above their
gnarled, grasping canopies, the
night wind flies savage and free.
Without constraint or direction
it inhales, blows, flings about at will,
tearing wantonly at primeval fears.
And higher yet, to the east there's a
cooper moon rising sinisterly, lighting
the way for wary night hunters.
Is it the howling of their hounds, or
the howling of that feral wind, or
something more I hear?
Yes, something more, I fear.

Such an eerie night on the bayou,
where fireflies pulse phosphor green,
dangling, dancing like marionettes
above jutting cypress knees. Along
the farthest bank, tip-toeing in mire,
a pale night-heron walks as a ghost,
dropping its head to strike, to give
final croak to some hapless frog.
Were crows awake on such a night
they'd caw and clamor and sidle up
to each other to see which could
provide the most reassurance
against such a dreadful night.
Latch every door, shutter every
window, light every candle!
The night wind is on the prowl!

---

Praying on still more
of the man-made nectar,
it's a hooded monk on the wing
and it kneels at the bright
blood-red throne
swaying just shy of heaven,
genuflects several times
while vocalizing its disdain,
sips hurriedly of my offering
and then scuds away without
so much as a blessing save
for the assurance of its
repeated appearances.

--

It's deep night, damp and sticky with the
residue of southern heat which refuses to
totally dissipate this far into the night.

The night is thick with the voices of insects
and sleepers sweating atop their sheets,
committing sins in their vivid imaginings.

Dreaming, I'm standing by the wide river
wishing I could fly with the breeze through
the trees, the soft, warm, cradling breeze

that comes up from the Mississippi River.
It stirs the boughs of cypress and oak trees
and arouses a wind chime's music somewhere

down the dimly-lit street, while scattering
a newspaper like huge leaves; a wind that smells
of magnolia and dogwood blossoms and

river mud. A full moon casts long shadows
which melt into even darker, yet benign
shadows. The night has compiled its secrets,

mysteries, transgressions; surely that is the
charm of night - it frees the mind to settle not
on what seemed important during the day,

but on the longings kept locked away, hidden
from the disclosing light, struggling to break
free and take wing with this night wind.

--

Several miles beyond, the dark mountain
looms threateningly - mirroring my mood
as we both brood coldly. Snow clouds hold
grip of its peaks and melt in an icy drizzle to the
umber, wind-swept valley below.

Inside this dank motel room with its peeling
walls, my addiction is both hidden and enhanced.
The room's grimy window is closed to the world
by a threadbare curtain which hangs
askew, sealing me inside my drunken cocoon.
I can now lift bottles to my mouth with abandon,
gratefully lacking the contempt of others.

A tinny television mutters a string of profanities
from a corner, and a faucet drips incessantly into
the filthy sink. It all seems to echo into what I
have evolved. I have become as this dead fly,
scraping back and forth along the window sill,  
manipulated by currents of stale air.

_

It's late autumn but the colors
simply aren't there for me. Leaves, trees,
the sky, my face, my hair, my mood,
everything has become pall and gray.
Everywhere that color should abound
there is only lack of color. This canvas
remains indifferent to me - staring
blankly at me. My brushes sit unused
and rotting in solvent, the colors grimy
and dry on my palette, a spider has pulled
its hairy carcass through black oil and
then white and died gray upon the
edge of my painting table - its web strung
at the bottom of my easel. I feel no more,
paint no more, sell no more, I'm used up.
"Colorless, odorless" reads this can of
brush solvent - it's what I've become!
I have become nothing, even without odor.
I'm completely gray, insensitive, consumed.
Looking into the broken studio mirror,
I confront the artist I used to be. My image
grows diffuse, without form, then dissipates.

--

Going back out,
that's what he fears most.
To resume his last
miserable drunk,
homeless, loveless, broke.
Scratching up money for a fifth
of whatever he's drinking
- ***** when he's semi-flush,
cheap wine when he's not.

Lacking the guile to beg or steal,
he washes dishes in a dive
for a meal and a bottle,
sweeps out bars for drinks,
knowing he can't hold a job
much longer than a day.
Scavenging cigarette butts
from barroom trash cans.
No place to get out of the cold
except for the missions
and flop houses.

And he hates the flop houses
with their toothless managers
spreading their ****-eating grins.
He dreads the city winter
as the cold seeps in and wraps
its tendrils around him,
and he fears seeing one more
sooty gray dawn with grizzled men
like himself mindlessly shuffling,
searching for the next drink.

He fears the back alleys,
fears he's destined
to live in their filth, huddled
in whatever hole or box he can find.
No longer caring for himself,
just craving alcohol.
That insatiable craving.
And it's the grayness he fears,
the empty, pallid expanse
of his remaining years
and losing people who
used to love him.

He's frightened of going out
and not coming back.
And he fears thoughts of suicide.
He has no answers to why he drinks,
why he gives in to the bottle.
His mind cannot or will not grasp
that final thought.
---

It's the tear of a brother
who is slipping into, out of
confusion, oblivion,
dementia.
A tear of recognition,
of reassurance.
How to weigh
this tear?
How do I
preserve it?
What value
this tear?
Priceless.

*Written prior to my
brother's death

Down from the icy Sawtooth crags
and through the winter-laden landscape,
the wind eventually dips to the canyon
and creek we loved so well as children.
Continuing on, it threads through the
hollows above the creek, sculpted even
today by stooped cottonwood trees.

Twisting above granite outcroppings
and lava boulders, the wind courses
through the giant arteries of this canyon,
passing among quaking aspen, river willow,
and gnarled cottonwood, shorn rudely
by now of every dryly-veined leaf.

At ancient volcanic escarpments the
wind bears south, scraping hard along
canyon walls. Upward it moves, out of
the canyon, slowing and sallying about
the hillocks, the gullies, the poplars
until it finally comes to stir ever more
gently, warmer even, my dear brother,
around your gray marbled headstone.

Primeval of days, this very same wind
blows for eternity upon eternity, polishing
and purifying even the roughest of
the earth's elements and impediments.
This said, at this hill's crest where you rest,
there is no need of further refinement. Feel
how the northern wind quiets for you,
as if it knows over whose stone it passes.

--

I feel that familiar guilt everytime
my shadow darkens her headstone.
Ever the errant son, my visits
to her grave come once a year -
Memorial Day, penitentially, flowers
in hand. However, the preacher
said her soul is no longer here
so I've adopted that rationale.
Mom, I know you're not supposed
to be there, but if you are,
forgive me, again. Your son.

--

He used to eat them up, wives that is -
sweet, delicate things who gave him
their hearts, three in all over the dark years,
destined sooner or later to look deep
into his black eyes and know the desolation
they offered, to begin comprehending
the cold chasm of pain to which their
innocence and credulity had brought them.

Today two of the former wives stood
an appropriate distance from his grave
and the milling stand of mourners,
immediate family to be sure, and those
who tried but could find nothing else
to do on this blustery day. The ex-wives
each scooped a handful of damp earth
and threw it with spiteful satisfaction
into the gaping mouth of his grave.
"Eat that", one was heard to say.

--

Sadly, she was consumed, fated
long before I ever met her, soaked
to her precious core with cigarettes,
cheap wine and strong tranquilizers,
fighting the demons that clawed at her soul
whenever she tried living and loving
free of the chemicals.
Her demons I would never want to share,
although I was all too eager
to share her bed, share her days
without contributing what she needed,
and so she continued to drink
and laugh with that sad spirit the
laugh of the condemned, until
she finally drifted from life into death
and I hope, no, I pray into the peace
she had desperately sought while
confronting her living wasteland.

--

Today I came across your fragrance, your scent,
for the first time in years, and I thought of your pale
skin, your *******, lips, the yielding of your body.

I always assumed it was lotion you wore, as if the scent
and the allure were unintentional, not a purposefully
and seductively placed essence, but simply your scent,
carried so appropriately upon the spring breeze.

Why don't I smell it more often? I wish I could. I don't
even know where it came from this time - some woman
on the street, or wafting hauntingly from a vendor's
cache of perfumes, or through the doorway of Macy's?

The memories struck me like a dull arrow straight
to the heart - I turned but you weren't there, nor did
your scent last for more than a few precious seconds.
It was there and then it was gone, just like you were.

I've obviously never gotten over you  - you continue
to linger in that special niche in my memories, waiting
for the occasion to leap sweetly back into my conscious.

--

Snow fell deeply on the graves that night,
falling on both the wealthy and not so,
coating with cleanliness and purity all who
do not deserve and the very few who may.
The snow descended coldly and quietly,
blanketing gravestones and statues alike.
Distinguishable only by their shadows
and heavenward thrusts and stances,
they continue to designate where bodies
lay and bright hopes are finished.
Despite the softness and the silence,
above the solitude and endless white,
the boundless rage of ended dreams
seems to penetrate upward, to shriek.

--

I wonder if her death has been duly noted,
whether the trees in the forests became hushed,
the wind paused for a few respectful minutes,
and the rivers that run wild, grew briefly tamed.
Did anyone notice light was somehow less bright,
and that a far-away star flashed and disappeared?
In her honor, did the fragrance of wild flowers flood
the woods and did even the tiniest of creatures pause
in their meanderings, not comprehending the why,
only aware that something good that was there, is gone?

*(For Dorothy, my painting partner,
who died Thursday, Aug. 5, 2010)

He was an elderly man, clothed in desolation,
a gray man fading into the stoop on which he reclined
as if he were already turning to dust, disintegrating.
He coughed, and coughed again the rasp of an ailing
man, a rattle vibrating from the fathoms within,
and he fumbled for his pack of cigarettes
as if to reaffirm his intention of dying should his
bottle of cheap wine not propel him into oblivion. He
was muttering, muttering secrets to himself, or of himself,
or perhaps proverbs to show someone, anyone,
how enlightened he could be there on the gray stoop
as dust and the remainder of his life swirled about him.

--

The road to the South Hills always
has a message for me, always wants
to whisper something secret to me.
This special autumn day it's a
message that the hills have groomed
themselves and are ready for me
to be overwhelmed by their beauty.
The hills await me, the road whispers,
and the road reveals to me how
the hills have clothed themselves—
brightest autumn finery brought out
again this year from stuffy, hidden
trunks, with gold and yellow dresses
now covering the spindly legs
and knobby knees of quaking aspen,
while brilliant saffron sashes gird
the expanse beyond the trees,
with willows trimmed in scarlet
and ochre meadows completing
fall's wardrobe, but for the mist.
Above it all, a misty veil hovers softly
between trees and mountains on days
such as this. Of course I'm perfectly
willing to be lead by the road, for
I relish where it always seems to lead—
for this road never lies to me.

--

She stares into her canvas, drawing
to her brush a blood-red droplet
of paint for another flower, her hands
delicate, as diaphanous as the wings
of a white butterfly, with blue veins
running a precious lace-like pattern
from her thin fingers to her heart.
She knew she didn't have long to live,
but death was uncharacteristically
slow in fulfilling itself, as she sought
week by week to finish her painting.
Not a masterpiece, I sensed, and
perhaps not even intended
to be finished, but instead a sweet,
wonderful journey of the heart, as if
retracing a memory-strewn path
back to her beginning. She paused
at times in her wanderings along the
sunlit path of that canvas, too ill
to leave her bed, or looking upon
the world from a hospital window,
the shadows of her death intensifying.
The last time she was able to paint
she seemed aware that her death
was near, and thanked God for the years
allotted her. She died several days later,
her canvas, her life, largely incomplete
but her true journey now underway.

*(For Dorothy, my painting partner,
who died Thursday, Aug. 5, 2010)

Early dusk and it's as if
all the birds have memorized
lullabies; they've quieted
to delicate refrains
as the summer sun descends
flame orange and spent
to its western berth. Birds huddle
deep within the cradling
catalpa trees and murmur
in their soft way to one other,
barely audible to those who
would listen, perhaps
reassuring each other that
the night will not be long.

--

The constricting walls reflect nothing,
allow nothing, it's simply the dusty
depression of a room within
a house within a failed marriage,
barren of love or hope of continuing.
Only a break in the tilting blinds
allows a razor's shard of light through
to the suffocating heaviness of the
room, slanting across the floor
to the feet of the man in his chair,
clutching the near-empty bottle.
The man he is now, a diminished shell
devoid of dreams and plans,
of sexuality and a passion for life,
can only long to be the man he was.

–