Atalanta Modern

How does she do it? She’s 2500 years old.

Degraded to some degree by use,
some few dismiss her now as “old”,
but she runs ahead and still more swiftly climbs.

Her electrodes and enzymes
still play their part a dozen times,
for she’s powered by sugar and sprayed with gold.

With Soul So Dead

Is there a man with soul so dead,
can walk among his trees,
not see that even asphalt can grow a leaf,
and in the private satisfactions that fill his head,
not once give thought to that which he should dread?

Is there a man with soul on fire,
whose words and guns teach life as poor,
and only death is worth the dying for?
In his crazed obsession he claims his way as higher
than contented peace to which he sees dull relatives aspire?

Unseen, unfelt, the spirit lives on from time before,
a time when music and patience were a cure.
During the Repudiation, one thinker’s vote was cast for death.
This being novel at the time, was foppishly believed.
Poor soul so dead.

Theology

Height is the Lord’s, not the hills,
the hills are yours.

Depth is the Lord’s, not the rivers,
the rivers are yours.

Mind is the Lord’s, not the translation, translation is yours.

We Too Will Be Studied

Ages and eras and epochs from now,
we too will be studied, each son and his daughter,
dug up and defined, on display, and historical,
before hydrogen escape began stealing Earth’s water.

Time’s Fool, the swift and the swifter,
still gathers her flowers though petals fall,
but after ever and ever after,
she’ll never know no thought at all.

Soothing the music on Earth’s elegant slopes,
her dancing a marvel beneath the stars,
until the dust that blocked their spin,
rose high and did her dancing in.

She died the way it was foretold,
Time’s Fool, nice conscious drifter,
each limb still perfect when they dug her up.
but all her dancing dead in her.

–all her dancing dead.

One Particular Morning

I have not the wit, my imagination is far too dull,
to imagine anything, anywhere, at any time,
to be as pure, as peaceful,
as stepping into the salad garden at dawn.

The leaning towers of lettuce gone to seed,
the mesclun thinned by appetite,
isolated beds of mint with soft, furred eyes,
and paths measured carefully in feet
of three or six or nine;
the morning air is sweet with dew
as last evening, drowsy was with wine.

This world around,
fragrant with the sound of birds,
is all I need to imagine Heaven,
though I will never find the words.

Beside Herself

She was “beside herself,”
who was beside her?
How did it happen
that she found herself
and found her self beside her,
alongside, nearby,
connected, clinging,
impossible to shake off?

When she is no longer
“beside herself,”
where, exactly, will she be?

It is too soon to close the books.

No Matter How We Read And Write

No matter how we read and write
in nearly every way we do not mix,
we never saw we were mismatched.

And so we’ll float away from love
so easy, like a hammer
clawing at the bones of crucifix.

Reach Into My Window

So simply you startled,
so surely your hand,
reached into my window,
took lease of my land.

Possessed and entitled,
now shoeless I fly,
deliver you water
in the blue by and by.

Scorpion, Don’t Starve Here

Sweeping blown leaves, dark scorpion
was caught making for the terrace sill,
he turned to skitter back across the kitchen floor,
heading for the shelter of the inner hall.

No, not here!
Better to be snapped in a saber beak,
to vanish into change
than to starve here,

in this place so clean, well lighted.

Thank you, Nicholas Kristof

Stable in humidity and heat,
triple-fortified salt:
iodine, iron, and vitamin A,
no crop modified by foreign genes,
here’s nourishment without fault.

Glasses

Your glasses are all right,
Not if we’re like this;
OK, they’re in my hand,
Feel them? No. Here, silly,
I’m polishing them on your back so they can see,
Oiling the little hinges
So their arms can reach
And clasp your head.

Their eyes will look into yours,
Be kissed asleep by your lashes,
And gummed by lying in bed.

Oh dear, my hat was there too.

The One You Meant to Save

Oh I beg you to beware
Of what you go to kill;
In your justified and inexcusable rage
You may find a great giant
Crashed about your feet,
Great thorny, leafy, head,
Sticky with interrupted life,
Asprawl across the doorway to your home,
Great arms asplintered in your path,
Enormous trunk
Crushed across the one you meant to save,
Trembling roots between you and the sky.

The satisfactory thing in watching flame—

The satisfactory thing in watching flame,
Its cardinal breast, its leap of wings,
Is the unreluctant sense it always brings
Of certain satisfaction of its aim;
It knows that it consumes the chosen wood,
And will consume it to an ash,
I’d consider it quite brave but rash
If wood held private hopes, misunderstood.

Crows

Burning with a quick thin flame
Charcoaled scarves blow whole and fall
In a field no green has touched at all.

Heavy-handed, hoarse complaining,
Treading down the liquid snow,
They strut on brittle legs, no shyness feigning,
Thinking that it’s they who’s reigning.

Knowing no one any better
They assume they are the best.
Never will they understand the quaintness of
this jest.