Taking Pictures
of People Taking Pictures
of Fields of Sunflowers
–
The backs of people with cameras
sprout arms at angles, careful arcs.
Legs genuflect in half-squats.
The box they hold, the spell it casts,
their trust in it, can replace
grief and loss, doubt and fear
in one piece of an hour.
Here we all are, digitized
mesmerized by fields
of yellow glory. We learn
joy in being, when we see how
the flower faces follow
the sun from the first stab
of morning to melted evening
light, to some new form
of god now become our secret.
–
(from Transplant)
–
What clock ticks in which firmament?
Which star describes the end
of a life or the birth of new one
from our puny point of view? Do you remember
your first orange? Will you love
your last breath?
Our Llasa Apso plays sentry for the inner palace,
as his ancestors did, outside
our bedroom door.
By all accounts of animal shamans here
and in the next world,
he should have been dead by now.
He takes his cue from the High Llama and views
the world from his perch
at the top of the stairs.
We can hear his beard grow at night.
–
We find ourselves in Oslo,
pass the little house
with Alfred Nobel’s bust
in the yard bound by
a picket fence
as if to keep it safe.
We walk the wide plaza,
study sculptured figures
stretched like fjords,
ride the confident street cars,
look for wine
to take to the home of a friend
face to face,
and others who will be there
we have yet to meet,
and we know
with incredible lightness
that all of their parents
wore Nazi uniforms
a thousand years ago
it seems
in this same land.
Listening to Old Love Songs
–
The first fumble in the back seat of a Chevy
doesn’t seem so far from this.
You played those records alone in a tiny room
shared with a younger brother
songs you wanted to lift from the air and stuff
in your heart and say they are mine
music you shared with another or thought
it was the same with him
lyrics you know were written for you
lyrics you wish you had written.
The longing, it is the longing that hurts—
the longing you can’t live without.
Then the one love happens, the first
or the last, the one that nearly broke you
or held you together. At the corner table
with the blue light you sit and hope
he will come—pray he won’t. And you can’t
won’t see him again. You meet anyway—
you know how it is. For years you see that smile
at the rattle of a trumpet, in the stem of a note.
–
(from LOVE: Poems for Vintage Song Titles)
–
Often the smaller paintings hold them
as they stand in coarse muslin
and old shoes near a bowl of fruit.
They bear the look of those accustomed
to sun, to the purpose of the day,
and the eyes hold you
in a spell of constancy, a fullness ripe
as pears in the bowl, the dim lit room.
If you look away they will go back
to what they were doing.
Antietam Review, Volume XXIV, 2004.
–
(from Antietam Review and Dinner in Oslo)
Leaving the Home of Friends on a November Night
–
breathing air laced
with burning wood
first fire of the season
scents the streets
and in my head
calls up other
first fires lit
with expectation
predictable futures
I hold a small fire
feeble and new
the birch trees and I
gathered in each other
–
When we walk with the spirits, we walk with our
selves. Bidden or
not bidden, God may be present. Who will close
a door, open
your mouth, move your hand? Like a man covered
with bees, or a
woman who says don’t touch me, don’t talk to
me, stay with me,
spirits break the white void with the words we
say and think are
understood, and they gather the words we
don’t say and bring
them to us in tiny baskets saying,
all you have done
all you have not done is forgiven. Blow,
burn, make me new.
–
(Dinner in Oslo and New Letters)