Thin Water

Thin water (call it that) but it is everywhere,

Insistently covering, coating everything—

Pebbles, grass, swaths of concrete, tracks of tar, the trees—

Soaking the air invisibly, dripping, puddling,

Wet, wet, wet. Shivers run down my back. I pull my

Skin close to the bones. A big breath—and out I go

To haul the garbage bag out to the distant curb

Navigating petty lakes across the ocean

Of thin water; then back again to fetch that blue

Recycling Bin full of its humid cargo of

Spent bottles, cans, and plastics sacked to save the world.

There are these times when for a week of Sundays, seems,

The sun must hide behind a massive grey or fog

So thick thin water turns quite visible and white, and

The faint light only hints at what I cannot see:

Houses across the street, the lake between, the docks

Down there where in some distant future yachty things

Will moor and white swans will seem to move without the

Locomotion of webbed feet thanks to thick water

That carries them darkly, but glitters as it

Reflects the light that, in some future, shall be back.

Will it dry out? Or will fake January last?

I Pray not. Sick of thin water and obscuring

Fog, sick of fake news and fake months that should be cold

Instead—and brilliant—the Sun in charge again!

Rare Awakening

Calm as a rock, sharp as a blade,
Straight as a ray, high as a hawk
Sane as the day, hard as a jade.
Rare is this state, deep as a loch.

Complex the night, artful the dreams
Crumpled the limbs, pillows astray
All night a fight, jungle of beams
Out on the rims, can’t get away.

Some mornings come like lightning strikes.
They wake me clean, a curtain ripped.
A cymbal- drum, a ruptured dyke.
All black turns green, a slammed-shut crypt.

And then…

Calm as a rock, sharp as a blade.
As if all night I’d only prayed.

MLK Morning 2016

Gorgeous sunny morning

The merest breath of snow.

The fog seems to have frozen,

Has simply left the air,

And rests on grass and thatch

While the sun, arrested

In its path, stopped by this

Vision itself had wrought,

Cannot move on without

A moment’s meditation.

Through Nature's Eyes

Green grass shows through half-hearted snow.

The sky is uniformly grey.

The evergreens are tall and dark.

The other trees are stark and bare.

A few new flakes began to fall,

Slightly angled in descent,

A while ago, as I looked out

Struck by silence and by the same,

The same old face of Nature,

Always there, moving or still,

Ever-changing yet stubbornly

Still the same, standing, lying down—

Like that grass under its frowning snow.

Now new snow is falling thicker.

A small gust sweeps a curl of it

Right off the roof. The house

Back there is still asleep,

Its windows dark, the blue tarp

Covering a boat still dully blue.

It’s January 1st out there,

A new beginning—but Nature’s

Eyes see just another day.

Shadow Moon

The earth would throw its reddish shade

Over that Mayan heroine

“Blood Maid”—whom we call “Supermoon”

These days (a new term for Luna

At her perigees)—when streaky

Clouds began to spread dense veils leaving

Unwelcome snaky dark-grey trails.

Then came a call from Pat next door

To say that clouds had now at last

Begun to fray. The Supermoon

Was in the sky again. Its diamond

Shine had now begun to wane as

Pac Man Earth’s dark shadow took the

First bite it would now swallow.

We sat in a deep pool of black

Between the house, garage, and the

Dark green of grass, the gazebo’s

Shapely silhouette—marked by faint

Solar beads of lights—ahead and

On high a mirage—a gaining

Moon its dark parts faint maroon.

It took a while until real light

Had fled leaving behind a shade

Of glowing red. Here was “Blood Moon”

Named so, they say, by our prophets

Predicting the Last Days. We read

The message, agreeing with the

Sky, and hoped that Light would yet

Return, if only by-and-bye.

March Ends

March ends in snow lightly coating

Just the grass where big flakes sag with

Disappointment and half-live blades

Of last year’s growth drink unawarely

Of the moisture the flakes bring.

Flakes die, blades live, unawakely,

Until the sun resplendently

Half wakes them to emerging Spring.

The Month Has Fled

The month has fled, where has it gone?

Memory draws lines each night

And starts a new one every dawn.

Potter-like it fashions Time

Its turning wheel the sun’s new light

Each day a line, each month a rhyme,

In language that is not quite clear

Until at death we leave this sphere.

The Night Before the Night Before

The night before the night before Christmas

Seems already here at noon today

What with a vast low pressure system’s brow

Pressed right down over rain-wet roofs on which

An aggregate of fallen branches stir

The symmetry of shingles on our roof.

Absent all white except some litter of

S-shaped particles of foam blown from a

Walmart bag. Today is trash day here and

Dark hulks of jumbled cans, some upside down,

Mark, with green recycling boxes, that things

Are all quite, quite, quite quotidian still.

Nevertheless, on this the day before

The night before, invisibly but still there

Nonetheless, we feel the season’s presence

In the air—not the humid atmosphere

But instead the spirit’s breath which knows that

Christ’s birth on this our earth is very near.

Ode to an Ad

We found an ad that shows a farmer

Surveying vast worlds of green.

Far away a lowly mountain

Bows before his stern, commanding

Gaze. All’s in order, all’s control

Here, endless rows and rows and rows

Of green extend out to a vague,

A dim horizon. This isn’t nature,

It’s something more, a kind of manmade

Screen where every gene is modified

And only bits of puffy cloud

Exhibit in a timid and thus halting

Manner a touch of spontaneity.

The theme is “How the world advances,”

 (To where, one wonders, to what end?)

The way has naught to do with

Fertilizers, genetic tricks

Or weed control—though such are quite

Visible here. Rather, to our

Surprise, the deeper secret of

Control, the right to gaze emperor-like

Over a great domain, lies in tight reins

Held in firm hands over Invisibles

Like price of crops, the weather, and

The satanic dance of interest rates—

All achieved by riding on a relatively

Newly-crafted magic carpet—

Trading on the derivatives market.

Marking Nov 13

This year, the only one numbered

Thirteen, I raked last leaves one cold

And windy day, and shoveled snow

The next with no delay excepting

But a single night between—a

Night already lit by Christmas

Lights put out by those who practice

Early rites.

This morning on the thin snow left

I saw a few late leaves I shall

Remember as marking this unique

November—and silently left

Prints of a cat’s paws. Thirteen now

Wanes. That number for us has a

Certain weight. But when it’s over

All—it’s fate.

October’s Last Hurrah

How the body matches weather!

Gloomy skies and drizzling rain.

Green is now a shade of heather.

The sweeper’s come to sweep our lane.

Tonight in rain will come a few,

From tiny tot to full-grown teen;

Umbrella-toting parents too

Will come because its Halloween.

The children active, all pragmatic.

“Trick or Treat.” The open bag.

Never mind the Fall thematic,

The costume of the tiny hag.

It is a sort of rushed routine:

Up the stairs. The eyes are hidden.

Candy is what Halloween is…

From our to their kitchen midden.

And depart. “What do you say, Lilly?

What do you say?” “Thank you,” she says.

And then she’s gone.

The Almost-Shadow Moon Eclipse

It happened only yesternight.

Earth’s shadow touched the moon a bit,

The earth quite unaware of it,

Just turning, turning left to right.

Penumblar is the word we use

To name a partial moon eclipse.

It starts on top and then it dips.

It travels but it doesn’t bruise

The bright-lit surface of the moon

At all but merely looks as if

The lanteen of a distant skiff

Had briefly shaded silver dunes.

Who watched? We did, but we saw naught.

Our global angle wasn’t right

Although the Hunter’s moon was bright,

So round! So who can be distraught?

The Dark, the Light

Some dreary element in modern life,

Its endless noise and ever-pointless strife,

Inclines me every autumn to observe

With something not unlike pious reserve

The movement of the sun, that best of clocks,

Its needle now on the Fall Equinox.

Lating September

The day is still; the sun will shine

Full glorious after its rise.

Where sun-rays reach I see the sky

Blue enough but slightly hesitant.

“Should I gray over gradually

By making common cause with that

Thin mist? Or should I wash my face

And comb my hair and reach for the

Deep blue?”

                   That season is but days

Away when squirrels, who ignore

The calendar, at this still early

Hour are avidly collecting

Nest-making debris and nuts,

And below tight-clustered tomato

Plants, seek spots easy to dig

In pots to store their treasuries.

But where I wonder are the birds?

A Taxonomy of Mind

The difference between the horse and oak

Between an evergreen, bacterium, or bird,

Between an ape and the tomato plant

Or spiders and the nesting cardinals

May be discovered to be as great as

That we find between whole groups of human

Individuals if we engage in

A taxonomy of minds, observing now

This person’s vast web of thoughts, and then

Another’s mind unfold, each a primordial

Jungle of symbolic references—

Some clusters thickly habitual others

Marginally thin but still linked in—and

We can then classify these webs and clouds

Into domains and kingdoms, phyla, class,

Orders, family, genus, species and the like

Until we have at least as vast a realm

As nature holds of living things that cannot talk.

"Active" Squared by Science

We are Seniors, busy, active,

We’re also mobile and we’re spry.

Nips and tucks make us attractive,

We climb mountains, we can fly.

But to those who are proactive,

Unwilling yet to say goodbye,

Doctors promise something drastic

From old hip U of Hawaii.

The doctors there have found a tactic

To breed rabbits that glow by night—

DNA and such. Fantastic!

Hurrah, we say. Let us be bright!

Allergic to anything lactiv?

Who cares! We’ll soon be radioactive.

The inspiration for this comes from an article in The Atlantic, August 13, 2013, reachable here and titled “Glowing Bunnies: Why They Matter.” Rabbits, cats, even a lamb will soon glow in the dark. But here is one Senior who hopes that by the time the U of Hawaii is ready to launch Glow-Baby-Glow, Inc., complete with IPO and all of that, there will be a choice of colors.

Shivery Doubt

Windy, grey, overcast day.

The temp gauge strains to reach but

Doesn’t quite manage to touch

Fifty-eight degrees of F.

This summer so far seems to

Lack those bruising torrid can’t

Breathe spells of heat that cause me

To believe that Global Warming rules.

The sun has a huge hole, or

Had, some coronal void

From which vast tongues outward bound

Lick the darks of space. No link.

Fear naught, we’re told. Not that, not that.

Absolute Sunrise

It’s early, too early for things to kick off,

But the light has invaded in force from the east.

A vivid yellow slant marks a part of the door

Of our garage—why slanted, that light? Who knows?

—while all else remains in shade and waits in a

Kind of immobility as if this yard

Were not moistly alive, but were instead painted

On Reality’s translucent canvas and

Represented mere drips and drabs and smears of

Primordial color to indicate, to point,

Rather than to mark some kind of substantiality.

Tall hosta blooms, delicate blue, hang like bells

And wait for the ringer who sleeps still in some

Narrow Quasi Modo garret hidden somewhere

And swirled about by dreams. Not a leaf stirs, not

Low, not high. Silence reigns in this absolute

Sunrise until, suddenly, a single bird’s

Keen tweet reminds me that the day, officially

already on, will soon disrupt this magic pause.

Gold Moon

Gold moon, mid-high, last night,

Your continents visibly dark,

Your oceans a silvery white…

On St. Paul’s no-lights parking lot

Three or four darkened cars,

And people stood by them not,

Mind you, saying anything at all—

Just gazing up: An orange

Supermoon this late June night

With baby Summer three days old.

Of Pens and Nibs and Ribs

The pen’s an object writers must possess!

A means, of course, it doesn’t spell success.

And of the pen itself the most important part,

The thing that gives it spirit, soul, and heart,

Is that metallic tip of it, its nib.

It is, let’s say, the writer’s thirteenth rib—

To make a nod, with tongue in cheek, to God

Who, if the text is right, instead of flawed,

Used Adam’s rib to write the script for Eve.

Or perhaps that rib meant to deceive.

The Hebrew might be read another way:

God might have nudged Adam a bit astray:

“From your own rib is where the woman sprang;

She’s merely yin and You are proudly yang,

(But as for Eve, she was right up My sleeve,

A wonder a mere man cannot conceive.)”

Now as for nibs, to get back to my subject,

The finest nib’s the worthiest of object,

And the writer lucky who gets as a gift

Two fine-nibbed pens to labor on his shrift.