Lantern On A Wooden Walk

 

The lantern's body in autumn is cold

because its coat is a gift from the wind.

The lantern lies close to the wooden wet

in order to hear where the tree has been.

The lantern's handle is ever unheld

so that silence can take it further than words.

Left on the path, left ever low,

left to consider the motion of birds.

The lantern's glass is lit by flame--

its mother the match that gave and went out.

A lantern on a wooden walk--

pass by, pilgrim, with or without.

________

for Dverse Poetry "light"

Music: The Bee Gees Lamplight

My Question For The Unabomber

 I asked the Unabomber

if he had ever been in love.

You know--before Montana--

before wandering the unforgiving winter woods

holding a frozen tulip

and a rolled-up poem

nestled inside a pipe as if you were a minstrel.

I asked him

if anyone had ever inhabited

the slow-cooking smoker

of his heart.

Was there ever the very emblem

of desirability

in the formula of anyone's eyes?

In your Harvard classes

full of second-week quitters

and callow

nattering plebes

was there never any elevated romantic

who might have solved for the

impossible equation

of your isolation and your need?

Oh Teddy, 

you coward,

you murderous nutjob,

if the one whose heart could have stopped you

were to speak at last to your wobbling soul,

could you still be fixed

even now,

or are you already damned? 

Perhaps my question itself

is like postage on a parcel

that can carry your remainder

softly out of shame

or suddenly into Hell?

_______

for Word Garden Word List--Ghost Eaters.

Music: The Fleetwoods Mister Blue

I Walk Out On The Fragrant Fields Of September*

In The Barn of Morning I found a stool, but its cow was in the field,

south of the sun,

and just north of the earth.

The stool was called The Stool of Error,

Its legs named Impulse, Disaster and Wisdom,

each one held in the jaws of a laughing hyena.

I took my bonnet and breastplate

and walked out upon the fragrant fields of September,

following the shifting arrow of a weather vane

and the cowbell-call of my wandering girl.

"Halloo," I called, carrying The Stool of Error

and shaking the hyenas off.

"It's just me, with my bucket and milking hat, 

dandelion blooms in the pocket of my smock."

"Bessie," I said, beginning my work,

"In The Barn of Morning, when all is quiet and you face the east as all milkers do and must,

Do you think of your lost calves 

and the bulls who came and went?

Or are your big, kind eyes on the brightening world

and all of its clover and blue sky bigness?

Moo me a clue, girlfriend. 

Under this gingham and chain mail I am fierce lonesome

and sorely unsure."

All afternoon the sun dripped across the heavens

while hyenas chittered and hid behind a buckthorn bush.

I picked up the Stool of Error and led Bessie back

to the Barn of Evening.

She lowed softly as she settled in,

and I thought that was as good advice as any,

The Soft Moo of Stay Tuned, Chickie, 

a sort of psalm for this moon-hearted milkmaid to ponder.

___________

for Sunday Muse #127.

*with apologies to Grover Lewis ("I Walk Out On The Wounded Fields Of October")

Faux Foxes

You three.
Come to me.

Open this box.
Take out a fox.

They are color coded.
Don't tell me you didn't know this.

Now here's something you may not know:
Two are real, one is faux.

Ever wonder how this came to be?
What I'm saying, what I mean,

Is the thing that I most want to say:
ever wonder how a faux fox fffff-finds its way?

Okay, back in the box.
Come back next week--next week, ducks.
______

foolishness for Sunday Muse #102 and day 13 of my 39 poems in 39 days. 

Photography by Anatasiya Dobrovolskaya

Clocks In Deep Resentment

Do clocks sit in deep resentment
of time flowing past them, through them, slipping by,
or do they cradle and bless like a riverbed? 

I have asked them, held in my hand
like branched nests whose natural progress is startled
by my rude curiosity.

You--are you a kind of clock?
At times you define me to myself, but in the next moment
one of us has moved on, like pouched time, a hoarded secret.

I wonder--shall I join these resentful clocks,
ticking off quantified complaints ad infinitum?
Or is it better that I dissolve, like the sugar of a moment

In a hot mug that warms my hands, but only in this instant?
_________

for Fireblossom Friday: Ask  Question.