Birds At Dawn

 

Dawn mists shroud the preening swan

forever in her bridal gown

down near the shore where footsteps end

then floating out to mourn again

This is the pond where my true love drowned

never seen and never found

by water lilies twined and kept

in green and silent alphabet.

Dawn obscures the calling crow

forever dressed in black who goes

along the branch that holds the knot

and every cherished thing he's got

This is the tree where my true love fell

as gracefully as Pachelbel

a dancer to adagio

as far as woven strands dare go.

Dawn comes dim and damp in hours

just light enough for owl's eyes

that see the hidden bower nest,

where silent birds don't sermonize.

This is the hour when my true love comes

in melancholy misted dawn

to call me on and call me down

demanding his sine qua non. 

_______

For the Mercy of Forgetting

 

If it were time for me to die

I would ring my rue with scarlet red

and wear it as a binding scarf

sewn from every word I said.

If it were time for me to sleep

like a stone the river runs above

I would count the clouds from underneath

an accountant in the house of love.

If it were time for me to speak

with roses growing from my teeth

I'd talk of roots and bark and limbs

and dress my skin in paraffins. 

If it were time for me to pay

Charon for my journey home

I'd fill my purse with copper coins

and jelly made from angel bones.

If it were time for me to die

I would ring my rue with climbing vines

and lay my head where heads can rest

with hyacinths and columbines.

__________

image: black barlow columbine

Word List --Sorry!

 

Hi gang. No word List today due to your Listy being under the weather. I will try to post it tomorrow. If not, it will be next week, but the List will be back!

Crow & Astrolabe

 

Crow, obscured by wing and leaf,

there we were

under the stars.

Who knew then that we would bond

over common language

and common loneliness. 

You came when you would, and not that often,

like others of your kind

I had known before.

I thought, if I can crack the seed your heart will open

starved as you were

starved as I was. 

Crow so black against indigo sky, I lacked

Rosetta Stone

or Tarot deck.

So, I wrote you poems upon an astrolabe

looking for heaven

Deus ex machina.

Crow with your song in ghost-ship semaphore,

you sang to me

beautifully

Yet crows are crows, and stars are reclusive.

Astrolabe and downdraft

broke both our hearts.

I have learned wariness of crows, and they the same

both poorer but safer

for such sad education.

Still, I have my astrolabe, an antique affectation

like the love I once had

for an obscure bird.

_________

Jennifer over at Poet Laundry--no doubt prodded to do so by a thousand devils--challenged me to write a poem about or including an astrolabe. This is that poem. I encourage you to go visit her there; she is a genuine peach of a poet. 

Music: Alana Davis Can't Find My Way Home

A Strange Place To Die

 

The Polo Grounds was a strange place for a man to die. 

Across the way at 515 Edgecombe Avenue,

14-year-old Robert Mario Peebles' enthusiasm

for the 4th of July hit just above Barney Doyle's eye,

killing him instantly as he watched infield practice.

He never got to see the game. 

Thirty years earlier, a fellow everyone considered to be

a mean bastard delivered a fatal pitch submarine-style.

Back on the farm, his daddy had taught Carl Mays never to back down.

Ray Chapman never got up.

No, wait, after being hit with a dirty, hard-to-see ball

with an impact so loud that Mays thought it was a hit,

Ray Chapman got up, fell, rose, and fell again on the baseline.

"Tell Mays I'm all right," were his last words.

Ray Chapman was a man with the world on a string.

Good-looking, friendly Ray, playing out one last season

at the sport he loved, was newly married and set up in a good job.

He even got on well with quarrelsome Ty Cobb

who was said to have killed a man in Detroit.

The world was his oyster.

In a New York hospital, Ray Chapman got better, then worse,

then was gone forever. His widow lived just eight more years herself.

Carl Mays never felt he had done anything wrong

on a dusty diamond July 4th, 1920 in Manhattan, New York City.

The Polo Grounds was a strange place for a man to die. 

_________

for What's Going On? An Historical Moment.  

Music: Jeff Buckley I Know It's Over

Santa Anita

 

When I think of you 

                                     Daddy,

still to this day I see you in

                                               overcoat and fedora,

newspaper under your arm,

                                                  breath visible in the cold,

coming down the sidewalk from the

                                                                 train station--

I would run to meet you, overjoyed.

Years later,

                    post-divorce, me a

21-year-old 

                     home from overseas.

I stayed with you

                              and your new wife

that stranger, and you Daddy, 

                                                    you a stranger too

in the unfamiliar sprawl of L.A.

You took me with you to

                                           Santa Anita racetrack

with the beautiful thoroughbreds

                                                            ambling

in their easy gait, the jockeys

                                                    leaning forward

as if already running the next race.

                                                              I was looking

at the odds board and then you were gone.

I waited as the horses with their

                                                         strange wonderful names

finished race after race,

                                           feeling lost, and sad, then angry.

I still regret how I spoke to you

                                                       when you finally appeared

but you took it all with a funny smile. 

                                                                  Years later I realized

that you had gone to call the new wife.

                                                                      You just

couldn't be away from her, for me. 

Daddy, I don't know who you turned into.

My adored father

                               became someone who lived

with plastic over the furniture

                                                     and the Lakers on tv.

Oh for a ballgame with you

                                                 at Tiger Stadium

or another trip to the DIA

                                             to see Diego Rivera's mural.

I would run to you, overjoyed,

                                                     but you are gone,

just a sad California memory.

__________________________

for Dverse Poetics "Left In The Lurch" hosted by my friend Dora. 

Music: The Pretenders Back on the Chain Gang

My Bear

 

My bear

has to be awoken gently.

(We've been through any number

of jarring alarm clocks, smashed to bits on the floor.)

My bear

needs to get up by April

or he's groggy all summer.

Wakey, baby,

I whisper in his cute furry ear.

My bear

is the super in our building.

His keys jingle like

Christmas bells.

He is jolly and waddles to the rescue.

My bear

gets dissed by some of the 

harpies on the top floor.

Then they go kiss

the apes and hyenas they married

who keep Cameros under tarps in the parking garage.

My bear

solves problems by waving

at them with his massive paws.

He groans offendedly

when this does not solve the problem.

Then he tries chewing on it or tipping it over.

My bear

makes the residents' kids

get out of the storeroom in the basement.

He gets up on two legs

and shakes his head no.

Some of them need to change trousers afterward.

My bear

is my bruin castle keep.*

We talk in bed and decide

that if we have a girl we'll name her Ursala,

and if we have boy he'll go to Boston

to play ice hockey.

My bear

knows that I will buy

his favorite fruit preserves

and real honey in jars, not the fake stuff.

We have twelve different

honey dippers

and each wear one ring.

My bear

sits back on his butt like a Buddha.

I wear a bucket hat and a thousand

cuffs and necklaces.

He huffs the air with his big fat black nose.

I sigh and smile.

It's a good life.

_______

for Word Garden Word List--Help! A Bear Is Eating Me!

*this line is adapted from a previous poem of mine, "Our Bear."

Music: The Bare Necessities