Category: POETRY
Again, look up “poem” in the dictionary if you don’t recognize the word. Or, better yet, just have a look at what’s here and form your own impressions.
Travel Haiku
Havana 1959
El Presidente’s
reef surrounded by shark nets;
fort with touch-me-nots.
Stockholm 1977
A royal wedding
followed by a live sex show
and Millesgården
Dubna 1978
Sheremetyevo:
Arrive late and unannounced.
Wait for black Volga.
Kona 1979
Freshly off the plane,
fragrance of plumeria
smacked me in the nose!
Paris 1980
A Métro platform:
where we all got pepper-sprayed
for speaking English.
Antigua 1980
A charming island
beloved of German tourists
stinks of resentment.
Brugg 1982
The bank doesn’t mind
the soldier’s rifle, but my
wife can’t sign alone.
Tokyo 1983
Anywhere else, you’d
worry on the last subway
alone at midnight.
Seibo Byoin Hospital 1983
A blinking Buddha
merges with the less wise world,
fresh out of the womb.
Snake River 1991
Flashes of cutthroat
scatter in invisible
water under raft.
Bisbee 2009
Mountain become pit,
cupping bright blue & green pools
to its mined-out heart.
Bokelia 2009
Snook tattoo on arm,
my neighbor’s out on parole:
A friendly redneck.
Matlacha 2011
I jumped a tarpon
off the rented dock across
the street from the bar.
New South Wales 2014
Batehaven: parrots,
miles of beautiful water,
but nary a fish.
Belize 2015
Gourmet meals from shacks,
happy folks despite many
reasons to hate us.
Zermatt 2017
Pink petunias
frame every scenic vista
of the Matterhorn.
Above it All
I can’t see you down there
living your life with all its
delicious triumphs and tragedies.
I am too high and moving too fast
and there are so many of you.
Next time maybe I’ll bike.
2023
Coming and Going
To be in new places
with new people, new sights, new delights
is the only way to learn some things
that we need to know.
But to be there you have to go there
and eventually come back.
From this the lessons are never new.
2023
Florida Haiku
04 Nov 1974:
Leaves of palmetto:
maze’s roof waved by hot winds —
horizon of fronds.
06 Nov 1974:
Soft chink of seashells
shifting with a gentle wave
merge with smooth-churned grains.
End of Exponential
Race among the garbage odors:
fly-gyres in summer air,
cyclone clouds of silent wings
fly circles centered on my stare.
What is not today decaying?
Groceries turn into waste,
poems go to tattered pages;
tongues dry out and lose their taste.
Why do I continue watching,
figuring trajectories?
Somewhere maggot eggs are waiting,
forming new simplicities.
Is there any end to spending
everything we own or steal?
Can we carry on forever
trading money for a meal?
Termite generations cycle,
chewing cellulose to dust —
more discarded cells consuming.
Somehow, calculate I must:
How much longer can we make it?
How much further can we go?
How much more can we discover?
How much less can we still know?
(10 July 1974)
Hope
I can feel the stupid phoenix rising
out of the ashes of despair, dumb bird
aren’t you ashamed to be so
gullible?
Cynicism
False Reason leaps at Beauty’s throat.
The grinning beast you thought was your only hope
lives only to kill.
What wisdom leads only to death?
Death is unwise.
You wring yourself dry
while growing grass
splits mountains.
If truth is despair,
what is truth?
Elsewhere.
Consider: an open eye
looks up as well as down.
What is closed in us?
(Probably around 1972)
Justice
The fool said justice would be done.
The coward said it couldn’t.
The saint was just with everyone
although he knew they wouldn’t.
Edge of the Axe
(a postponed revision of “The Carpenter” from 1966)
I grew in the roots all winter,
wine waiting to rise;
I mellowed in wood till you made me see
the luxury of chair and table
set in a frozen skeleton of maple.
So seeing, I cut and killed the tree.
You made what you wanted
and we moved on.
I swam in a rolling tide of pine.
All the coniferous, brittle
turpentine trees
breathed into me
spirits of ordinary needles.
Then you began to see
how broad pine beams
build structure into dreams.
Again I saw timbers
toppled and trimmed,
treated for use.
Then I spoke in the oak’s rough tones,
grumbling green solidity.
I grew tough,
drew up gnarled and huge.
But soon enough
hard floors and solid stairs
called for the oak, broken and cut.
You cancelled the monument,
moving on.
Kneeling about the base
of a towering cypress temple
tended by storks and egret priests,
I needed to grow to know the grace,
the grand patience of that place.
I rose to an insular spike of pride,
mystical spire spun with thin green,
when again at the edge of understanding
you stepped away and wanted
weatherproof wood
so your structures would stand
when you moved on.
Save me the still willows,
silent, to wait on.
Stay, let me sit a while,
shifting and watching,
sifting my will
slowly away.
(22 July 1975 — a good example of ruining a poem by revision?)