Is it a foghorn or the wind's
Drone-monotone through a barely open
Sliding door? What is this kindly view for?
The waves slide out from nowhere in the dew:
No horizon. No slow ships from Hamburg Süd.
This powerful narcotic compounded for you --
Flat, pastel, gently pulsing day and night
The tidal foam a self-abasing white
And nothing there to break a terrace nap
And nothing there to take your thoughts, and tap
Their shoulders toward the useless and the old.
Dead passions; thoughts of the dead; all gone cold
While you lie temperate and unconcerned
About the super-earth light years away:
"A world that constantly burns."
EILEEN AROON
The greening of the evening
The cold flat light of night
And the mesmerizing
Tritone thrush in the honeysuckle
Thrill me, and hush me.
Later, sitting in a black chair
Under the thrush
I start to sing
Eileen Aroon
Aesthetic
Garden piano starlight and stone:
The pursuits of my parents
Present as my own.
Also dogs, and birds.
The play of words.
***************************
Is there nothing that is mine alone?
****************************
Instead of her spaniels a runty pit.
Purcell in place of his Hindemith.
And perseids more than constellations.
David, December, Rehoboth Beach
How all occasions do evoke thee
My own Lord Hamlet. Here, beside the sea,
With only Philly Airport contrails for clouds,
I slip on icy boards and say your name aloud,
Because everything evokes thee. Those contrails:
Your father, who mapped the moon, regaled
Me with their chemistry and their meaning.
Your Swiss cousin, who never left off keening,
Sends text messages about your mysterious life.
After all these years I've heard from your wife
Who finally wants the books you left with me.
And there's my yearly visit to the tomb
Of your mad Ophelia. That keeps the ghost in the room.
Beyond all these, your famous sister is another thread
That keeps delaying your entry into truly dead
For every end of year my ritual is to read
Her widower's account of how he freed
Himself, a little, from the long pain of her dying.
When he said the Heart Sutra her soul went flying.
"I had a distinct feeling of a kind of expansion
Emanating from the furnace into the room
And beyond. Something was being released
From Eve's body and expanding into space."
For me, for your memory, no such amazing grace,
No closing mantra, no sense of you unrestless,
Over on the other shore, life and deathless.
*********************
Clear winter sunset now.
Ho! The horizon takes a roseate glow.
Pink's the sand where the whitelets flow.
Between the two, a table setting silver blue
Darkens to gray. Evoking you.
People are drawn to nothingness
Here on the coast at the end of the year
The horizon makes itself disappear
The banner planes are gone the gulls are gone
It's nothingness to which people are drawn
The sand is smooth the blue umbrellas went away
The noisy white boats that nose up and say
Ladies Night at the Bar and Grill are not missed
People are drawn to nothingness
The lifeguard stands are standing down
Calm waves make the only sound
Portugal Africa None wonder anymore
What lies along the other shore
Really all that's left is us
Drawn so hard to nothingness
Packs of winter scarves and coats
Black against the gray of the coast
Praising the sacred empty space
The misty mystic vacant place
People are drawn to nothingness
DECEMBRIST
It's the old annual end-times go-round
When the revolution goes up in flames
And everyone flees to an assisted
Living facility. But not you. Yet.
Checks still go out to the truly needy
Which must mean that you yourself... You're young still
In some senile way and unprepared to
Abandon the ramparts and call the
Revolution ended.
End-time subversiveness
Mainly involves mantras. Surreality
Of Everyday Life remains popular.
A far remove from Here at Senior Sylvan Retreat You Are
Never Alone. Alone is what I want!
Alone I can work out another New Year --
Reckon up lost ground, lost troops, morale issues.
********************************
My basic animal spirits are sound.
Born lucky, raised lucky, lucky in work
And love, I pause in the hallway, steady
My mug of tea, and undergo full-body gratitude.
The room is cold, the words in the books are cold; And the question of whether we get what we ask for Is absurd, unanswered by the sound of an unlatched door Rattling in wind, or the sound of snow on roofs, or glare Of the winter sun. What we have learned is not what we were told. I watch the snow, feel for the heartbeat that is not there.
Ancient Medieval Modern
The high-speed train site, a substation with an epic switchgear,
Also has triple-transformers: Ancient/Medieval/Modern.
Roman/Norman/New. Keep digging.
Further down, something neolithic will appear.
Piling on with every mood swing... Then, years later, turning over
Statues, witch-marks, scratch-dial.
And now we lay down our own dedicated tracks:
Frail rail.
And no more turn aside and brood
Upon law's bitter cruelty;
For cash still rules the Ivy Leagues,
And rules the schools almost as good;
It rules the fate of our dim babes
And all rich dishevelled wandering spawn.
