Leaves in the Autumn Winds
Orange and red and yellow leaves are waiting
In the treetops--trembling, hesitating,
Anxious for the signals of the season--
The fog at sunrise, chilly breeze, and
Shortened hours of sunlight--to permit them
To let go of their graying, brittle limbs
And spin and twist and float and spin again
Until they're left behind the autumn winds.
(The Advocate, PKA Publications, Feb/March 1992)
Springtime Vows
It cannot last--it all must melt away,
This softened world of white just cannot stay.
The powdered bulk that bends the budding boughs
Must soon drop off to keep with springtime vows.
The sharp and angled corners, so defined,
As late as yesterday have given way
To easy, rolling, deep and cotton-lined
Illusions--only hints are found today.
Enjoy it for the time, it will not last--
This white that hides the world will fade off fast.
Soon all the dulled and friendly shapes will melt
To leave but hard, distinctive edges felt.
(The Advocate, PKA Publications, Feb/March 1992)
Aren't I?
Aren't I too young to be concerned with such
A thing as death? Why should it bother me
That darkness comes to each and every life--
That every heart must stop, that every lung
Must draw in and blow out its final breath?
The fact that one day even I, myself,
Will close my eyes and never see again
This world--the skies, the trees, the grass, the seas,
The faces of my loved ones on this earth.
Should this arouse such fear in one so young?
Now twenty-one, should I live out my life
Awaiting Death's firm hand to grip my mouth
And close my nose and never let me breathe?
Must every heartbeat trigger in my mind
The thought that one day it will beat no more--
The thought that someday, someone will drain out
The final drops of blood which once had coursed
Throughout my veins? The thought of being placed--
No, sealed--within a cold, cramped casket and
Then dropped beneath the surface of the ground
And buried there--should this cause me concern?
I've got some sixty years still left ...
(The Advocate, PKA Publications, Feb/March 1992)
The Smear of Yellow
I wish I would have had the nerve to take
The bag of leaves he set out by the street
And pour them on his yard, now groomed and neat.
I wish I would have made off with his rake
The morning that the leaves began to fall.
He must have seen the color that was saved
In that one tree, with all the rest depraved--
A world of gray, a patch of gold so small.
But I am likewise guilty of this vice,
This need to force a form on nature's way--
Of thinking and re-thinking what to say
And writing every line not once but twice.
I'm sure that I have gathered up and tossed
More than one bag of colorful discourse
Because I was determined to enforce
My structuring. What delight has been lost?
Perhaps next time, before the gift is gone,
He'll prize the smear of yellow on the lawn.
(Byline, February 1993)
Left Behind
There have been nights when noises just outside--
A swirl of leaves, a gate left swinging wide
Then swinging shut as if to let the ghosts
Of air pass through that serve as nighttime hosts
And orchestrate the sounds that fill my head--
Have lured me from my sleep and from my bed.
I've slipped into my jeans and shirt and shoes
And walked along the lamplit avenues
When all the town was dark. Down by the track
I've waited, listening for the click and clack
Of coal-filled cars to creep along the rails--
I've waited but my waiting always fails
To coax the train along. I've seen the moon
Peek down on me when all the sky was strewn
With shifting clouds. I've heard my whistling sound
Against the empty buildings and rebound
To fool me into thinking that there might
Be someone else seduced by such a night.
But when I stop and listen, all I hear
Are echoes of my steps that disappear
And leave me wondering if I should have stayed
At home and hoped for sleep--or even prayed
For sleep--instead of wandering out to find
The loneliness the daylight left behind.
(Anathema Review, December 1993)
Lifelong Glance
This might be read some fifty years from now--
This one and all the rest that I have kept
As pictures of the times I've laughed and wept
And marveled at the world and wondered how
This life, this living, ever came to be,
And why the seasons have to change, and why
All living things--all living thingsmust die
And when and how this death will come to me.
You, you who hold this page--I write to you,
Not knowing who you are ... My child? My wife?
My friend? Or just another fleeting life
Somehow led here, with nothing more to do
Than scan these lines--it is to you I write
This end of March in Nineteen ninety-three
That you might understand, that you might see
This passion that has kept me up at night
And snatched me from my sleep before the dawn,
Mumbling in the darkness, searching for rhymes,
Reading half-completed works fifteen times
For meter's sake, through half-completed yawns.
Too many souls are thrust onto this earth
To sleep and wake and bathe and work and eat
And curse the winter's cold and damn the heat
And leave as ignorant as at their birth--
Too many, but not all. There are those who
Can see the simplest things, but from a slant--
See miracles in things that others can't
By taking time to take another view.
Those are the ones who stop to take down notes
When a crust of frost on a windowpane
Is melted down by an early spring rain
Which takes away leaves like brown, battered boats.
Those are the ones who love to be awake
When all the town is sleeping and the clouds
Are draped across the stars like thin-spun shrouds
When the moon peeks down through a closing break.
These pages that you thumb through, let them show
My gratitude for having this one chance
To take a passing glimpse, a lifelong glance,
At a world that so few will ever know,
And may you come to know some part of me
This last of March in Nineteen ninety-three.
(Byline, June 1993)
Verses in the Fog and Cold
She had her feet spread wide apart to brace
Herself along the water's edge. The breeze
Made ripples on the lake and stripped the trees
Of leaf and leaf at such a steady pace
She wondered if it might be the last day
To witness any color off the ground.
Across the way, the barking of a hound
And a voice, fog-damp, telling it to stay
Assured her that she was not all alone
As the year came to its end. When I am dead,
Come back here--come and try to skip a stone
Or feed the ducks or reach some mistletoe
And whisper to me when no one's around.
Read from your poems. Let me hear the sound
Of every rhyme. Say all the ones you know
By heart--the ones you studied night to night
To, as you put it, help your mind retain
some of its nimbleness. Come in the rain.
Come when the earth is naked to the light
That lends a hint of God before the dawn.
Come anytime. And please do one thing more:
Before you leave from standing on this shore,
Please tell me that you've missed me since I've gone.
This was the world without him, where she stood--
The world which she had feared for all that time
Yet in the fog, the cold, she planned her rhyme
And spoke her verse--she'd promised him she would.
(Byline, April 1994)
Let the Green at Least Pretend
Start the raging waters flow
Twist the trees with moaning wind,
Let the far-off thunder creep.
Brown the summer grasses slow,
Let the green at least pretend
That their foliage will keep.
Hide the world in heavy snow,
Make the rigid branches bend
Under white piled inches deep.
Find me in my marbled row,
Tell me when I should ascend
From this long, long silent sleep.
(The Lyric, Winter 1999, 79:1)
John at the Cross
With strangers, John stood at the cross
Bringing down our saving loss
Ashamed the other sheep had fled
And left the ravaged shepherd dead.
(Adoration, Summer 2000)
Wondering Why You're Late
The birds can't know that you are gone,
But with the year's first snow
They'll look for seed a day or two--
And then, I think, they'll know.
They'll line the limbs and fence and wire
And chirp your name and wait
Like voices in a beggar's choir,
Wondering why you're late.
(Reflections: A Journal of Poetry and Art, Fall 2000)
Growing Old
All the harvest, picked and sold,
Year is ending--growing old.
Summer field is cut and rolled,
Fall's last leaves have lost their hold.
Geese are passing, now and then--
V-formation, south again.
Where they're going, where they've been
God must know, I guess--and when.
Firewood stacked and hearth prepared,
Kindling to the match and aired.
Time to think on how I've fared,
Growing old, getting scared.
(Reflections: A Journal of Poetry and Art, Fall 2000)
The Song I Heard
The song I heard
From a morning bird
Meant more to me
Than any word.
Its trilling there
In the tree, yet bare,
Set springtime free
In warbling prayer.
(The Lyric, Spring 2001, 81:2)
November
Against the window bears the cold
And black of night as we retire
To sit and watch the brilliant fire
Become a glow as it grows old.
The embers may require a stir
From time to time to give them spark
Enough to check the outer dark
And warm them as they earlier were.
And when spent ashes fill the grate,
When cold air creeps upon us, slow,
We'll pull each other close and know
But that the hour has gotten late.
(The Lyric, Fall 2001, 81:4)
Jesus at Gethsemane
Grief and horror took him to his knees.
"Take this cup--but, no, do as you please."
Then with a kiss, they caught him weeping
While Peter, James and John were sleeping.
(Adoration, Winter 2001, 2:1)
Unhatched and Broken
I was the only one who could explain
What happened to her nest when all the rain
And wind and thunder blew in with the night.
I was the one who found the speckled white
Lying in the grass, unhatched ad broken,
Downed as if some vengeful god had spoken
To the storm saying “Rain and flash and blow
Until they fall!” I knew it wasn’t so.
I knew that it was chance she built her nest
In that one tree, instead of all the rest—
Chance that she placed it up so near the top—
And chance that limb gave way to let them drop.
But what was that for me that April dawn
When she returned to find her nest was gone,
And all her eggs? I was the only one
To tell her what the thunderstorm had done—
But I could only stay inside all day
Until her desperate calling flew away.
(The Lyric, Summer 2003, 83:3)
Finally the Ease
Dark, save for the candle that she had lit
And placed on the dresser in the corner
Across from where she moved the chair to sit
And stare into the storm, as a mourner
Waiting for the death to come. With arm crossed
She watched as lightning flashes, frame by frame,
Revealed the writhing treetops as they tossed
And swirled, and as the rain, with slanted aim,
Hissed against her window. Far-off, at last,
The rumblings rolled, and finally the ease
That stills a room with the dying past
And brings the living--silent--to their knees.
With one soft breath she put away the light
And sat awhile to look out at the night.
(The Lyric, Winter 2003, 83:1)
Judas
He watched the crowd of thousands pushing in
Along the gates and gathering on the grounds
From the railing of the porch. His ears seared
At the chants and prayers below as they neared,
Cramming the steps and corners. All the sounds,
All the tumult and excitement had been
Brought about by his own doing--and now
His eyes grew wild with worry for the fate
Of the man whom he'd captured with his kiss.
What have I done, he whispered with his fist
Drawn tight against his chest until the wait,
The tension, had brought sweat upon his brow,
Forcing him, aimless, down in the mass.
His hands, thrust in his garment, felt the purse
Which held the thirty pieces he had earned
In giving them their prisoner--felt it burn
Against his side. With his fears growing worse,
He stopped a messenger from rushing past:
"What happened to the man from Galilee?
What was the council's word?"
"They gave him death,
He will be hanged this morning."
His heart raced
As he pled to the crowd which he now faced,
Explaining hoarsely, trying to catch his breath,
How this fuss over Jesus should not be--
How this all was out of hand. But his pleas
Grew silent as the faces turned away,
Laughing at his ramblings.
This is not right,
He told himself, his knuckles gripping white
On one another, almost as if to pray--
Pushing his way toward the Court of Priests.
Their tongues grew still, seeing the man they'd paid
Standing, again, before them.
"I was wrong
In bringing this innocent man to you--"
There's nothing more," one said, "for you to do.
You've got your pay."
"This man does not belong
On the cross you've made!"
On the cross I've made,
He thought, throwing the coins across the floor,
Turning to flee and clutching at his breast.
Against the crowd, he fought to reach the gate
And struggled down the path as if some weight
Were dragging on his shoulder, knees and chest
Until he could not drag it anymore.
His steps had brought him to a lonely tree--
A fig--where he removed the leather strap
And fixed it to a branch and made a knot
And dropped himself: a prisoner somehow caught
By someone's larger plan in his own trap,
His own life traded for the traitor's fee. Ancient Anc
(Ancient Paths Literary Magazine, Easter Issue 2003)
Thaw
Ours isn’t like the great spring thaws they see
In mountain places, where the snows may last
For weeks or months. No—just a few days past
Our snow began collecting sparingly
Along the curb and, light, across the lawn
And just enough to make the sidewalk slick.
By mid-day bigger flakes began to stick
And evening found our grass completely gone--
Eight inches deep, our yardstick poked to prove
When morning came. So, that was our big snow,
The most of which we kept two days or so--
Our big snow, which the thaw will now remove.
Already our thick rooftop layer has thinned,
Lining up a row of icy fingers
Down the eaves. On each, a melt-drop lingers
As long as it can manage at the end
Until its own load forces it to fall,
Dripping with an almost rainlike thud
Against the crusted snow, now mixed with mud
And bits of fallen ice along the wall.
Branches have tossed most of their frozen weight
Freeing themselves to reach up toward the sun,
The way that you or I, then, might have done
To warm ourselves—our hands at any rate--
Had we been out and covered, thus, with ice:
The thaw for all outdoors must be so nice.
(The Edge City Review, March 2004, 19:6:3)
On a Late Walk Through Woods
Man and dog and darkening trail
And thrash of leaves and sway of tree
And pause of step ... and flick of tail ...
And no one there but him and me.
(The Lyric, Summer 2004, 84:3)
One Hand on the Gate
That moment--Oh! That instant
When life and death combine,
That last brief breath, but remnant,
Where is and was define.
What secrets in that second--split--
When last the heart has thrust!
Time stays though the clock has quit.
We pray. We doubt. We trust.
Oh! To stand where you have stood,
With one hand on the gate,
To leave all this behind for good
And know! --not speculate.
(The Lyric, Fall 2022, 102:4)