GET OVER IT

GET OVER IT

In the gallery, completely
ignoring poor Alice Neel,
Richard’s at it again –
bouncing from wall to wall,
arms flailing, voice wailing
about Kasparov’s loss to
IBM’s computer, Deep Blue.
It cheated! He screams.
I want to shake him and say,
Come on Richard! Get over it!
It was just a freakin’ chess game!
But, he won’t listen to me.
He wouldn’t understand
what I was saying, anyway.
He doesn’t speak or hear in
English anymore. His language is
expressible and understandable
only by algebraic notations
and Boolean ones and zeros.

FROM THE CORNER OF A BLUE FOG LIFTING

Charcoal Drawing of Walt Whitman by Merissa Gilbert Garrison

FROM THE CORNER OF A BLUE FOG LIFTING
~In Imitation and Praise of Walt Whitman~

From the corner of a blue fog lifting,
Comes an old man bending.
It is the good gray poet dressing
The wounds of the young warriors,
Whom he longs to love.


Dear heart of the nation,
Keeper of democracy,
Man as literature,
Who better to sit by the unsettled
All through their somber night?


Who better to remove their blood soaked rags?
Who better to smooth their hair?
Who better to cry their suffering?
Who better to beseech death to come,
But one who will record it so sacredly?


From the corner of a blue fog lifting
Comes and old man bending.
It is the good gray poet turning
The heavy woolen blankets to find
The face of Christ, divine in death.


After these some hundred years it is
Still the same grass growing,
The same leaves turning,
The same wind blowing across the
Stagnant, bloodied, and flyblown fields.


It is the same celebration of yourself.
The same mist of your breath,
The same play of shadow and light.
It is the same song of yourself,
Sung from the same bearded lips.

THE VISITOR

Watercolor, Old Mossy Moon, by Terry Clark

THE VISITOR


What does it mean when you show up at my door,
Youthful and majestic, a lost Croatian queen, carrying
In your deep fur-lined pockets, fossils of Neanderthal
Bones, like stones, unearthed centuries ago in Krapina?


On my stoop, in January’s radiant light, a crown surrounds
Your pale head, as the arctic winds blow through my open door,
Swirling into the house, touching every corner, smelling of sweet
Black juniper cones, icy ferns, pine needles, and a crush of cloves.


By the fire, we sit for hours as you regale me with your stories
Of giants, and faery-folk, snowy owls, and cave dragons of
Fire and smoke, and of stars that have fallen from the heavens
Into your winter’s garden, where they grow into crystal flowers.


Now that the wind has quieted down and the fire has turned cold,
And I have been told the last magical stories you will ever know,
You pack your words away and start on your long journey home,
Through the moonlit woods, over the snowy hill, toward home.

LEANING OUT

LEANING OUT


high above
the silent city
she spends
her hours
leaning out
toward the
high towers
and piercing
spires –
the bells
tolling
her desires
to breathe
through the
holes they
punch in
the black
star-sprinkled
sky


and
from them
the air –
reaching
her from some
ancient hill -
or the breath
of a mystical
messenger
sweeter still


and now
to fall
silently down
toward the
whiteness
of snow
and the
dark blue
shadows
beckoning
below


the stars
watching in
amazement
as they brighten
their glow
and the earth
flinches
impulsively
and waits
for the blow
of another
poet gone
mad with
thinking -
or with the
thoughts
that makes
it so


but the
poet is an
aged thrush
who flings
her frail
frame into
the wintry
gust of
iced flakes
and crystal
shapes of
every blush
and with
her might
she fights
to flutter -
as wings
bend and
songs stutter
while her body
tumbles down
through the
pall of night


just as
the winter
suffers
the snow
the paper
endures the
words of
the poet
as she goes
down through
the night
dangerously
dangerously
in her flight

WHAT SHARON THINKS

WHAT SHARON THINKS


In a passing
conversation
about writing,
a poet friend
said she thinks
metaphors are
scary - such as,
“water is blood.”


I don’t want
one thing to be
another thing,
she argued.


Yet, she made
it clear that she
is keen on similes,
explaining - with
a grand gesture
of her hand,
“life is a simile.”


…Is it me?

THE EXTENT OF THINGS

THE EXTENT OF THINGS


here’s what
brought us to this -


that cold steel
that sought me out
and blood and bone
I suffered alone…


you kept vigil over me
in my troubled times
on the mountain
and you let me see
your beating heart,
however faint


your voice behind me
in a hush of love,
assuring me of eternity


and youth – transitory,
like any other thing
that is here for a
moment and gone,
was hidden away
under old forest trees
where the only light
shone from our eyes


one sweet day
after another
sweet day,
each longer
than a year,
and that special
grace holding off
imminent sadness


how many nights
did we confess our
sins but were never
absolved
we never needed
forgiveness
I know that now


we put our
heads together
and changed
the universe -


stars from
different galaxies
exploding into
a billion shards -
still traveling
through a dark

and endless space.

INDICATIONS

INDICATIONS


Breath is holding form now,
as the promise of sleep whispers
seductively in the cold fields.


Up on the hill, the wild pears
hide crystals of ice inside
their sweet white flesh -
as tendrils of pumpkin vines
lie in dark and delicate rot.


And weeds, that so carefully
multiplied themselves
in the heat, now shiver boney
and brown in the wind -
their rustling, a death rattle.


At the edge of the field,
high, in the interlaced
branches of a walnut tree,
a plague of gregarious grackles
marshal themselves.


They scold me - and scream
their disapproval of my
aimless wanderings.