First True Love

We keep the windows open
and a breeze runs in and out of the home.
You can hear the sound of
crickets, birds, water dripping onto stones.
A white summer moon sits in the night sky.
In another room,
an old record spins on the player.

Every so often, I can hear the rotating hiss
from the sprinklers outside
as I think of my first true love,
wherever she may be,
but not in this country town,
as one dog howls,
then another,
then another. . .

An Old Couple, A Young Couple

To get to the heart of the matter:
we were all pretty drunk.

Every so often, I would get up and refill everyone's glasses
with ice and gin and clear soda water.
It was only us four:
my wife and I,
and the Corporal and his wife,
and we were going around the table swapping stories.

The retired Corporal was shirtless at the table,
red in the face and arms, but pale in the chest,
and very drunk.
(He was taking his drinks straight with lots of ice.)
His wife was also in her bathing suit,
and you didn't have to look closely to see the cellulite.
But, to her credit, she'd had three children
who also had children of their own.

The ex-Corporal was in the midde of telling the story
of the birth of their first child.
The dispute was whether or not the wife said a particular word
in the heat of childbirth.

They'd been married 42 years,
and the story has been retold a million times, I could tell.

We all looked on, in mild amusement.
The drunk ex-Corporal kept feeding the mutt under the table.
Then, he tipped over his drink,
spilling over blocks of ice.
Still, we all looked on.

Ice melted freely on the big, wooden table.

Music played unrelenting from the overhead speakers.

Time moved on without our say-so.

Perfectly Normal

They were married young.
She was thought to be beautiful, though I'd never seen her.
She'd been experienced with men, had boyfriends,
young men forever swearing themselves to her.
Promising her the world
under evening skies parted orange and purple.

Before her husband, she led a reckless life.
With Harvard boys in the back seats of automobiles;
on the wooden docks of summer lake houses;
dancing in the Ritz Hotel lounge rooms.

She found what most seek: fame.
And she lost herself in the many chords of bacchanalian experience--
in the rhythms of her pursuers.

But in the end, the chords struck dull.
After the first, it was all the same,
or, it was never the same.
Can you identify?

Anyway, the story is they were married young.
Around 22 or 23.
It didn't last after they discovered one another.
Then, they mystery was solved.
She couldn't simply live the everyday life,
and she couldn't go back to before.
So, life most everyone
who remember with envy what they once had,
and abhor what they no longer have,
she decided to give herself to children,
but died, still young, in childbirth.

I Remember When The Day Was Light

I remember when the day was light,
when I was clear-hearted and free,
when the sun was up in the clouds and shining.
I hesitate to remember now because it's no longer so.
Now, the day has worn on, and there's nothing to speak of.
Everyone has left. The letter is already sealed.
The immortal poem carved in stone is ephemeral.
The spoken word is lost
as if uttered over open sea.

Those who've left, came unannounced into my home,
drinking all my beer.
They danced to all the wrong songs,
laughed at all the wrong jokes.
I tell you, the human race is failing us--
it's timing is slightly off.

I ask, is it wrong to avoid people,
to scorn the ones who love you?

To tell them you no longer love them?

Early Morning

The sun hides behind the clouds.
As a child I was shy,
and now I'm only afraid.
Of what you ask, I couldn't say.
But this morning wakefulness leaves me content
as birds sing to one another in the rising light.
At the beginnings of days,
I remember very little of my troubles before.
Fear only comes during late afternoons and nights.

Yes, I relish these mornings--
the quiet light the sun makes,
the slow, steady turning of the summer wind.

It's only now the present is allowed to reconcile the past.

Looking Through Photographs

On this clear summer afternoon
I wonder where my old friends have gone.
The people I once considered companions,
who travelled through life with me and kept my secrets.
Do they keep them still
or have they been forgotten altogether?
Only history remembered can be written down and documented,
and it's this intimate history,
between friend and friend,
I no longer make.

Instead, I watch a group of birds
flutter in summershade.
Everyone else has left.
The sun is hidden behind a cloud.
The bloomed trees hide home from home.
And I wonder where my old friends have gone,
and when I'll fill the void they've left.

When Fates Are Decided

When Fates Are Decided

It is during the last days of fall,
during evening light,
walking the wind-swept beaches of the Atlantic,
that they come upon a pavilion empty for the season.
Deserted, a cold wind roams through it
catching and lifting bits of sand
that hide it's brick floor
(it's wooden pillars are bleached by sea-salt).

O,the quiet secrets love stumbles upon.
And her heart goes far out to the coastline
that recedes like a tentative hand--
a geasture somewhere between friendship and longing.
He finds the wholeness of her,
urging her away from desire towards love
as they walk side-by-side with silent purpose
unconcerned where it takes them.
A small boy's faith, developing in a sun-lit cathedral
with doors open to a warm breeze
travels with the same medatitive stillness.
These moments of discovery, such as now,
such as finding loneliness in an unsuspected place,
a seasonal place out of season,
only lasts for now.
But during the reverie,
the twilight when fates are decided,
the past is diminished
and she raises him and he raises her.

Under an orange evening sky
over the failing of fall,
they recreate one another like a stranger,
omniscient like the poet,
looking from a boat out at sea
onto their separate loves
intersecting and finding one another.

Three Haikus

The Beginning of Something

The last autumn leaf,
Singular among bareness,
Hangs onto a branch.



Evening Light

Our hearts remain still
In brief moments of twilight
When our fates are decided.


Generations

The wisdom passed down
From ancient philosophers
Like a son's father.

All the Better For It

sitting beside a hearth, cage open,
a fire up and coming
and myself content to just drift
in and out of sleep
listening to the distant wind blow
through the curtains.

the objects inside this house
remain silent, yet tell a story
that over time has shifted with my own.
My breath comes slow and easy,
my thoughts run one into the next,
and I'm all the better for it.

Lesson for Poetry Class

Black Springs


Between grey boulders, hidden, are black springs--
so black they appear blue.

Higher up the mountain,
sometimes covered in sunlight,
sometimes darkened in shade,
are the black springs--
so black they appear blue.

At night, within starry skies,
clouds slowly travel through over enormous mountains,
and so, under moonlight, appear the black springs--
so black they appear blue

where small bacteria sizzle away,
dyng like a dying fire
while a woodsman slips into sleep.

At the summit, a car's chain-incased tires
clutch the snow-white- town's winding roads.

Life continues on, life inside life,
and we'll meet in town to go to the black springs--
so black they appear blue--
where a white moon is reflected in,
and with talk of our dreams.

Young Lovers

Out To Sea

My mind swims with thoughts of a past love,
warm like a sun-filled afternoon
while walking the pier of a green sea.
Remembered moments slip by
as easily as the sky changes color--
from swept orange, cool red, to dark violet.
Various shades of emotion.
I watch these changes like one watches
the slow travel of clouds.

Past arguments both won and lost.
Small reminders, really,
like a white sailboat in the rolling sea.
With it's cloth sails set against a west wind,
and like the quiet past,
our voices carry away out to sea.

A Family's Grave

It's autumn in the country
and the leaves are changing from green
to yellow and orange and brown.
They fall dead off trees
and cripple after days.

Under bridges,
creeks run thin and cold.

Wild horses saunter next to
fields of corn--dry, brown
emptied husks.
These fields of empty husks
sway in the breeze,

and across an old red home,
with tiny paper ghosts
nailed to it's columns,
a small grave lot lies
telling the season's story.

Shadows

it's as if the sky opens up
to the circle of the sun
and it's rays knife through the atmosphere
and settle down inside silent forests.

this light lies down
alongside rivers
that run into other rivers

and the dark outlines of fresh-water fish
move within and without
the changing light.

Driving Dark Roads, From Town to Town

In the half-light of early morning
I drive these dark roads
without a thought in my head.

My heart if covered in mist and silence
as I pass an airport's landing strip.
Blue and white lights flash
in this darkness.

Wheat fields spread out to infinity.
They go on and on
as I come to terms with my limitations.

After It All

For days, my sad heart
has prolonged happiness.
Waiting through the prologue
for the epilogue--
hoping for help to come.

Like a deserted station
waiting for the next wave of transients.

The full heart waits for a joke,
and this season's leaves rot.

For days, my sad heart
has prolonged happiness.
Waiting through the prologue
for the epilogue.

In the autumn the nights are long.
The new mornings dark and still
and not yet ready.

After it all,
after all the mornings and all the nights,
after all the seasons and all the years,
my sad heart has waited patiently.

Once frozen, once sprung to life,
once inflamed, and once fallen.

After it all, after prolonging happiness,
it has settled
where it cannot be touched--
deep in a woods
where snow blows off the trees
and covers every footprint.

Down an Alley

The season behind
is like a stranger
following me down a street.

We do a dance under street lamps
unaware of the future--
once forgetting one another,
once remembering,

and reminding me
that I cannot escape it
unless I were to turn a corner
and disappear down an alley-way.

Finding myself alone in Time,
he walks by
looking left and right,
forgetting the present.

Leaving

But don't you see,
most of the time
we're leaving
hoping to look back
and see ourselves
in a history

In the City

the man was a hoarder
though I never knew him
but only by the things he left behind

old records, typewriters,
dozens of shirts all the same

oh the garbage!

it took an industrial size dumpster
to carry all the weight

and the Italian neighbor,
having had it up to here
with her parking space being taken,
coming out, time and again,
only saying "move,"
then throwing back her hair

the lull of the block
in mid afternoon

a broken mirror
sunlight coming through the window
and catching each piece of glass

before we knew it
the man had come back to life
if only to find his home empty
and neighbors disgruntled

The Garden

Under dark skies I kneel
where vines sprawl
and choke plants.
Climb up stone walls.

Thorned weeds, having spread,
are unearthed.

The lilacs are dead.
Their bulbs
hollowed out and shrivelled brown,

The green Earth is moving on
and soon it's hidden face
will be revealed.

Ignite

Hanging around town
for the rest of your life.

It's in the small things--
the echoing of Sunday morning church bells.

The thoughts of the city--
leaning old brick cathedrals;

Morning light coming through
staind glass windows;

The muted shuffling of feet.

Sins relieved. The soul ignited.

Then, out again,
wherever I may be.