Late night fog hung over the field
and obscured the wood
like a veil of ancient mist
from which the earth
had not yet emerged.
I heard the midnight train
brood slowly down the track.
I packed up my dreams
and sent them ahead,
somewhere,
intending to follow them,
later.
Smitten
I am smitten
by your charms
and wonder do you know
how thoroughly your eyes
so bright and dark disguise
your thoughts
and shroud your feelings,
yet your beauty shines
like the stars.
Our love shone warm and bright, memorable
as sunshine that washed over us and sang
like a soft sea breeze as we lay silent,
still, together on the beach in July.
Our love disappeared slowly, more slowly
Than the sun that day when dark, angry clouds
Obscured bright blue skys and banished the sun
To pour torrential rain into an impervious sea.
Our love faded slowly when summer
Slipped into a colorful fall and died
Away leaving these cold, snow white winter
Nights that we now spend lonely and alone.
Her heart
(showed in her eyes
with her every smile
and she liked to smile;
she glowed when she spoke of her children
and her grandchildren,
one a college graduate,
another a graduate student,
one a late surprise,
a boy, of whom she was very proud.
She deferred,
toward the end,
to her husband who could still hear
and she leaned toward him
to see what she might have missed,
and they beamed together
as they stood side by side
In their eighties now)
Gave out at the last after 83 years,
and he said,
“I close my eyes and look down fifty years
and the best I can do is cry.”
Love Poem
What fiction will it be?
Shall I play Lancelot
to your golden
chaste Queen?
Can fated love be stayed
by the press of state?
Or you as Dectora
raving and mad,
while I, the strange
harp playing pirate,
transmute your rage
to desire that burns
like kindling?
Or are we simply
the streetlight
and the moth?
The Rose
The rose is perfect in its fluid scent
And blossoms with plush contours
In elegant shades of yellow, red,
Pink, silver, though never blue;
Yet beneath the bloom grows a thicket,
Thorns that will draw blood
From the embrace of the inexperienced
Or the naïve.
IF THE SHOES FIT,
DANCE!
HIGHBROW
IS NOT
FAR
REMOVED
FROM BALD
Conversation With The Wall (II)
There's kinds
and kinds
of suicide.
Fred wasn't
sixty
yet, when he died.
He got
the pains
upon his chest
and took
no heed
until the best
doctors
were too
little too late:
not fair
to life
to call that fate.
I have always wanted
an Aeolian Harp
and a house in a wood
near the city.
Conversation With The Wall (III)
I lost my sense of yesterday:
an angular woman
reluctant in bed who had
her way with men
eluded insight, hopped down
the underground steps
into a subway car
at Forty-Second street.
She had something to say
at the last, something
indistinct--a woman's voice
vaguely lost in the fast fading roar.
When she was gone, she was gone:
no residue of feeling hovered
round the platform. I was alone
to notice the old tile walls
of richly decorated mosaic
street signs, and the hollow
silence of the place
between trains.
Ordinary Time III
I've got some paper,
half an inch or so--
my fountain pen's
ready to go.
I've got some time,
a rarity,
and no one's here
to bother me.
There's a cool breeze;
the rose in bloom:
I'm at peace
this afternoon.
But what to write?
What to say?
To hell with it!
I'll sit today.
This poem came to me
like a pigeon flying
over my picnic table
leaving a semi-permanent
impression:
You need your seat
to fly your plane,
to ride your bike
(comfortably),
to drive your car;
you can swing from your neck
and walk on your hands
or crawl on your knees
(if you want to),
but you cannot
sit while standing
unless you’ re a pigeon.
Your fear scares me
Most; not your moods,
Nor their swings:
It is your fear
That scares me most.
When you feel awful
I feel awful too.
I cannot help it
Anymore than you
Can help feeling so
Awful when you do,
But it worries me
When you feel awful
On our one day off.
Highly polished verse
Reflects what it observes;
Like a large sphere,
An oversized, mirroring
Christmas tree ornament,
That distorts what it reflects.
Nor Rainbow
A drab sunset
gone grey, opaque,
wet by summer's
thin, dull drizzle;
neither thunder,
nor rain, nor wind-
swept cries of bent
trees, neither light-
ning nor rainbow
to signal the end
of tearful days
and anxious nights
while we wait, wait
for some new start,
for some new hope
of love's return.
When you show
your horse
to the water, you
do not expect that
he will throw himself
in and drown.
Twisting venue, no crossroads,
The dark wooded night
Through headlights flowed.
Coarse haired winter had nearly died.
What wasted time do you regret
While you watch the full moon
Begin to set behind blackened trees?
Do you feel the dream is gone?
Do you drive fast at night
With the radio on and sing along
Not quite knowing
The words to the song?
Right when I say
Things can't get worse
the beetles kill
off the roses!
My Study
My study is cluttered with
Papers:
Papers everywhere:
Papers in notebooks,
Papers on file,
Papers in boxes,
Papers piled high;
Papers in folders
Papers galore,
Papers in binders
stacked on the floor.
I've got papers
Dividing papers,
Paper to choke
A horse, yet
It takes so very
Much paper
To capture so very
Few thoughts.
I did what I did
and got little done
but all that I did,
I done in good fun.
Late to bed;
early to rise;
makes one wish
one were wealthy!
On Canary Bond
(Late October)
This paper is so-so;
it will not take ink.
Cold air is pushing
summer to the brink
of a fall to prolong winter.
The Series is awful--
the best they can do
is not even baseball:
St. Louis in red,
Milwaukee in blue.
Nothing to remember.
Nothing.
I'm restless with yellow,
eager to exchange
the last of this old ream
for the white one,
to change the way
I'm seeing October.
One can roundly dispatch
two thousand sound men
with a single wag
of the female's ass,
but no heap of sense
has ever quelled
the resounding bellow
of the donkey's jaw bone.
Poetry Night
I rode the elite elevator and stood among the elite
in elevator silence as we sped to a vertiginous height.
A man in full, greying sideburns with a smooth,
shining head perched atop a blue turtleneck sweater,
his three button tweed jacket buttoned up tight, stood
silent and glossy as his polished mahogany umbrella handle.
A woman, separate and large in shining black fur looked
soft as a panda; her black boots rose well into her long
fur, and her dark eyes glowed as she stood apart; her acrid
silence hummed through tight clenched, dark red lips,
like the sealed elevator that hummed its way upward.
I stood in a metal corner and watched blinking lights
flash numbers from left to right where it stopped at twelve.
Dull metal doors parted slowly and disappeared.
Black fur exercised female prerogative and pushed
her way through the crowd and the opened doorway.
She turned right and lumbered away, making haste
with short, heavy, slow strides. The shining head
looked round with the quick movements
of a small bird, and marched off.
I stepped from the emptied elevator to a brass picket rail
that overlooked the floor twelve stories below: the distance
tugged and drained blood from my groin and my legs felt weak;
the fall was steep; the distant floor of black and white rose in three dimensions, jagged like hewn rocks sadistically set in perfect diagonal rows--an Escher etching, over-enlarged, magnified, compelling, dangerous.
******************************************
An elder sentry in thin lapels, his hands folded over
his zipper in watering hole pose, barred entry to the hall:
a slight woman of some years sat, officiously stiff, behind
a bare table and exchanged entry for cash, tickets,
or passes. She checked off names with practiced,
absorbed concentration.
Three tiers were expected: those who would pay,
those above paying, and those beneath paying: the coerced,
students of the venerable Whisp, the uninitiated.
I produced my summons; the elder lady found my name
and with a stiff back, a serious look, and her short pencil,
she carefully drew a check mark and waved me on with a nod.
Her quiet sentry, politely chagrined, winningly mustered
a bland smile, and asked, near embarrassment,
if I would be kind enough to point out to him
the young lady, Laura Blume.
Ms. Blume had risen lately, beyond elite, straight
up from coerced. She'd ascended, some said, indecently,
like helium balloons let loose.
"No," I smiled. "Can't say as I've ever seen her."
Who has not heard her name? From behind me
came a feeble voice that said, "Yes, I can." I looked
round to find a fellow student who overheard
the gentleman's hushed question and could not
resist the urge to raise his hand with a right answer.
He leaned toward the tall, thin grey sentry, surveyed
the room with a shrewd eye, and careful not to point,
stood still as a dog trained for the hunt, aimed his
deliberate stare toward the very center of the gathered
crowd, and said, "She is the one in the white blouse."
The distinguished old gentleman followed the line
of the young man's nose and blinked in recognition:
"Ah," he said as he slowly, politely licked his lip
and wrinkled his forehead in some slight confusion.
Laura Blume, her hands folded and buried
in her ample lap, sat straight up with the plump
calm of a queen planted like the center-piece
of a small, unruly garden.
Professor Whisp, the main event, had not arrived.
******************************************
The crowd, fully swollen, was lost in the hall
whose rarefied air breathed with détente,
disappointed in this small gathering,
whose loudest din echoed like the buzz
of an insect circling high ceiling lights.
I chose a seat near a side exit and surveyed
the door; a heavy dark grained wood hung
snugly on elaborate brass hinges. I stepped
to the door and turned a smooth handful of brass
knob to test the route of my early escape.
A shrill bell sounded a shocking alarm that echoed
aloud in the hall's spacious quiet.
The crowd's buzz died of a sudden: a startled hush
fell on the floor. Stunned eyes searched round
and found me standing below the lit exit sign:
I was caught as if with my finger in the pie.
Disinterest returned and the silent pause gave
way to a slowly rising hum that reascended to buzz.
At length and later than she liked, a lady, whose pure
antique charm shone like a mirror veneer poised
with a stiff neck, stood. Her head tilted slightly upward
and to one side to display, to some advantage and without
ostentation, her short string of yellowed pearls:
"May I have your attention!" she insisted, leaning toward
the microphone, "May I have your kind attention!!"
She waited with watchful persistence.
A deferential hush fell over the hall and amplified
the echo of metal folding chairs banging: a moment's
clamorous clanging shuffle and all were seated.
Laura Blume rose up in mid-declaration and trotted
heavily from her central seat, her head slightly bent,
she picked her way modestly, slowly hurrying till she
sat at the long bare folding table beside the podium,
next Whisp's right arm: for Whisp had arrived.
******************************************
"It is our enormous good fortune," the stiff necked
pearls insisted into the microphone clamped
precariously to the podium, "an honor and what
a distinction, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, and extreme,
talk, talk, talk, among above, talk, talk, talk," she smiled.
Up popped Whisp, though not far enough. He reached
up for the microphone, pulled it down, then down again.
He fumbled his thick black-framed glasses, caught them
in mid-air and struck them against the microphone,
nearly tossed his papers, grabbed them, slid his glasses
over his ears, propped them on his nose and opened
a book of his own doing . . .
As from a cupboard, like a politician cock roach,
with a bow and a blink, Whisp nodded and began:
"The purpose and aim of the poetry talk talk talk talk.
I'll show you what I mean by reading a poem talk talk.
A blurred title and on sung Whisp:
something a mermaid off on her own in the sea.
The microphone lisped and hummed,
Talk, talk talk talk," and Whisp had done.
******************************************
Laura Blume rose up, bumped into Whisp
as they danced round one another in a tight
circle. Whisp sat, smiling broadly, while Laura
stood, discretely raising up the microphone.
With intense calm in her tight, quiet voice,
Laura lamented that her light was dimmed
by forever trailing Whisp's golden glow,
though her tone told the silent she was every
bit of it equal to the task: "It is the bane of my
life, the curse of my career to have always
to follow Professor, dear Professor Whisp. Talk,
talk, talk, talk. Talk, talk talk talk . . .
******************************************
I leaned back in my folding chair and thought
of the river as it was when I drove beside it on
my way to this chair: the water was still, frozen,
jagged; it gleamed like glass debris, stuck, caught
as if in a ragged mood while the sun settled
distant and cool behind the factory silhouette
skyline on the Jersey side.
******************************************
talk, talk talk, talk, talk, talk . . ."
Laura was suddenly reading a poem of her own: