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He lives to someday retire
from work
after he retires
all debt.
No outstanding balances,
no portfolios out of balance,
owing nothing to creditors,
with everything credited to merit
and compounded interest
in mutual funds,
but not in mutual dreams
or a vision requiring more than
one set of I’s.
Me?
I wish to ever live so deeply in debt
to love
that I have to work
nights and weekends
just to break even.
This was my home for two years
and is for a few days every December
when the camelias are in bloom.
An annual pilgrimage--
not to a holy ground of worship
but to an altar where I pray
to understand the journey itself,
the winding stream of direction
that is no path, no trail
till it becomes one
behind
me.
Year’s end is an artificial marker,
only a bending of something,
not anything broken off.
And year’s beginning is no seedling;
it is mere budding pushed out through
wooden pores
of established branches who
take their orders from roots
they’ve never met.
In the canopy the spanish moss hangs from the oaks
like garland or
maybe they are thick gray locks
that remind me I'm not a young man
anymore,
that life is a turbulent river,
and not an oblong lake
held in its spoon by banks
and rules.
At 5pm, winter twilight, the snow flurries were plentiful and beautiful. Large flakes blowing on a diagonal line from north to south, tiny white meteors flying into the windshield. All of it sticking, accumulating. The snowfall has blanketed the ground but its angle frosted only the north face of trees, fences, and buildings. There are distinct lines of snow separation that run down the east & west sides of all trees making them look divided into vanilla & chocolate halves.
The driving was slow and deliberate and somewhat tense. It took a long time to get home. Reminded me of driving from Atlanta to NC in an unexpected snowstorm, doubling the time it took to get home but somehow I didn't mind. I get very nostalgic when it snows. I have good snow memories.
The snow stopped before 7:30 tonight but not before giving us several inches and closing school tomorrow. I was outside moments ago and the front is clearing out and a full moon is on display which casts a glow on the untrampled snow in the yards and large fields.
Given the places where I've lived for the past 25 years I have not seen all that much snow really, and I can't recall a time when a full moon hovered over lingering snow like this. It's really cold outside but I want to stand outside and look up and look around. Something about this scene makes me feel sad too. Maybe it is that when something is beautiful and rare you experience joy in the moment of it, and yet you know it may be a very long time before you look upon this sight again.
Because the sky is clear (thus the moon visible) the sun will take over in the morning and by mid-day there will be few signs that snow was ever here. You'll wonder if you just imagined the whole thing. Snow doesn't stick around and hand out souvenirs before it leaves; that's why you have to remember well. You have to take pictures of such moments with your heart and develop them in your soul's dark room. There will be times ahead that require you to open the album in private, review those images, so that you know that the moments were very real. So you'll remember.
If it rains all week like this--
drips, pours, soaks, and puddles,
mists, sprinkles, spews, and floods,
I’m afraid your moist lips might mildew
so bring them inside
and let them dry
while your w c h
e l a
t o n
t g
h
e
s
by the fireplace.
The tension was mounting and reaching a pink
when I asked orange you the least bit
interested in my feelings?
I don’t see what purples it serves she said,
not when you have such a discolored
view of white and wrong.
And I’m not budging teal you
admit you were out of lime.
Sorry but the idiocy of your logic
just blue right past me, I stormed back,
and I’m sick of you wearing your martyrdom
like a beige of honor.
Don’t yellow at me, mister!
How ‘bout just a piece of courtesy, huh?
Just a slice. Is that too lofty a gold for you?
To cut me just a silver of politeness?
(I hate it when she speaks to me
in that skin tone of voice.)
Heck , woman, since you’re all ready
to lock me up in pale
you should’ve at least red me my rights first!
Forget it.
You know what, I’m leaving. And I may
not be coming black I said,
stomping out of the room.
Oh that’s just gray she said. Just gray!
When things get a little heated
you run like a bright green shirt
in a hot water wash.
"As long as the roots are not severed, all is well. And all will be well in the garden."
Peter Sellers as Chance the Gardener in Being There.
This is a great truth to remember in all seasons, but especially in the winters of the heart when all that is true must be true underground. And remember too that no winter lasts forever, and no spring skips its turn. -- RLP
Boy Scout troop 61 is selling Christmas trees
at the corner of 31 and Buckner,
but they’re already cut at the stem
and I need one with a root ball attached
so it will plant in the middle of the living room,
buried in a Mt. Pisgah of dirt dished out,
mud slung, and bull shitted.
An artificial tree requires assembly,
but instructions are so controlling
and directions are for those who
can’t think for themselves.
We thrive at taking things apart,
making wholes into pieces,
scattering parts, losing hardware,
pulling threads from hems
till the entire garment unravels.
We’ll string the spruce with lights,
the kind shone in the face of war prisoners
during interrogations.
We’ll put some Christmas carols on the Victrola,
war paint on our faces, and the kids will ask Santa
for foster parents.
We’ll whip the boughs with steel garland,
wrap it with a chain link fence.
and hang the ornaments
like all horse thieves deserve,
with hooks in their necks
and nooses over the branch.
+
+ +
Instead
of topping the
tree with an angel
or a bow or a star
this is your year to be strapped
to the limbs like Christ or like a deer
to
the
hood
of a
pick-up
harvested, freshly mowed, a Red-tailed Hawk with fixed brown eyes and fisted black pupils is perched, erect on the power line, flesh-ripping talons wrapped soft as ribbon around the cable watches stares scans an entire field without any movement of head for any movement below, for a twitching swatch of color that does not blend in with the grain. What if he is actually drawing in raw electricity from the line, sucking it through those claws, juicing some primeval predatory battery and heating blood to a boil that can cook a careless rabbit who drops her cloak of corn husks which make her invisible, invincible. Yes, like that one. Towering over this fog strewn field,
CRACK!
I’m not sure that the sound
of rock hitting glass
explodes out of the cannon
with a consonant blend,
but that’s not important right now.
that turtle pace construction truck in front of me
is leaking small stones and sharp rocks
and should be pulled over
cause my windshield didn’t always
have this starburst spider web
etched into it for free
and I want to ask the driver if he
also works in stained glass.
I have a box of words I didn’t employ
from other poems
and I hate to see them go to waste
because there’s some perfectly good cast-offs in there.
Most are clumsy words
that never should have tried out for varsity,
each word like an unmarketable Scrabble tile--
the Q or Z
who can seldom find a place to work.
I thought of donating the words
so poets less fortunate
could use them, but I gave enough poetry
to charity last year so I decided to keep it all,
see what I could make of the scraps.
First I thought of assembling the shards
into a mosaic.
Then the idea of a patch-word quilt came to mind.
Then I remembered my friend Stanley
who makes “garbage soup”
from months of leftover ingredients
he stores and freezes.
Sounds nasty but I’ve had it
and it’s actually pretty good
if you can get past the appearance,
fragrance, and taste.
When I emptied the evicted words
into a bowl I saw that the soon stew
would be overpowered by spicy,
torch-bearing, tongue-raking adjectives
so I spooned out several.
A few of the adverbs, mostly the “ly” ones,
were seriously overkill
so I yanked them immediately.
Several of the metaphors
should have been refrigerated
while one simile had to be pulled
and replaced like a starting pitcher.
Here’s just a few of the salvageable words
I added to the stock:
clandestine—I just like the sound of it but I don’t know what it means
service road—from a trucker poem I struggled with
hydrangea-- overused in lines about spring
perceived from afar –was laid off when I downsized it to “saw”
humorous—if you have to point it out, don’t bother
slow drip death is too good for her kind—I was having a bad day
It still needed something
so I chopped up some alliteration,
added a few strong verbs and vices,
threw in some organic imagery
to give it color,
and peeled some raw emotion
to give the piece some texture,
plus bulk it up so it wouldn’t be so runny.
I let it simmer on low heat
for days and I stirred it on the hour.
But to be honest, I’m pretty disappointed
with how this first batch turned out.
Gary Chapman: Love Talks for Families (Lovetalks Flip Books)
Ramon Presson, John Underwood & James Harnish: 365 Meditations For Men By Men (365 Meditations)
