The Way A Mother Dances
It isn’t like a warrior in the field,
although a killer instinct has a role.
It isn’t like a worrier on the couch,
although it’s vigilant and self-defeating.
A spider crawling over a sleeper’s mouth
is more precarious, but much less fleeting
and much more rare. An Arab horse displayed
in the well-groomed air and the mowed yawns
is, in comparison, what schoolboys pawn
for inexperience (since we can’t get
enough). Imagine thistledown invaded
the kingdoms of our memories and scones
are what you tasted; what did you forget?
In Times of Economic Hardship
The cost of love is no great price.
The pyramids at Giza stored
no rice to ferry with a pharaoh
to the other side, try a cat embalmed
with eight lives left. Or the Taj Mahal;
that oriental wonder found
a likeness of the underground.
The cost of love is digging; pay dirt,
peat and pearls are all a piece.
The earth and heart give way to
badgers, budget for the outward budge.
Estate Sale
The cardigan my grandma wore
on Normandy in ‘84
is still here folded up. It smells
like things I know from pictures. Bells
arrive, and five times in a row,
to tell the time, “It’s time to go.”
And Yet, They Rage
The dead all rage. They ravish ferny soil
for a radish. All the old arrangements, all
the sages turn for yellow chaparral.
The old arrangements turn a savage page.
The book of seasons comes of age, appalls
old men who rank the baby’s-breath with shawls
and fear the draft; ridiculous on stage
but common as a housefly. The dead rage
with self-made purpose, turn the soil on
a bombing range to yellow chaparral.
(The cemetery is a kind of shrapnel.)
The dead rage – no chaperone
or cage – and yet, they rage in harmony.
The Political Poet
The moral sense for common good
Is commonly misunderstood
As God and poetry.
And pity too is apprehended
To make you feel like gladness ended
As God and poetry,
For misery, took Ibuprofen.
(Or better yet, a heart to loaf in.)
But God and poetry
Imposters, uninvited, fight
In real-time for the last delight:
A godless poetry.
