New Poem:River

It thinks itself too good for
These generalizations and is
Moved on by them. The opposite side
Is plunged in shade, this one
In self-esteem. But the center
Keeps collapsing and re-forming.
The couple at a picnic table (but
It's too early in the season for picnics)
Are traipsed across by the river's
Unknowing knowledge of its workings
To avoid possible boredom and the stain
Of too much intuition the whole scene
Is walled behind glass. "Too early,"
She says, "in the season." A hawk drifts by.
"Send everybody back to the city."

[end of poem]

New Poem : Mixed Feelings

A pleasant smell of frying sausages
Attacks the sense, along with an old, mostly invisible
Photograph of what seems to be girls lounging around
An old fighter bomber, circa 1942 vintage.
How to explain to these girls, if indeed that's what they are,
These Ruths, Lindas, Pats and Sheilas
About the vast change that's taken place
In the fabric of our society, altering the texture
Of all things in it? And yet
They somehow look as if they knew, except
That it's so hard to see them, it's hard to figure out
Exactly what kind of expressions they're wearing.
What are your hobbies, girls? Aw nerts,
One of them might say, this guy's too much for me.
Let's go on and out, somewhere
Through the canyons of the garment center
to a small café and have a cup of coffee.
I am not offended that these creatures (that's the word)
Of my imagination seem to hold me in such light esteem,
Pay so little heed to me. It's part of a complicated
Flirtation routine, anyhow, no doubt. But this talk of
The garment center? Surely that's California sunlight
Belaboring them and the old crate on which they
Have draped themselves, fading its Donald Duck insignia
To the extreme point of legibility.
Maybe they were lying but more likely their
Tiny intelligences cannot retain much information.
Not even one fact, perhaps. That's why
They think they're in New York. I like the way
They look and act and feel. I wonder
How they got that way, but am not going to
Waste any more time thinking about them.
I have already forgotten them
Until some day in the not too distant future
When we meet possibly in the lounge of a modern airport,
They looking as astonishingly young and fresh as when this picture was made
But full of contradictory ideas, stupid ones as well as
Worthwhile ones, but all flooding the surface of our minds
As we babble about the sky and the weather and the forests of change.

[end of poem]

New Poem: The One Thing That Can Save America

Is anything central?
Orchards flung out on the land,
Urban forests, rustic plantations, knee-high hills?
Are place names central?
Elm Grove, Adcock Corner, Story Brook Farm?
As they concur with a rush at eye level
Beating themselves into eyes which have had enough
Thank you, no more thank you.
And they come on like scenery mingled with darkness
The damp plains, overgrown suburbs,
Places of known civic pride, of civil obscurity.

These are connected to my version of America
But the juice is elsewhere.
This morning as I walked out of your room
After breakfast crosshatched with
Backward and forward glances, backward into light,
Forward into unfamiliar light,
Was it our doing, and was it
The material, the lumber of life, or of lives
We were measuring, counting?
A mood soon to be forgotten
In crossed girders of light, cool downtown shadow
In this morning that has seized us again?

I know that I braid too much my own
Snapped-off perceptions of things as they come to me.
They are private and always will be.
Where then are the private turns of event
Destined to boom later like golden chimes
Released over a city from a highest tower?
The quirky things that happen to me, and I tell you,
And you instantly know what I mean?
What remote orchard reached by winding roads
Hides them? Where are these roots?

Really like that one.

:up: me too

It is the lumps and trials
That tell us whether we shall be known
And whether our fate can be exemplary, like a star.
All the rest is waiting
For a letter that never arrives,
Day after day, the exasperation
Until finally you have ripped it open not knowing what it is,
The two envelope halves lying on a plate.
The message was wise, and seemingly
Dictated a long time ago.
Its truth is timeless, but its time has still
Not arrived, telling of danger, and the mostly limited
Steps that can be taken against danger
Now and in the future, in cool yards,
In quiet small houses in the country,
Our country, in fenced areas, in cool shady streets.

[end of poem]

New Poem : Tenth Symphony

I have not told you
About the riffraff at the boat show.
But seeing the boats coast by
Just now on their truck:
All red and white and blue and red
Prompts me to, wanting to get in your way.

You've never told me about a lot of things:
Why you love me, why we love you, and just exactly
What sex is. When people speak of it
As happens increasingly, are they always
Referring to the kind where sexual organs are brought in -
Diffident, vague, hard to imagine as they are to a blind person?
I find that thinking these things divides us,
Brings us together. As on last Thanksgiving
Nobody could finish what was on his plate,
And gave thanks. Means more
To some than me I guess.
But again I'm not sure of that.

There is some connexion
(I like the way the English spell it
They're so clever about some things
Probably smarter generally than we are
Although there is supposed to be something
We have that they don't - don't ask me
What it is. And please no talk of openness.
I would pick Francis Thompson over Bret Harte
Any day, if I had to)
Among this. It connects up,
Not to anything, but kind of like
Closing the ranks so as to leave them open.
You can "stop and shop." Self service
And the honor system prevail, resulting in
Tremendous amounts of spare time,
A boon to some, to others more of a problem
That ony points a way around it.
Sitting in the living room this afternoon I saw
How to use it. My vision remained etched in the
Buff wall a long time, an elective
Cheshire cat. Unable to cancel,
The message is received penultimately.

So over these past years -
A little puttering around,
Some relaxing, a lot of plans and ideas.
Hope to have more time to tell you about
The latter in the forseeable future.

[end of poem]

New Poem : On Autumn Lake

Leading liot act to foriage is activity
Of Chinese philosopher here on Autumn Lake thoughtfully
inserted in
Plovince of Quebec - stop it! I will not. The edge hugs
The lake with ever-more-paternalistic insistence, whose effect
Is in the blue way up ahead. The distance

By air from other places to here isn't much, but
It doesn't count, at least not the way the
Shore distance - leaf, tree, stone; optional (fern, frog, skunk(;
And then stone, tree leaf; then another optional - count
It's like the "machines" of the 19th-century Academy.
Turns out you didn't need all that training
To do art - that it was even better not to have it. Look at
The Impressionists - some of 'em had it, too, but preferred
to forget it
In vast composed canvases by turns riotous
And indigent in color, from which only the notion of space is lacking.

I do not think that this
Will be my last trip to Autumn Lake
Have some friends among many severe heads
We all scholars sitting under tree
Waiting for nut to fall. Some of us studying
Persian and Aramaic, others the art of distilling
Weird fragrances out of nothing, from the ground up.
In each the potential is realized, the two wires
Are crossing.

[end of poem]

New Poem : Fear of Death

What is it now with me
And is it as I have become?
Is there no state free from the boundary lines
Of before and after? The window is open today

And the air pours in with piano notes
In its skirts, as though to say, "Look, John,
I've brought these and these" - that is,
A few Beethovens, some Brahmses,

A few choice Poulenc notes....Yes,
It is being free again, the air, it has to keep coming back
Because that's all it's good for.
I want to stay with it out of fear

That keeps me from walking up certain steps,
Knocking at certain doors, fear of growing old
Alone, and of finding no one at the evening end
Of the path except another myself