Long Rows of Old Childhood

My months are getting longer.

Long rows of harsh-barked oaks, old childhood trees.

Running, running, running fast my hands along the dry trunks,

feeling little bits of torn fur in this half-light.

Quiet sounds up there,

dark canopy of branches, flitting,

rumbling whispers.

You need to stop following me.

Rolling in and out between stiff fingers,

lithe, little bits of fur and particles of bark.

Like a foam-lipped dog,

kicking out its legs behind its rolling neck,

echoing through the wild woods.

Echo, echo, echo,

follow, whisper, running!

Bark like the soft shutting

of a wooden trapdoor on an empty stage,

no curtains, curtains, curtains rippling billows in the wind.

Sounds of many, many steps down corridors and avenues.

Rolling little bits of fur down deep forever-rows

of oaks, the dark trunks of old childhood,

off into the blinding darkness of

someway, someway, someway out.

Hands still holding to the barking limbs, the old child.

If we get out, I say, we'll leave this place together.

My months are getting longer.

Iron Caught in Hard Scales

"Don't you think," said the fish to the hook,

"that you should clean yourself off a bit before

you try to get at me like this?"

"Why," replied the iron, "so I told the worm!"

Looking close, the fish gave heed to conversation

and the fisherman, who felt the tug, drew up the line

and saw the scales writhe rhythmically,

pierced through the outskirts of one eye in agony.

Hooks have never caught in fleeing tails,

only in chatty lips that know not when to still themselves and run.

Did Christ say we should reason our temptations to the ground,

build up our good defenses,

or swim off quickly, leaving nothing in the water

to be caught and fried in butter, smooth as silk?

The courageous man seeks peace for himself

at the ultimately very low expense of all his pride.

Circling Fields of the Open Air

Two single plumes
having nothing to do with one another
circling fields of the open air.

Two lovers discussing chattilly how
horribly lovesick they are
for their distant, distant loves.

Two wax candles
burning weakly in far corners;
little light.

Two sides, one blank, of a lottery billboard,
its promised count long since inaccurate.
Millions still decide to play.

Two shade plumes; clear air;
bright reflections in dark water, someone
snaps a photograph.

To Know the Autumn Trees and Laugh Like Rain

O heart! The rich, warm, rolling hills to the south

unfold as if they were the stars in bloom.

O soul; the marshes set afire, the clear scent of an old room

touching the crest of the red-leaved bird

that soars your skies to brush the walls of mere remembering,

and see, the gold flows out beneath you!

What of these? O, love!  To know

the fingertips ungloved

of all the many autumn trees!

Above, the year's last thunderclouds cast spells of ruin

and below, we roar up laughter, singing:

"See?  We laugh, it sounds like rain."

Denying Entrance to Two Demons On Separate Nights

The threshold you are tempting toward,

though but a way without a door, it is not for you!

You have been invited here, but there was a set place,

a set time: when I suffered.

Where were you then?

You are too late; your plate is washed and dried,

your chair pushed in, your bed fulfilled.

I am asleep now.  In the morning light, whom will I love?

Go away, little thing.

Take your dreams and cool night sweats,

your too-large voice, into the bottomless long avenue

of you, your coming too late to me.

My lover holds me, resting.

The doorway without door is shut.

*

I know the things you show are enticing, but your very appearance

repulses me like a sermon from the lips of a hypocrite,

like promises from a drunkard's mouth.

I have nothing to do with your hellfire!

Burn some other bright place dark as windswept ashes.

I have left your flame, scarred over,

healed without you.

I will not play your riddles,

you are too weak an instrument

for my ancient tune.

The Wind Off the Waves (Hope & Children)

This boat will reach the shore. . .
O God, please, please, this boat will reach the shore?

A sailor who hopes to God that he remains a sailor because he cannot swim.

What will the children think who laugh and play on the beach
in the ribs of a dead ship without a sailor in sight of the long sea?

I left my mother for the breast of the wave,
the milk crescent swell of the ocean's moon.

But will the children know, and will their mothers?

How many mothers have come looking at dusk
to find a child curled in its fists in the ribs of a ship from the sea,
holding to the swollen wood with their small, brave hands,
trying to trace the contours, trying to breath.

How many children touch the ribs and cry as the mothers pass by
in their worry, their desperate plight, and mutter to themselves
above the sound of crashing ships and sailors far from land,
"Where is my child, not this, mine! Where is my morning light
in this rustling field of cast shadows?"

Ever deeper into the crucible embrace of watery planks, floating;
no truth, no truth to overshadow the height of human hearts.

O God, can I even speak?

The wind off the waves has run away

into the forest of rain,

moaning sea-spray, carrying my voice.

Hands to the rigging, my boys, my men.

We'll reach the land

one way,

or another.

*

Hope is a shallow wave in a storm.

Waves from the Potomac

Multitudinous grains of speckled sand, in and out again,
little curls and eddies swirling up the image
beneath a lapping, translucent lens.
Old, old Chesapeake crabber sees it moving so.
No good catch today; old boots, other garbage;
good wind whistling North Ireland tunes.
Smells of engine puttering, stale cigarette breath.

Ripples in his reflection.

Old, old Chesapeake crabber; strong arms, weak eyes,
thinks every day of serpents seated high atop the crests of waves,
crying out wisdom like thunder, laughing, crying so,
they laugh so hard: they smack their knees.
It sounds like water on the sideboards.

Ten cigarettes or so a day, these days, a beer apiece.
Not very good stuff, but when it isn't spicy, anything tastes like smoke.

Old, old Chesapeake crabber; lives on the docks,
nice cozy bed below-decks, calls sleeping rock 'n' roll.
Hates to see young punks buzzing around his pier,
disturbing what's sacred on the water.

Every night he's a child for 6 hours, breathing in time
with the mother-river's inhale-exhale,
soft waves like a pillow of milk breasts
clothed in satin starlight nightgown: a reflected sky.

Gentle raucous battered sweet harmonica,
key of G, drifts up Sunday mornings.
At church he doesn't exist,
but when he sees the face of God
and roars "Jesus Christ!" he means it, every time.

Old, old Chesapeake crabber nurses his own past lives.
Once a month he watches his face in the light
of a good cigar on the bay at night,
tapping ash, causing ripples.
Once a month: cries for lack of karma,
seeing no cause and effect to pattern memory.

In the morning: new waves from the Potomac.

Looks at God today, sees me tying off lines, says
"What the hell you staring at!"
I wave. He smiles.

Makes me laugh every time.