Below Zero

I breathe deeply
These winter mornings
Like I’m at ten thousand feet
Both movement and thinking
Tedious
Slow.

Behind the wheel
I stare out the windshield
Morning sun dancing
From ice cycles
Snow patches on roofs
Smoke drifting
Above suburban chimneys
Truck in park
Heart in neutral.

My breath exhales
As vapor
Swirling before my face
Like clouds forming
At mountain peaks.

Minutes spiral away.

A sales paper
Pushed by February winds
Somersaults the ice.
I shiver involuntarily
Jerking back to reality.

My hands encircle
My cup of one cream
Two sugars
Steaming the frigid air.

A microcosm of my life
Trying hard to stay hot
In a life measured
Below zero.

In this environment
Even tears freeze.

Doppelganger

He is suddenly beside me.
I smell the earth on his body
The musk of fresh sweat
Mud drying on his face
The acrid sting of burned powder
I hear his shallow breaths
Trying to steady his
Rapid pulse.

Never saying a word
I hear the metallic slide
Of the bolt on his rifle.
His desperation rises
Like mist from a swamp

For the briefest moment
I think his thoughts:
Concealment
Target acquisition
Breath control
Exit strategy.

Then the searing pain
The uncomprehending shock.

In a flash I feel his panic
I’m hit!
I’m hit!
Oh God!
Sweet Jesus!

It always ends the same way
Thousands of times over
His mad scramble for life
Dissipates
Into traffic noise
The ten o’clock news
The securing of my door bolt
Sounds exactly like his rifle bolt
And I’ll spend the early hours
Trying not to smell the smells
Or hear the sounds.

But he is right beside me.

Land of Gracious Lumen

Turn my face to the sun
When I die
And my unbeholding eyes
Will see.

My lusterless face
Will glow
In the bright slanting
Of our waning orbit.

I will smell the good earth
Now my bed
And stuff
Of slow return.

My open hands caress
That by which I am caressed.
My earth lover
Embraces me here.

Turn my face to the sun
When I die.
Fall softly across my sleeping form
Shadow and light.

Let me sleep here
Until, in bright day
I awake
In a land of gracious lumen

A Cemetery Visit

Autumn leaves scatter and pile
Around leaning stones
Etched in dimming names
Above their dusty bones.

Secreted in boxes
Remembered as common lives
Covered up in years
And the memory of their prize.

Here lie moldering bodies
From which sprang
Working generations
Whose hammers on anvils rang.

Exploding in brilliant color
See them in wildflowers
Expressions of souls
‘Neath their oaken bowers.

See their warm smiles
In the ache of setting suns
In the blaze of seasons
Where the cool brook runs.

Hear their happy music
Whisper in branches above
In breathless silence comes
The cooing of a dove.

Their ageless wisdom
Rises like morning mist
Embraced in common memory
Like lovers we have kissed.

We feel their struggles
Joys and bitter sorrow
Slowing our pace here
And allow eternity to roll.

Leave the old gate open
When you turn to go.
Let there be a chance here
For history to stroll.

Jockeying for Position

At the double nickel, my beard came in white.
Not like snow.
More the color of paper burned to cinder
A molecular transformation
With the appearance of frost

It smiles, the beard
With something of the bard
The revolutionary
The prophet
The lover
Within.

We are jockeying for position
The beard and I.
He does not like the way I drive
Saying it’s unfitting the image.
And I reject the way he walks
Stumbling, half-bent
Like an old soldier
Mindless of the combat earning him his stories.

We are unlikely partners.
He, unwilling to smooth my cheeks
Appearing as lunar plaines
Without heat, or charm.
I, unwilling to be the pirate he would like.
I am not Jimmy Buffet, conquering the Caribbean
With a salt-stained guitar
And Capt. Morgan in tow.

This is our Treaty of Pusan.
We will gaze with the apprehension that comes from distrust
Across the chin’s 38th parallel.

The Certainty of Touch

Could we have touched
You and I?
Your fingers, perhaps
Twisting a knob mine had turned
A moment before?

An arch, under which you passed
And I followed
A heartbeat later?

Might our shadows have mingled
Upon a snowy bank
Or across an urban plaza?

Could I have over-flown your emerald quilt?
Or, like Jupiter’s moons
Or a wisp of gossamer cloud
Have we been forever distant?

No…
No.

We have touched
You and I.

Our paths are marked
And we navigate
Every footfall certain.

And I will not content myself
Until we touch again.

Heroes

They fell on Flanders field
As they did at Shiloh Hill
On Normandy’s sand they bled
And they do in Baghdad still.

On the frozen heights of Korea
Or the jungles of Viet Nam
In the arid deserts of Iraq
In peril of bullet, mine and bomb.

On Afghanistan's mountains they fight
They struggle and sometimes die
And never rise to question
Or ask a bloody "why?"

They stream from farms and cities
Leaving behind little brothers
They say farewell to fathers
And tenderly kiss their mothers.

Bidding goodbye to comfort
To embrace lonely sacrifice
They struggle on land or air
In silent seas, below arctic ice.

Heroes, all of them
Whether they bled, or not.
They bore our nation’s colors
When the way grew fierce and hot.

I see them march in perfect order
I hear them pray at night
I know they weep for comrades
After the crimson fight.

Welcome home brave soldier!
God has a place for you
And we embrace sons and daughters
The many and the few.

Before the War

I am full of memory
As evening is full of mist
Gleaming in bright cones
Beneath the corner lamp.

My hollow footsteps
Bound from stone and brick
Pauses and apostrophes
Measures of moments.

Where went the days
The seamless nights
Of childhood
The womb of our hopes?

From the highway, traffic sighs
Golden bright in vapor lights.
Sidewalks of the marketplace
Orbit shops and bistros
Where we shared coffee kisses
In darkened doorways.

We were immortal.
Days endless
Drifting on a sea of innocence.
Our hearts pounded like jackhammers
In our chests
Marking the days
And velvet nights
Of youth.

But that was long ago
Before the war
When we wore our hair long
And laughed at old men
Who sneered at our passing.

Now, I am becoming an old man
Lingering under the same corner lamp
Collar and heart turned against the rain
Through which we once ran, laughing

Euclid and State Route 4

Moths spin like whirling dervishes
In the mercury light’s brilliant wash
On the corner of Euclid and State Route 4.

The light hums with electricity
As thousands of papery wings batter
Assault each other in the hot night.

In the west, sheet lightening charges the sky
Illuminating cloud mountains
Rising eight miles above Arkansas cotton.

Somewhere in town, gear jockeys violate the peace
Engines screaming like mechanical demons
To the squeals of girls in tight jeans.

I sit with my brother on Grandma’s porch swing
Heels digging into flooring, smoothed by a hundred years wear
Thighs working, keeping cadence with our pulse.

Behind us, in the bowels of the old frame house
Our parents talk with mom’s mom of dead relatives and dry crops.
Maybe this lightening means rain.

I knit my fingers across my face
Breathing through my hands
Smelling the leather of my baseball mitt still on my skin.

My brother laughs, mostly at nothing.
I laugh too.
Our laughter builds like lightening, both with nothing in it.

Mom demands to know what we’re up to.
We’re not into mischief, are we?
Are we getting into trouble?

Of course not.
Trouble will come years later
Far from Grandma’s porch.

Long after the moths have fallen
As have the rains
After the gear jockeys have taken to Buicks

After Euclid has been paved
And State Route 4 widened
And bulldozers have leveled Grandma’s house.

Then, we will have trouble
Beyond that which makes brothers laugh together in the dark.

The Inheritance

I remember
Sadness
In my father’s eyes.

It leaked
From his eyebrows
Through downcast lids.
Maybe from the poverty of 1929.
Perhaps from the weariness of ’45
Having burrowed deeply into his heart.

He always had answers
To which he
Had no questions
Which is often worse
Than the other way around.
Everything had reason, he said
There are no mysteries.

A man can’t live that way
Not for long.

Eventually he swallowed
The whole of his pain
Though it was a life’s effort .
He choked it all down…everything.
His father’s vagrancy
Mother’s cancer
The bullets and bombs
The terror of the Panzers.
The fear of too little money
For a growing family.
He was always afraid he would fail
Though I knew he was a Super Hero.

I never asked my father
What he felt
Because I was afraid
He would tell me.

I couldn’t endure that.

My father was not a sad man
But his eyes were haunted
Having endured the hurt
He wore like a coat.

But my father gave me what he could:

He gave me a lump at the back of my throat.

You

You sat
Naked against the wall
Eyes downcast
Arms around your drawn-up knees
Head into your chest.

I notched my belt
Smoothing my shirt
Into my pants.

Perplexed
I asked
Wasn’t it good for you?

Come lay with me
You said
Don’t just leave
You whispered.

Is it enough for you
You asked
To take what I freely give
Then refuse
What I most need?

Heat flowed into my face.
I took off my shirt.
You smiled softly
As I lay with you again.

Then we made love
It having nothing to do
With our bodies.

007

I’d just met her.
She seemed bashful
But pleasant.
I asked whether she needed help.
Looking through her long lashes
She quietly said I have a
A James Bond smile.

How do I respond to that?
With a smile, obviously.
Hers was a pleasant flirtation
Appealing to my avarice.

I considered the image, thinking
Should she get much closer
I could leave her world
Shaken, not stirred.

One Strand

One strand of her hair is all I’ve left.
It was on my sweater
Where she’d lain her head
The head that loved me
Thought of me
And considered me
In ways no other woman could
Or would.

One strand of her hair
Among the tens of thousands
That shimmered in the sun
Gleamed by candle
And through which
My fingers ran
Sifting out a wisp of glory.

But now I have one.

Better one strand of her hair
Than the entire body of another.

I have secreted my single strand of her hair
In the workings of a clock
Where it rests among the processes of time
Marking each second with a tick
As we grow further and further apart.

But the clock also measures that indeterminate
Length of time
Between the present
And the moment I hold her again.

On that day, I will entwine the single strand of her hair
With her many sisters
That they may reacquaint
And share the story of our long separation
And that time we rejoin on the plaines
Of timelessness.

With No Music

All the towers of Chicago
Skied light
And all the stars of the universe
Rained radiance
While we danced
Between the two.

Your body, warm
Left hand in my right
Arms around waists
Your gaze in mine
The music swaying us
Like kelp waving in Caribbean streams.

We moved in seas of bodies
In something as incredulous
As trade winds
In a Midwestern city.
Chicago lights
Entered our fingers, and streamed from our eyes.

How strange we must have appeared
To passersby
Who thought us silly.
But we knew what they did not.

We would have danced with no music.

The Sun of Early Summer

Sliding into the western strand
The sun deepens to bronze
Like helmets of conquistadors
Or shoulders of migrants
Bending to vineyards
Along the coast.

Odd, the images Sol suggests.
No wonder he was thought a god
By searching minds, long gone
Reckoned eternal and wise
By those who wished they were.

My cheeks redden
Eyes sting with salt from sweat
Lips dry and thoughts parched
Sighing at the luxury of a frozen margarita
Or kiss from a pretty girl
Wrapped in a towel.

Days are lengthening
On this spin around our star
On long afternoons
Spent half-asleep
Eyes slit to welcome
The sun of early summer.

This Side of Over There*

These hands have lifted mighty wings
Toward sun, and stars and moon
And this joy my heart has known
Is ending all too soon.
Cirrus clouds and thunderstorms
Ice crystals and vapor forms.

These eyes have watched receding earth
Blend with azure skies.
That I was given this rare gift
Was kingly enterprise.
Starlight teasers play
Where snowy canyons lay.

These fingers charted distant paths
Chasms of quiet space.
I’ve chased the sundown, watched sunrise
And amazing race.
Earth’s expansive girth belies
The depth, the breadth, the dream of skies.

These arms have measured spans of time
Embraced a Grande Design.
But, it has ended all too soon
Like contrails left behind.
I hadn’t watched the moments pass
And time has fled too fast.

These feet are hungry for tall air
For seven-mile heights.
To tread across a path of stars
In calm or stormy flights.
Like priests at evening prayer
The engines’ vesper air.

It’s my heart that yearns the most
For the clawing of the air.
And it will likely never rest
This side of over there.
Red-rimmed sunsets fire the night
With Dipper, Bow, and Northern Lights.

But there’s no need for tears of loss.
Please don’t weep for me.
I’ve heard the beat of angels’ wings
‘Cross diamond-studded seas.
And, oh! The miles I did roam
Over my blessed Terra home!


(* Written for Hank, my retiring United Airline Captain friend)

Rumors

Rumors
Suggestions beyond rational thought
Entertain you
A Hypnotic intrusion.

I knew you once
Understood your inner working
Like a Swiss watch
Fine and precise.

You stepped
Into a new world
A universe out of step
With the one we knew.

A new fire lights your eyes
A blue blaze
Electric
Flickering.

I would have you back
The familiar
The warm you
I once knew.

But you are given to rumors
Suggestions beyond rational thought
And from that place
There is no return.

The Purpose of the Arts:

"Music and art and poetry attune the soul to God because they induce a kind of contact with the Creator and Ruler of the Universe." ~ Thomas Merton

Morning Kiss

Your coffee kiss steams my mouth
Burns my throat
Warms my belly.
I swallow you
Feel you extend to
Arms
Hands
Legs
Feet.

An awakening flow
You slosh my loins
Splash my chest
Sigh from my throat

Content
Satisfied
Alive
Full-bodied
Finely ground
And flavored
To my taste.

Narcotic Release*

My head spins, swirls, jets
Twisting end-over-end
Crossing streets and yards
Flying, soaring
To land in cold puddles
Like a brittle maple leaf
Pirouetting on November’s wind.

The narcotics in my veins
Purposed to kill the constant pain
Removes the burden of fire
Doing nothing to extinguish the blaze.
But, oh! The dizzy trail I thread
Splices me to life
Hell-for-leather and hold on tight.

Sometimes I feel my hand slipping
Slipping
And fear joins the pursuit.
I wonder what it will be like
To catapult the balustrade
Slamming headfirst into the stone wall
The stone wall
With no chance to walk away
From the stone wall
Waiting for me
Just waiting for the next wild ride.


(* Explanation: I survived a massive cerebral hemorrage in '97, resulting in a pathology of severe neural pain, requiring treatment with federally regulated medications. On occasions of "off the chart" pain I have accidently over-dosed. The above is the frightening result.)

Word Smything

I chip at words
As a climber chips at cliff faces
Securing ropes through pitons pounded into rock walls
I pound verbs into nouns
In a determined effort to describe
Wonderful life
Life of wonder
Double knotting words
Like ropes
Dangling over chasms
Trying to hold fast.

Drawing battle lines flanked with language
I want your loins to be Hell on Wheels
In literary combat
To know the Rolling Thunder in your gut
Bleeding vowels and consonants.

I want to Spearhead language
In ways that make you weep
To smell sounds
And taste noise
With senses tuned to cosmic
Sensual frequencies
Your soul’s Armored Cav
Giving sight to touch
And spectral image to solid thought.

I sweat, grind, twist and
Wrestle with incomplete sentences
Making more of them
Than they are in their parts.

Sparks fly at the anvil
Hammering sentences
Into paragraphs
Orange-red heat smelting
Poetry from life
And love
From the iron of passion.
Forging petraglyphs onto paper.

And if you sigh
I am victorious.

Where the Crow Caws

Out there, where the crow caws
And the tree line meets the sky
I will make my winter home
When I come to die.

Blending with astral swirls
In blizzards of white light
I will shed familiar skin
And settle in the night.

Let others takes my possessions
I give them all away
To free me from encumbrance
As I ready for that day.

I leave behind endeavor
And the life-work of my hands
The whole of it unfinished
Abandoned where it stands.

Out there, where the crow caws
And the tree line meets the sky
I will make my winter home
When I come to die.

You Pushed Me*

You pushed me.
I felt it between my shoulder blades
And, Lo…!
I was out there!
Exposed in the harrowed rows
Jagged stone against my raw skin
Virgin to the blistering sun
And scorched earth.

How could you have so casually changed my world?
Reset my parameters
Like a factory default
Returning me to some primal existence?

And now You smile from the throne
Trying my character
Testing my anger.

I am enraged!

Let us remember
Before you reduce my walls to dust
Before you turn my rivers to powder
My seas to blood
Before you cover me in darkness
Choke me in locust
And slay my firstborn…

You pushed me.

(* I learned the hard way that God is able to handle my foolish anger)

Empty Fire

You offered no kindling
Yet I burned for you.

No oxygen
But my flame warmed you.

Nothing combustible
But my glowing illumined you.

Heat and light
You received of me
Though no sustenance was given.

My flamed licked your sighs
Caressed your cries
But without fuel I was only
Empty fire.

Seasons on a Birch Wall

Twilight paints the western sky
With Venus overhead
Bleeds to night the inky dark
Then eastern skies rim red.

On rolling hills, I see a wall
Of birches, white and slender
Reaching high, through chilling air
Delicate and tender.

White birch stands fill these hills
Like brides, adorned for grooms.
They stretch limbs here, rise tall there
In cathedral mountain rooms.

Swaying, singing, waving arms
They dance through storm and breeze.
Hear them sing a soothing song
These graceful, snow-clad trees.

Hear the wren and robin call
From perches near the sun.
Below the bear, and elk patrol
The deer and otter run.

High above, birch branches weave
Their dappled sunlight spreads.
By night a leafy canopy
Will mark their woody beds.

Winter drapes in sheets of white
Like linen on a line.
Springtime wakes in mint green hues
Sweet as garden wine.

Summer sighs in leafy shade
Autumn in burnished golds.
Seasons on a birch wall turns
And wraps me in its folds.

A Smile and a Shiver

Are you going to
Make love to me?
She asked.

Her eyes never moved
Stayed locked on mine
A smile and shiver
In her blue pools.

It’s been so long.
So are you, James?
Will you?

She came to me the way dewy mist
Falls upon the land
When days heat
Fades
And the cool of evening
Lays peaceful and still.

She lay in my arms
For hours
Until cicadas
Buzzed in the trees.

It was not sex.
It was not sensual.
It was compassion
And mercy
For both of us.

In time, her ragged breath gentled.

She died
Three months later
Savaged by the cancer
That was claiming her
Even as she lay with me.

She lays with me still
A memory of a woman
Who touched me where
Lovers cannot reach.

Waiting Outside

One day they shall lay me
In a cherry wood box
Dressed in tie and tweed coat
Glasses over my unseeing eyes.

A small parade of mourners
Will pretend sorrow
Passing by
“My, He looks so natural.
Didn’t they do a good job?”

Does all of life lead to this?
The appraisal of
Funereal arts
Well-placed lighting
And rosy makeup?

But, what about….?
It will not matter.
Nobody remembers
Achievements and accolades
And those who do, won’t care.

Please, close the lid slowly.
Let darkness come
As lover to my flesh.
She has been in long pursuit
This inky mistress.

Soon, you will slowly walk
To your car
Keys dangling from fingers.

I will wait for you
On the lawn
Hands in pockets
Amazed at how natural you appear.

Fire Base Rita

I lost you
In the oily smoke
Of Fire Base Rita
The summer of ’69.

You were my friend.
The limitless horizons of youth
Stretched before us
And though we knew the risks
Could not imagine
They constrained us.

We joked and laughed
Talked of all we would do
Back in the world
Once you were home.

How could I know
You were not coming home?

Had I understood the brevity of time
I would have done less joking
Less time spent discussing girls
And hot cars.
I would have given more attention
To what mattered.
But we were kids.
How could I know what mattered?

Back in the world streets teemed
With students burning flags
Lofting banners
Calling soldiers “baby killers.”
I stood on the curb
Jeering those cursing you.

I never wrote about them
Although I’m certain you knew.
I wanted you to come home
Celebrated for the hero
I knew you were.

But you weren’t coming home.

I lost you on a green mountain top
Bristling with rockets and concertina wire
In a land that never appeared to be at war
Until the jungle belched fire and smoke.

They put what remained of you
In a flag-draped box
And sent you home.
They gave your family a Purple Heart
And the “Appreciation of a grateful nation.”

The bugle is silent now
And the drums are still.

Today there is no Fire Base Rita
On the jungle mountain where you died.
Its scar has healed
In a place where death was so swift
There was no time to scream.
Decades have drained away
But somehow
I’m still waiting for you to come home.