Along the Road

Non-elected candidates

live on

on bumpers

while colleges

stick to

windows

along the road

People pull up

in parking lots at parks

where you know

they go to meet

interesting new

friends

along the road

Yesterday’s machines

lie scrapped,

smashed

and leaking oil

in rusted hunks

adorning a hill

along the road

You can tell the age

of politics by where

it once parked itself in

concrete slabs, patches,

potholes, and

jet-smooth stretches

along the road

An overpass overlooks

faster means of travel

while lot after lot of wasted space

adorns the street like banners stretching

greed along with disregard and

time discarded

along the road

Acetone gas escaping

from freshly-painted, double-yellow

lines and little arrows, words

and lines of various means, direction

and import

along the road

The gaps between beginning and end,

no longer the act of going,

cars plugging along declaring:

“I am here”

sit back buddy

“me first!”

along the road

Sitting in traffic

going nowhere

a sea of fleeing cars

thinking of that time

when movement and air

came together

along the road.

The Last Light

The last light tingles

with its tart taste for

nuances not scripted by

tongue or finger –

as elusive as an

unlit candle waiting

for the moment to care –

daring the receding mind

to formulate in functions

beyond its dimmed dexterity

A trickster’s gleam

denying sleep

surrender,

the death of

a day.

Disintegration

                        I

This

is the time of day

that has meaning

twenty-four hours wasted on

fifteen minutes

and tomorrow morning

it may suck

                        II

“Suck”

is too harsh a word

but I shall leave it

and see how it feels

                        III

notepads

self

storage

reminders

that I am

                        IV

Just as I rob

each empty page

of its purity

so does the empty page

growing up through

my daily life

threaten to

overwhelm me

Take a glance

at midnight

                        V

Words arrive

where sleep eludes

                        VI

curses

distractions

gaps.

All the Little Pack Rats

All the little pack rats

pop their heads into their pillows

and puff the filtered air

as if innocence could float

through foam and feather

to and fro

as easy as a breeze

Follow them

for all they think

there’s more they know

no less than all forgotten

and all that we’ve been taken for

as we’ve pulled ourselves along

a trail of knots

both fresh and frayed

as twisted as any

sign of light might be

to the night-weary eye

Glittering shadows of dust

greet the sunlight

in dance

as dreary as anything that glows

yet still

as peaceful as the gentle pull

that glides us through here

and as easy as a breath

The sordid whines and screams

of daytime deserve no less

than to desert us

unto ourselves

if only to have

us listen

to the muted breathing

of innocence

muffled as it may be

yet with its depth intact

World-weary

after a full week

of drenching rain

the only sounds left welcome

are those that echo

silence, those

that greet you

like a single wave

tracking to the edge of

of an untouched morning lake

one pulsation from the beat of life

sent to stroll its rolling way

across the perfect stillness

as if a rat

had held its breath

just long enough

to jump

So there it is

arriving as it will

in the dusted light

of afternoon

or here

pulled through

from morning

on its way

to wherever it

may take us

Forever riding

on the fluffed and foolish

fantasies

as we find them

in the soft

near-silent breath

of such innocence

as lies tucked

into their pillows

as safe

and soft and caring

as any trusted cloud

could be.

 Maine 8/92

                                                                                    

 

Clover (Waiting for the word on which to step)

 

Late Days

There was a song she sang with her eyes

if only in passing

a lullaby sculpted in sadness and yet

   sung with celebration and joy…

and this is what I knew of her

And so the morning sky squatted down

with overcast tones

cracking open only to give birth to

a confusion of sun and cloud

lying naked across the table, crying

I sat at a chair there, staring at a cup

empty enough to count,

swathed in light and shadow and thirst,

unsure of what if any

meaning even the least of it might hold

Beginnings must beg their endings, I guessed,

rising up to no occasion,

pushing myself from the table

with little resistance

and no really clear sense of where to go

It was later in the night that the candle would ignite

golden diamonds in her eyes

on which she delicately balanced all caution

against the passion of the flickering light,

encapsulating the questions of the day into the mysteries of the night

I arose from the table and stepped back into myself,

turning only not to see

in another direction, as the splinters of light

strewn across the table behind me

slipped and faded away into the distant corners of the room

Late season cicadas sang of summers lost

as I opened the door to step out

into the world in which we only pretend to own control

the purpose and direction of the path

lying before me partially obscured by overgrown weed and grass

The hours were due to drift by too slowly

before coming to an end too soon,

the designs that my mind had held the days before

to be obligations on these very passing minutes

had lost all color and focus between then and now

  

And yet she would hold the evening in her hand

as if it were a brush

with which she might create the very vision

of every human emotion

without so much as a conscious thought of doing so

There were things to do – I knew –

places to stop without going,

thoughts to capture before their outlines

dissipated into the shadows,

simple things now too complex to figure out

In a way, this day had a sense of needing to

start over again, maybe more than once,

there was nothing there to see past it with,

no glass clear enough through which

it might pause long enough to reflect upon itself

If this is it, this is what it is, it might have told me

as if saying such a thing could be

what it would be like to be imbued with wisdom,

but there was not conscious truth to

each step that I had taken or would yet take – they simply were

Time, when it arrived, would find me neither

sitting, standing, knelt nor dancing,

there could be no determined approach into,

away from, or around

the song with which she sang her every move

For now, the ground simply slipped away beneath me

with more direction than intention,

simple, sweet sunlight streamed past like a series

of post cards sent as if to suggest

that there might yet be other places toward which to go

But I cannot remember now quite where it was that

I did or did not quite get to,

   only that faintest of choruses of distant sounds…

the saws, the cicadas, birds and crickets, the

whole host of breeze-borne voices muffled by something to the air

Set two places at the table and wait

for an empty chair to gain meaning

conversations come and go without the need

  for someone to share them with –

It’s never the words themselves that crave the company

The greatest accomplishment of some late days

  is simply making it through them –

eventually our bearings will remind themselves

of what and where they are,

eventually something in everything will make as much sense as we allow it

  

Talk’s only talk – traded across a table with

   someone who is or is not there…

at the same table I rose and stepped away from hours before

it is the evening sweeping down around me

it is the light in the evening that will capture me for all and more than I know

She will smile with a shy sincerity that will beguile me

she will allow me the pleasure

of aching for places unknown and unseen

and I will wonder how it is that I might touch such a thing

even as I wilt before the glorious sparkling of its light.

Misplaced Letters

Down in the middle of

whatever might have happened,

where even ambiguities

get all muddled up,

someone placed some words

into an envelope –

shook it once or twice

and shoved it in the mail

It was an especially foggy morning,

even the mist didn’t know

where to go, a

morning in which the patterned steps

of a carrier’s feet

disappeared into the confusion

and, with that, all was lost

There’s a sea of scattered

leafs out there:

rocks, limbs and human garbage,

things both tossed and lost –

and, out among it all, there must lie

a misplaced bundle of decaying letters,

scrambled thoughts

that never found their way.

On the Tilted Water

A lost bell of dusty brass

  rocks slowly on the tilted water,

    leaving the gentle evening to its own company

It becomes anybody's guess

  whether it still has the gumption to sing,

    ring or clang with any clarity at all

Fog horns lifted from dreary spirits

  chase their fading selves across the

    dimly lit surface of this particular dream world,

Never catching anything

  beyond some diffuse sense of themselves,

    as directionless as the dark itself

Lovers twirl by in sweeping dances –

  churning tides and tight-knit eddies

    in search of sounds that rise yet never fall –

While barely-floating spirits

  row their aching bones along the

    way the wind might have carried them

Had it been there to guide them

  through the quiet calm of approaching night,

    in search of shining reverberations of the soul.

Intro

He rode his solitary mare

down through the far away,

up to the crest of happenstance

and then beyond, to the point of departure

There below him, the sea crashed

against a bitter wall of rocks,

salt-stained granite heaved

high up against its swells

Against the endless pounding of mercy and anger,

backing and slapping, backing and slapping,

stealing away a grain of sand at a time

from the fortress-like faith of invincibility

He sat astride his saddle of solitude,

caught by the rise of the wind off the bluff,

gusts of air hurled by the raging beasts of ravaging storms

beyond the dark gray cloak of the horizon

He sat thinking about how there are places like this

where no man belongs for long

but to which some people adhere themselves

for a period of seconds

How there are places like this

that the conscious mind cannot understand,

but that the heart accepts as they are –

unseen and untouched

Accepts them on dim days of distant strife,

on mornings kissed with the sweetness of the sun,

in the bold light of sunsets reflected off eastern skies,

in the coldest darkness of a howling night

He was an artist

painting his lines in circles and swirls,

hoping to catch the heart of the wind

that lifts and carries a falling leaf

He was a lover,

lost beyond the far edges of his canvas,

ready to rip away his own flesh

to suffer the purest pain of love

He was a soldier,

shed of uniform and marching in isolation,

weary of life yet far too full of it

to shed a drop of another man’s blood 

And he was a stranger unto himself,

awakened by the least intentional of dreams

and left to sit, bathed in salt and sweat,

high above the churning catastrophes of life

And he was the man who came from all of his other worlds,

searching through the sweetest depths of insight,

striving to reach across that last expanse of air,

aching to seize whatever was there and hold it, as a single breath.