Thunder quakes its bluff—
or so I hope and purposely laugh—
as cats skittle under the couch
and children shiver with blear eyes,
puzzlement at august mystery
while lightning flashes
its zigzagging sword
and trees sway, tremble.
My laughter is to shock
children out of shock,
bestow confidence
of authorial fatherhood
that laughs at fate,
even when laughter is too late.
Touching the sky
with feet upraised
children swing
to the music
in their arms
as their heads
float free
of the earth
and any knowledge
of the difficulties
that await them
while morels whisper quietly
amid leaves and grass
as they grip invisible soil
beneath the visible sward.
As a poet writes with pen to paper,
the poet enters a peculiar space
where time has lost its common dimensions
without a hint of romantic vista
and the prospect at hand is about words
dancing like blown seeds, airborne, descending
to the fertile humus of rhythmic line
where burnished metaphor enlightens mind.
He picked grape hyacinth
and brought it to me,
asking what it was.
He asks what bird
makes that peculiar call.
Woodpeckers fascinate him.
At the age of three
all the world is wonder….
While I caution him
not to eat the tiny hyacinth,
I’m thinking that purple pyramid
looks good enough to eat.
The problem with adults
is that they have shed
the cloak of wonder
that breathes at their feet—
their heads are too high
from verdant earth.
Early to rise
in greeny surprise
Bright aconite
at early dawn light
Glimpse of robin wing
surging hope of spring
Grass going green
in gold-brown dream
Banish all mortal fear
with springy time near
Insects appear
fly in your ear
Daffodils near bloom
to banish gloom
Woodshed door
needed no more
Geese honking loud
low wet blue cloud
Pleasant to tread
soft squishy mud
Ready the plough
as kittens meow
Ticking-and-tocking in the pendulum
Of historical turnings and tumult
What enfant terrible hosts elbow room
For aggrandizement, bluster, and insult?
Veracity is what he says it is.
Finance becomes final...
Walls: an historical meditation
Everybody loves a wall.
Walls can last a long time.
Look at the Great Wall of China—
it’s great to take photos from it.
Walls are...
Salesmen repeat. Reification
produces assurance and consumption,
yet artists loathe repetition,
preferring expostulation, objection,
and often, if bored, even
varied levels of flippant comparison
that evolve their own version
of...
In the beginning was the word,
but when was the sentence?
The world may be 50 million years old
as even baboons have the word,
yet when was grammar invented?...
Sleet and slush are fine manifestations
of silvered water—aqueous droplets
falling from high like mana for rivers,
hand-dug wells, reservoirs, and mountain streams.
The squishy, peculiar consistency
of sleet or...
Cinema, religion, and poetry
are all a form of fiction like novels,
painter's portraits, music, philosophy.
Well-written history alone travels
with a solid factual foundation:
collected, analyzed, categorized.
Yet historical interpretation...
For Christmas, let us put aside grudges,
gripes, and obsession—or piquant outrage
at this or that bauble blinking in eye.
Fellowship breathes at the heart of Christmas
when love is...
Snowflakes dither in ambivalent air,
blowing here and there, every-which-way, float-
ing like paper and melting on eyelids,
nestling on my...
