Poems -> Poems

Personal webpages are self-indulgent by definition. And so, some poems:

The runes I cast:
scattered stones telling the story and future
of my scattered life.

Above the clouds the sky is blue, they say.
Don’t listen to them,
or at least put them to one side,
and let the rain fall.

The end of a maple leaf is more beautiful that that of a nail.
But it is the nail that holds our houses together.

The wheel touches the road only an instant before going on.
It is the not touching that makes it useful.

How long is the road home?
How many years have you walked it?
“If you lived here, you’d be home now.”
Make the road your home.

These old eyes can’t always read distant signs.
I guess their meanings from the shapes and lengths of the words,
not knowing if I’m right till I’m quite near
If I’m wrong, then I’m lost - -
Well, lost isn’t such a bad thing.

The cold metal rails cut the curving land.
The dead wooden ties press down the soft dirt.
The spat-out smoke blackens the sky.
But oh, the journey!

Rough rubs smooth with time.
Grey soft stone walls in the woods
were rocks dragged with curses
out of fields being cleared.
Beauty from tired muscles and frustration.
Rough rubs smooth with time.

Today’s clouds will tonight cover the stars.
But if one should shine through a wind-torn hole
how beautiful its sparkles will be!

Even though the hedge would be easy enough to push through,
the gateway, with white posts and grey lattice sides, is beautiful,
and is used out of courtesy.

Waiting long years for my life to begin,
and me all the while living it.

Grey sky, grey sea,
join without seam.

Wind-blown pine needles
left behind after a storm
fall on me like rain.

The sun going down
casts pine-shadows on the lake.
Listen: the loon calls!

Rain on my windshield
swept away by the wipers
falls a second time.

Framed by my window
the evening sky has eyebrows:
two white pine branches.

Poetry is in the thing observed,
not in the poet,
who writes it down.

The hard part of poetry is the seeing;
the words, like Jill, come tumbling after.

The birds’ songs sound confused in the false dawn,
but the sun still understands them,
and comes.

Being a child of culture more than nature,
the flow I strive to become one with
is rush-hour traffic.

All the room
you will ever need
is the inside of an acorn
rotting under a tree.

I saw a wonder today:
fire riding water,
speaking across a valley
from ridge to ridge.

So much to pay
for this morning sun:
one less day.

My poems are single sentences:
full stop, and nothing more.

When a poem gets longer
than one sentence,
I don't know when to stop.

A flower, however small,
can have its beauty;
a poem, however short,
its charm.

A one sentence poem
is still a gift,
even though small.

I could always say
that they're unravelled haikus:
these one-sentence poems.

Seasons

So many of them
the snowflakes which had fallen –
where are they now?

New birds are seen -- the same ones every year,
the robin with blazing breast.
New flowers are seen -- the same ones every year,
the daffodil with blazing blossoms.
A new Spring appears -- the same one every year,
the Sun blazing higher in the sky,
the warmth burning in our bones.

Grey clouds in summer
hiding the sun, pouring rain
are tearing at my heart.

A fall-flamed maple:
my heart cries,
"Not yet, not yet."

No one ever sees
the last robin of fall.

I’d thought the mewing gulls sounded perfect on the summer’s beach,
but in the leaf-carrying wind I realize I was wrong.

The maple leaves
are a blanket of fire,
to keep the ground warm
through the winter.

The geese are flying
over the maples
which I wish to praise.

With each leaf fallen,
slipping calmly, self-willed,
or wind-torn, forcefully,
more of you is revealed,
no longer blending, one into another,
with the surrounding trees,
identity lost.
Now you are shown as you are,
the framework beneath the leaf-skin,
the growth of years behind a summer's production,
truth without decoration,
the pattern gives form to the leaves.

Winter snow to give water for summer.
Spring’s showers to help them become plants.
Summer’s rains to continue the plant’s growth.
Why this fall storm, if not the world mourning its losses?

Weathermen
Snow, sleet, rain:
They call it “precipitation,”
as if they do not know what it is.
I know it.
It fell on me this morning:
Snow, sleet, rain.

Late November.
The geese are in motion.
The trees are bare.
Death is all around, and it’s so cold.
It gets dark early;
I climb out of bed into it each morning
and drive home from work in it each evening.
The gray sky never brightens,
the grass which cushioned my bare feet in the summer
cracks brittle under my shoes.
The world is harsh,
one minute withholding itself,
the next striking with more cold:
Nothing makes sense.
Summer’s soft beauty is gone,
Winter’s crystal beauty not yet come:
and I see no beauty here.
People are meant for light,
and home, and warmth,
so no one would think worse of me if that’s what I prayed for.
But the thought comes that between beauty and beauty there should still be beauty,
that this time of locking up for winter must have beauty,
even if I don’t see it,
a fierce beauty,
a beauty of emptiness.
Empty of summer and winter, and fall’s produce, and spring's promise,
this time strikes without pity
and won’t help me understand.
Unless in between summer and winter spirits, and after the autumn spirits,
there are spirits of empty, dark, and cold.
Perhaps they are themselves cold and dark and empty.
Perhaps offerings would not fill their emptiness.
They are just who they are.
If I wish to understand them I will have to stop trying to fill the emptiness
to light the darkness
to warm the cold.
They come on their own terms or not at all.
I stand in the empty, cold dark and wait for them,
empty, cold, and dark:
May they come and fill my emptiness with theirs.

Yule, and from the suddenly illuminated houses
the ringing of bells
and the singing of people
and the spreading glow of lights (flame and electricity),
push the cold back into its emptiness,
leaving the only darkness
the shadow cast by light.

All through the longest night my heart struggles to believe in light’s return,
and perhaps by dawn has succeeded.

Science says that cold isn’t actually a thing,
but my body disagrees,
going out the door,
this December evening.

Snow flies around me,
blown in the winter night’s wind.
Man, it’s friggin’ cold!

The spruce’s boughs
are a roof
thatched with snow.

From distant houses
there are lights shining on me
alone in the snow.

Snow softens the blow of winter’s hammer,
beauty payment for death.

Clouds which fall,
frozen,
onto my lawn,
don’t last much longer
than they would have if they would have stayed
in the sky.

The spirits of snow riding,
about me,
flakes to the waiting earth.

My feet leave prints in the snow
which will be melted by tomorrow noon.

This winter snowfall
that covers the dried-up plants
is the sap of spring.

Winter Trees

The leaves we loved all summer
had hidden the shattering beauty of the branches.

Trees without leaves aren’t dead skeletons
but the trees’ truth,
now revealed.

Leaves move with the wind.
Bare branches move on their own,
dancing with the grey sky.

The trees kindly bare their branches
so winter’s weak sun can shine through.

Pray with me, wind-stripped trees,
raising your branches with me,
traced against the darkening sky:
speak with me of winter.

The trees have withdrawn from each other
their interlocking leaves
and stand, stripped,
against the evening sky.

To Her
It I should come upon Thee unawares,
bathing in Thy pool, O Goddess,
Do not treat me roughly.
I am no impious Actaeon,
come to ravish.
Thy nymphs may keep their innocence
and Thy sanctity remain unstained.
It is for Your presence I am thirsting,
come from the great desert.
And if Your hand will not be stayed,
I am still content.
It is enough to have felt Your touch
and to be taken in by You at last.

"The show must go on" --
and so it will
even if some actors must leave the stage
without applause.

I know many things --
there, I have said it.
Let those who wish call me arrogant;
it is a hard-earned prize, paid for dearly,
of which I am proud.

But when I am among those
who gather at parties, making pleasant conversation
who pass each other on the streets, with friendly greeting
who at concerts sing along freely, and sway with their hands upraised,
the energy coursing and tingling inside,
then I envy those who know the ways,
kept secret from me,
who watches without.

"Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow ...
a tale told by an idiot."
And so we sink into the sun
looking for light,
looking for the source.
But like Gollum under the mountain
we find there are no roots,
no roots worth seeking:
only darkness.

My youth is
fairy gold
turned to leaves,
blown away
on that wind
which doesn't die.

(The next two poems were written when I was in college and in Air Force ROTC)
War Poem I
In the beginning was the war.
And we fought to end wars
And we killed to save the world.

The war ended
and in time begat a son,
whose whose face was grey,
the grey of mud and death,
whose name was "war."

So once again we fought.
And, when at last it was won,
we joined together to stop all wars,
to form "one brotherhood of man."

Oh, wars were started still
but the brotherhood stopped them,
as a mother might end a game,
by sending the children to bed.
But they were not finished,
only stopped,
and the hate they bred lives on.

And so we wait, we who fly,
the warriors of our age.
For once again to mount our steeds
and leap, screaming, into the sky.

We go forth not as those of old
who fought with honor those like themselves:
we kill the women, and the children, and the old men,
hiding in a shelter, waiting.

We will survive:
no noble death in battle for us.
We will return in victory,
as befits the warrior,
thinking of our families,
thinking of glory which we have not earned.

But we will have forgotten:
that as we killed, so did others:
we will be met by burning earth.

Someday, perhaps, we will meet them,
those who killed our wives, our lives.
We will ready our weapons,
poise for the kill,
and stop --
And pity,
knowing that we share
with these our fellow warriors
that which all men share,
that which all men takes,
that one end of all our dreams,
death.

For we are the Death-Makers,
and this is our lot --
to live when all we love is dead,
destroyed by our own hand.

War Poem II: A Composition in Three Parts
Part I:
Dragons are there still,
but the swords are all gone:
where valor once sufficed
we use missles now,
Yet where valor won,
over us the dragons fly.

Part II:
Was it ever true,
was honor found,
withing this game of death.
Did we ever see nobility
in this game of gross absurdity,
that leads the youth to waste their lives
on the dreams of elder statesmen?

Part III:
Youth wants not war:
it wants to laugh.
Youth wants not war:
it wants to love.
But the tune is called
and down we go,
dancing widdershins
into the night.

Fedelm
A woman in red
standing on a chariot,
speaks:
"This thing you do
will end in death."
But still I live
following the tracks
knowing the end
which I did not need to hear
from her.

Cú Chulainn
Standing on the border of a land
to which I am not native born
defending a people my adopted own
ford after ford
fight after fight
against friends for foes with whom I was born
blood flowling freely.

(I heard the first sentence of this poem over the PA at a mall.)
A little lost boy in a black leather jacket
has been found by the fountain in the center of the mall.
He just stayed behind, for a moment, to watch
the water go up and the water come down.
He stopped there to watch, for a moment (that’s all),
but a moment’s enough for your parents to go.
And they did, while he stayed and the water went up
and he stayed a while more, while the water came down,
and he turned to say, “Look! See what I’ve found!”
But no one was there --at least no one he knew.
So the little lost boy in the black leather jacket
asked the man in the booth to send out a call
that a little lost boy in a black leather jacket
could be found by the fountain in the center of the mall.

Cabbages, with kings, too
I met a man on a wasteland plain
and asked him what he knew.
But all he did was sit and smile
and gaze with fixéd view.

I asked of him what he could tell
of days and men of old.
And sadly now he seemed to smile:
he spoke, and this he told:

Of days, of nights, of things long dead,
of long forgotten songs,
of men who thought to save the world,
of never-righted wrongs.

He seemed to speak most urgent then,
and in his eyes I saw
that this one had betrayed a dream
that at his soul did gnaw.

I left him there, upon his plain,
and slowly walked away
and never asked again of man
what makes so long the day.

Fragments (unconnected)
To see a captive goddess stand
in chains and bound must make one weep.
And I must cry to see such waste,
and say goodbye, and leave in haste,
the rock that is but sand.

The man has taken off the mask
but slips another in its place.
We only for a moment see
what truth, if any, on his face.

If life's a never ending race,
I'm quickly tiring of the pace.
I look off cliffs, and think to fly,
or maybe jump, and maybe die.

I dared to love a goddess,
and this is my reward:
not that of a wizard with magical sword,
not that of a ruler upon a high throne,
but that of a fool, walking alone.

The wind’s roaring across the ocean in a storm
are words in a language I don’t speak,
a song’s notes I can’t reach.

Watching giraffes flow effortlessly across the savannah
I envy the smooth, uninterrupted motion,
while I fall and catch myself,
that old biped gait.

Odysseus Poems

We read of his wanderings and pity Ulysses.
But sometimes the road is so straight
that what I wouldn't give for a Scylla or two,
or a Cyclopes to outwit,
or a Siren to sail past,
singing secret songs.

We sang in the camps at night the feats of the day,
rehearsing for Homer his long-told tales.
And each day we danced in the battle steps of future days to come,
when our fame, imperishable, would guide the feet of future men,
These our songs, these our dances, we left for you,
these our tales for you, these our lives.

Those who mocked my cleverness, calling it cowardice,
were happy enough to hide in a horse's belly
outside the walls their bravery had not breached in ten years' fighting.
Who, then, defeated the forces of Troy?
Who brought, at last, an end to a blood-filled decade?
A clever mind is sharp as bronze
and no shield may deflect it.

I could hold my place in the battle line
when we fought before the ships
when the Trojans attacked at night.
Oh, I knew a strategem when I saw one!
With spear and sword, bronze ringing on bronze,
I drove the foe back.
I could stand upright, head high,
among the warriors,
my skill undoubted.
Which of them could stand with me in cleverness?
They but followed the gods' commands:
I outwitted even their sons.
The robbers deplored the thief
who stole glory from them with guile.

Agamemnon was a monster,
killer of his daughter,
Ajax a fool, made mad by pride,
Achilles a spoiled child, pouting in his tent,
and I a master deceiver.
How could such as we bring noble Priam down?

Without Achilles Troy could not be defeated,
and so I lied.
Without Philoctetes and his bow Ilium’s topless towers would not fall,
and so I lied again.
Without a stratagem we could never have passed the gates in the high wall,
and so with a Greek-bearing gift I lied yet again.
The success of the warrior troop was based on my lies;
without deception they would never have won through.
They needed my lies, all those bronze-weaponed heroes.
Why then do I wander,
with them already safely home?

Crafty Odysseus had nothing to set against the scheming god but his wits.
And the wits of the most crafty of men were barely enough to save himself;
certainly not enough to save those around him, who went to their deaths in his adventures.
Each night around the fire, or dozing at their oars, did none of them ever look around at the dwindling company and think, “I’m next?”
Did none ever think, “It’s Odysseus Poseidon hates; let the god take him – it would need just a small push to topple him into his wine-dark sea.”
The tales don’t tell us whether they did, but then tales are like that.
But I would be surprised if they had. How could they?
A group of men, at sea, wandering, homeless – they were each others’ homes.
You might as well expect someone to sacrifice their child to save themselves.
And most of them all, Odysseus knew this. Each night, awake long after all but the watch were asleep,
each time he took his turn at the oars, or looked to see what lay between himself and the horizon,
he must surely have thought of it.
He must surely have been rolling it over and over with the waves.
He must surely have been thinking, “It’s me he wants. I would let them go if they would let me go. Their love will kill them.”
Crafty Odysseus in his boat, whose desperation grew as the company dwindled,
and the oars sang in their locks, and the ropes groaned in the wind, and the water slapped against the hull, and the spray dried on his salted skin,
piled scheme upon scheme to bring them harbor-safe
and marveled at the craftiness of the Shaker of Worlds,
outwitting him cruelly.

"Wandering" is an unfair name for it,
my labyrinthine journey home,
from island to island, blown by unlucky winds,
washed by waves sent by the blue-maned lord.
"Wandering?" No, that would grant me too much thought,
too much will
of one who could choose not to travel in a straight line.
Not wandering, not traveling directly home,
I journey aimlessly,
for surely the aims of those who befuddle my way
were long ago spent.

How pretty the stars
in the Mediterranean night.
How pretty they must be
in an Ithakan sky.

I sleep on the oar bench,
my dreams woven at night
unravelled in the day.

What a trick you played on old Wheel-Eye,
robbing him of sight with a thrust of the hardened wood shaft.
Clever man, a clever ploy.
Only No One left to bear the tale.

You won't see Ithaka
until all your ships are flotsam,
broken to matchsticks;
until all your comrades are dead,
who stood with you before the walls on the plains of Troy,
until the sea spews you up naked on a foreign shore
bereft of all but your treasured wit.
Where did it get them?
It will get you home.

It was they, in the end, I suppose,
who sealed their own fate,
slaughtering the cattle of swift-running Helios
while I dreamt in accurséd sleep;
their deeds, their hands, that brought them down.
So much I had done, and all for naught
their own sins damning them.
But I was their commander,
I was their chief, I the king on whom glory is heaped:
on me must all condemnation be laid as well.
My rescue must not be counted as success.

I only wanted to sleep,
but a commander must never sleep
or lose his command.

I was washed up naked on a sandy shore
to be discovered by a king’s daughter and her maidens,
come to wash.
Naked, bereft, alone --
nothing left that I took to Troy
and nothing taken from it.
Just myself, as if that was all,
as if I should be grateful that I didn’t have to pay with life too.
But grey-eyed maiden, why did they have to pay?
You who see all, why couldn’t you have seen them,
and stopped them
before they committed blasphemy.
They were hungry sailors
and you cursed them for a sin you could have prevented.
Is it so much pleasure to punish,
more than to prevent?
For as long as I live I must see the Sun,
and remember my men whose death it proclaimed,
the final god whose hatred brought me here,
who beats down on my salt-caked skin
while I lie here on the sand,
naked, bereft, alone,
with all of them gone.

Human flotsam from a storm-smashed ship
lies washed up, naked, on the shore,
all that is left of a dozen crews,
all that is won by ten years' journey.

They wanted me, they or their fathers,
to marry them, or at least just to stay --
Circe, Calypso, Nausicaa.
I had a wife though, and the point of my wandering was my return to her;
to Penelope, my Ithaka, my home;
she waiting, I wandering,
each lacking.

Why did you keep going Wanderer?
The lotuses were sweet.
Circe begged you to stay.
I'm sure Alcinous' daughters would have welcomed the presence
of the naked man they'd found washed up on the beach.
"While my ships wove their net between isands,
and futilely undid it again,
she wove her tapestry each day,
and each night picked it apart with flying fingers.
I wove desparately, hope dying,
she unwove desperatey, keeping faith:
How could I not hurry home,
how not hunger to see her again
to touch those hands tired with weaving and unweaving,
to mine, hardened by rope and oar?"

They would have died right there,
eaten by a giant
(as some of their number were)
if not for your craftiness,
Crafty One.
But they died anyway,
on Circe's island,
or torn away by Scylla,
or in that final storm when they thought themselves home at last.
How few reach their final goal?
How many grow old, dozing at their hearth?
And those who do, what have they lost,
what has died to them,
what in them,
who for them?
Success was return to Ithaka:
was it worth the death of friends?

Between Scylla and Charybdis was no proverb, let me tell you,
when I came to the choice,
when the screams of those men tore the sky.
Some for the rest was the bargain I made.
Useless: only I returned.

When my bow rang in the hall,
its arrows piercing the inhospitable guests
who had so unwelcomely pressed upon my wife and son,
I sang with it a battle song,
learned on the plains that ring about Troy.
That bow was mine; one only I could draw,
and that blood was theirs, which only they would shed,
the only blood shed in the hall that day
as I cut them down like wheat
with my harvesting sickle arrows.
My arms were strong then, and I used them well,
meting out punishment on those who had stayed behind:
one last glorious deed, even if performed against boorish cowards.
And my battle rage frightened my faithful wife
until I reassured her with my intimate knowledge of our marital bed.
The blood still stains the hall which I hallowed that day
to Zeus, protector of strangers;
I who had come as a stranger to my own home,
to know and be known again,
wonderously changed, but stiil old Odysseus.
My dog knew me, and my bow as well,
as I claimed again my rightful place
with the thrilling of arrows and the sound of the string,
my instruments to accompany battle deeds
which would one day be sung by a poet who was blind,
who saw them well,
who knew the truth of my fight that day
with arrows, with bow, against human targets
become sacrificial sheep.

When Odysseus reached home,
twenty years older,
and more,
worn by war and wandering,
his wife didn't know him.
"Prove it," she said;
"Prove you're my husband."
He answered:
"In ten years of battle,
and ten years of long journey,
our marriage bed never moved."
With opened eyes she kissed him home.

When I left for Troy I couldn't have known
that I would be ten years at war.
Nor, when I left Troy behind, that I would be ten years more at sea.
And now the years stretch out before me,
their end again unknown.

I'll admit it:
when the sea was smooth
and schools of fish shimmered just below the surface
and dolphins sported around our ships,
I was glad to be there,
sailing, with my brothers around me.
Even the rough oars felt good in my hands
as we sang in rhythm
voices joined together to guide the rowing.
It was good to be among such men,
all of them gone.

My grey-eyed goddess was just strong enough to keep my alive
when sun and sea conspired against me.
But those men who sailed with me:
were there no gods with attention to spare
to bring them, too, safely home?
To Athena’s altar I shall guide my flocks;
let those of other gods be as empty
as the homes of those left behind,
their fires as cold.

They were babies, some unborn even, when the ships set out,
carrying their fathers to war.
They cluster about me, asking for tales
of the men who sailed with me, fought with me,
whom they cannot ask for stories;
stories of those left behind before the walls
or on scattered islands
or at the bottom of ther sea,
their bodies rolling like waves.
I could tell them anything and they would believe me.
I tell them what they want to hear;
how each of their fathers was a hero who died with glory,
with laughter half-formed in their mouths.

Do you ask my judgement as I sit in the hall
with my rod of office held in agéd hands?
Listen, then; I shall give you such wisdom as I know:
that a man grown old, his goal attained, is already dead
that a royal crown is not as sweet as hair washed in salt
that my sought-for home is my cremation fire, ashes in my mouth
that I would give all of this for a hope unfufilled in a wandering heart.
You have asked, I have answered.
Now go, and leave me here, I who had thought this would be bliss
and who now dwell at night on the frustrated hope
that comes from dreams attained.

When I sailed for Troy I couldn't have known
that I would ten years at war.
Nor did I know when I left behind the battle-scarred plain
that I would be ten years more at sea.
And now the years stretch out before me,
their end again unknown.

After so many years asleep
the bitter taste of lotus flowers is all
that remains to comfort my cooling years,
embers unsmoored.

Wandering o'er long,
I find the wandering sucked quite into my belly,
and although my longed for home is attained,
I listen still in the quiet nights
for the change of wind, the ebb of tide,
that will give the signal of the proper time for setting out again.
Fearing that unwelcome sound, I gather myself closer to the hearth
and draw from it what warmth might be gained
from its once wildly blazing coals.
Filling my veins with its moving forms,
I set sail again on its living flames.

Hated sea, which kept me so long from home,
from my longed-for wife,
what brings me again and again to your shore,
to gaze across the waves
as if I could see the distant isles of my wanderings,
the waves a galley drum calling me back to the oars.

When I see the port filled with spectral ships
I will board and set sail,
with Hermes for helmsman,
with no other oars than my own.

To hear the Sirens' song
was almost worth the wandering.
I know I shall hear it again,
when the cattle-thief plays it ahead of me
on Leto's son's borrowed lyre,
leading me down the road.

A winnowing fan, they will say,
of my unknown oar,
no ship in sight to tempt or taunt me.
And so far from the sea I will lie down at last,
and die shipless on shore.

After all the years I've spent at sea,
how odd it will be to die on land,
my ashes laid in some old tomb
to be remembered there, so far from waves.
But my soul will rise on the pyre's smoke
to sail with the stars in their unending round
to wander again, without goal or home,
away from that so dearly found.

Remember this when you dream to set out like Odysseus,
the long-exploring:
it wasn't his idea.
He was god-driven.
Do not go unless you have a god at your back,
nipping at your heels.

Of the ship's company that set out for Troy,
only one (damn him!) returned.
Some fell in battle.
Some monsters killed.
Some were drowned by the Earth-shaking Lord of Waves.
Most died nameless, cheated of the immortal fame they had sought.
But I am Elpenor: I fell off Circe's roof, an inglorious death.
But you know my name.

She mourned, Persephone; yes how she mourned,
when she lost you, stolen beneath the ground
by the dark god, king of shades,
a maiden taken, ravished away.
She tore her hair, your goddess mother,
and raged at the gods, and starved mankind,
refusing to let grow the grain.
Consumed with fury she rejected their pleas
when they came, the immortals, to beg of her,
refusing all, one goal in sight, one demand made, your safe return.
But what of you? Did he treat you well,
that grave god, there in his land of shadows?
What of him, the desperate immortal,
enclosed and shunned, in his bronze-walled land?
What promises did he make, what wooing peformed,to win your love?
A maiden in title, a maiden in fact, with a clinging mother
might well grasp the chance to wed
and sit on a throne beside a strong husband.
When you held those seeds there, red in your hand,
did you know?
And, torn between adulthood and a beloved mother,
did you yet eat them willingly, eagerly, even, knowing their end,
taking the chance to seize your fate;
bound, it is true, but by your own choice?
Pomegranate seeds are sweet, with a sour edge.

Palinurus
Washed up on a beach in a foreign land,
I lie naked, my bones exposed to the sun.
Far from my birthplace, far from fabled Rome,
my flesh, decaying, mingles with the sand,
and Pergamus is reborn.

The cold is coming:
I know this for sure.
Each year it has come
and each year gone away.
But a cold is coming that will stay,
and not turn to warmth again.
My bones know this,
my ageing bones wait.

I lose these things, and these,
and yet again more:
the wind through broken windows.

This city deserves as fine a poem
as fields or trees.
But I, who can not call it home,
can’t hope to please
the spirits here,
with anything of mine.

(This is a song written by Bill DeMarco and me. Ask me to sing it some time.)
Bury My Bones: A Country and Westron Song
A soldier of Gondor lay dying
out on the Pelennor plain
and as I drew near he was crying
the words of this plaintive refrain:

Chorus:
Oh, bury my bones in Minas Tirith,
lay me under the stone.
Bury my bones in Minas Tirith,
and don't let the orcs dig me up.

Bury me deep in Rath Dinen,
lay be down on my bier.
There I will be the envy of men,
right next to Denethor's pyre.

Chorus

Bury me next to Aragorn, king,
who people call the Elfstone.
He helped to get rid of that awful ring:
I know I won't be alone.

Chorus

Gandalf will write my funeral song,
Queen Arwen will sing
'bout my labors hard and long
in the War of the Ring.

Chorus

Bad Poem
Breaking down he looses an ocean of tears
that cascade down over his face,
and, riding the flow, there appears a salmon,
swimming its way over his cheeks
towards his chin.
Then suddenly, with no directional signal,
it reverses its path and upstream it swims
towards a nostril (seeking what? seeing safety? sexual release?),
the left nostril,
the one nearest his heart.

My ancestors came on leaking boats,
and fell to their knees,
making grateful prayer,
and, swearing their journeys done,
never wandered again.
Whence, then, this song in me,
set to the rhythm of wave and tide’s flow?

“Branches” and “antlers” are the same word in French.
Abroad in the woods,
wandering,
I see that they’re right:
Your form in every tree.

The serpentine carousel loops around the pillars
and through its mysterious door,
and returns,
carrying the same damn bags
that aren’t mine.

Mound of Arbeth
Sit on this hill, they said,
Spend the night,
and see a wonder or go mad.

The stars have turned,
and Orion is high,
and I begin to wonder how to tell the difference.

The wind has blown my prayers away
and knocked over my libation
and extinguished my fire of offering.
And now it comes for my soul.

My net was cast, and drawn back empty
of all but the sound of her voice
filled with silences in which my words might fit.

You can't know what could come to you throught the fog
when you lie so still you feel each tap of the little waves against your little boat.
You can't know what could come to you from the water under your keel
as you wait with furled sail, with shipped oars,
with unset anchor, with a prayer dying in your mouth,
on a windless sea.

If two parallel lines meet at infinity,
perhaps there is still hope for you and me.

A long journey starts with a single step, they say.
But o how weary each one after that can be!

Tourists from Italy
Tourists from Japan
stand on a plain in Wiltshire,
saying, “So this is it.”
They take their pictures and go home to show their photos –
“See, here it is. We went to Stonehenge.”
And back in England,
under a grey sky stand grey stones
that neither ask questions nor answer them.
Their souls are immune.

It’s all one piece.
The Universe is all one piece.
They tried to break it up,
with God up there (out there? anywhere but here.)
and us down below (where we belong).
But we knew better.
Something brought us back.
We went home again:
where else could we go?
“Hi, honey, we’re home.”
And honey took us back
and wrapped her arms around us
and it was as if we’d never left.

The Burning Times: An Apology
Taken to her death, uncomprehending:
What had she done to deserve this?
Entrapped by inquisitors’ lies,
the leading questions while under torture,
she butchered the truth in search of relief,
now found in the comforting rope at the stake.
Martyred to lies once, her questions remain unanswered,
sending echoes that sound through the years,
eagerly snatched up by us now.
Martyred to lies once, we martyr her again
in dreams of persecution sized to politics’ frame.
All movements need martyrs,
and we have claimed her,
martyred her to our ideology,
deprived her death of its own meaning.
Her life once robbed to fit another’s needs –
we steal her death to make it fit ours.
And still the echoes ring across the intervening years,
demanding recognition for themselves,
while we, blinded by our doctrines,
let them fade unanswered.

He hadn’t driven me to college alone before.
I don’t remember why he did this time.
Ninety minutes of driving; not long, but long enough.
My father’s drawer of memories slides open.
He takes one out and holds it for my inspection:
“This was me, when I was your age.
These were my dreams.
Did they come true?
Most did not, but I do not regret them.”
Over a third of my life gone since then,
I wrap my dreams carefully to protect them from time
and put them in my drawer to rest
until I can display them to my daughter.
“Most did not come true, but I do not regret.
What happened was more wonderful
than a dreaming child could have imagined.”

The spirit in the rock near my mother-in-law’s condo
has survived without offerings for too many years.
Sleeping, it waits, for someone to notice
who remembers old customs, who recites old prayers.

A stone in the forest that could not quite make the grade
but thinks itself a megalith, or at least one in training,
stands, topped with oak leaves, as an altar for a squirrel,
who makes his oblations and chants mystic phrases.

Reunion
Seeking asylum from a yard too well-lit
we find our refuge among the offices of the mighty
where your mahogany eyes might mock the walls
and prove the ascendance of love and laughter.

I walk, grumbling, up the stairs,
answering my daughter’s call.
She shows to me a mystery:
a perfect shadow on the wall.

A Rebuke
Why are you wearing a crown, Lady?
Liberty wears a soft cap,
or her hair is loose, flying behind as she advances.
When she has to, she dons Minerva's helmet,
and exchanges her torch for a spear --
how gladly she lays them down when their time is past!
But a crown, Lady?
A crown?

Maybe I didn't see water spirits playing on the pond.
Maybe it was just light bouncing off small waves,
But light doesn't laugh.

How the maple’s limbs
bowing to me in the rain
still block my way through.

It takes no effort to open your hand
and let the universe fall into it.

It takes no effort to open your hand
and let the universe fall out.

Only open your hand.

Make simplicity a presence,
not an absence.

When there's nothing to soften the bashing wind,
   you're moving in the right direction.
When nothing obstructs your sight,
   you're facing the right way.
When there's nothing to give shelter,
   you've found your home.
No roots, only growth.

In ancient times people thought the rainbow a messenger from the gods.
Now we know that it comes from the sun and moisture,
from fire and water.
What’s changed?

Turning wheel
each point the same.

The scrub oak on Cape Cod
possesses all the glory
of its soaring-canopied cousin
inland.

"Thank you" is the noblest prayer,
"Glory" next,
"Please" last of all.

Truth is the play,
we the actors,
the gods the critics.

There have been thousands of poems
written about the rain:
I refuse to add one more.

If all the wonders we seek were really in ourselves,
the species would become extinct.

My own eulogy
At last that mind that couldn't sleep,
yet cried for peace
rests.

Manannán at Desert Magic
In this dry land, no ocean,
his wheels still roll on grass,
still beneath them deep water,
beyond the shelf.
Still beneath them deep wisdom,
old, cold, no currents,
the dark troughs into which all dead things are pulled,
the only rain that withered land knows;
Serpents' lairs,
of snakes who hold the gathered in their coils,
withholding life-acquired wisdom in the death-ringed jaws.
Until his wheels-passing rumblings shake loose fragments of the dissolved past,
and draw them in the wake across this dry land
to our ocean selves.

Zen Poems

Nowhere to go,
nothing to be gained.
Since everything is by nature perfect
what need is there of salvation?

The cypress tree is still standing in the courtyard,
the very body of the Buddha.

The sun rises every morning:
and still no one wonders!

A sledgehammer's blow and it is unharmed.
A feather's stroke and it opens.
A thought and it crumbles.
A no-thought and it was never there.

If you smash the mirror you are left with many new ones,
shattered on the ground,
scattered in disarray --
no solution.

Manjushri’s sword cuts so finely
that all that’s left is the nothing that was there to begin with.

I ask Manjushri to cut through the illusions which block my way,
and to my horror the sword cuts straight through me.
Cleanly, with no resistance:
the valley mist dissipates when the sun rises.

The thinner the blade the sharper the knife.
A no-blade can slice through anything.

I fear Death:
Who fears?
What is feared?
Can Void fear Void?

Why be afraid, standing on the edge of the Abyss?
Void into Void is no fall at all.

Void above
Void below
Void around
Inside nothing but Void.
Void within Void within Void --
Void without number or limit.
Nowhere to place my feet,
and no feet to be placed.

Adrift in the Void,
my little boat sinking.

I face the dragon’s mouth,
filled with fear
and nothing else.