Twelve Rusty Screws

Twelve Rusty Screws

Despite all legends of St. Peters gate, its
  Robed cartoon mensches doing stand up on clouds,
  Winged baby heads hummingbird about,
The book says very little about it,
  No postcards from that great beyond,
  One is ‘with God,’ so simply and profound

Repairing the Church, these
  Plexiglas panes that protect the Sainted windows
  Have hundred year screws loose,
Which we remove, drilling new holes,
  Then  replace them with the shiny new,
  Each generation has its work to do

When all is done,
  I’ve the old rusty screws shepherded in my pocket,
I take them out, lie in my hand,
  No small ceremony, just I remember them,
Then toss all to the recycling bin,
  Wherein they roll and rest in peace within,
Until their final reclamation in that molten integration,
  That whom, that what, that where,
     That whence of which all came 

Old Pond Abide

Old Pond Abide

In this ground hog summer,
  Near seventy in the sun,
The melt back has left the old pond
  Blue – Green, aqua marine,
A dynastic china jade which perhaps
  One could dip a ladel in and 
Pour out the cherry blossom Fu Dog Dragon,
  World held in his paw

Breathe deep, old pond, abide,
  Released from winters grip, all Nature’s still asleep,
Your turtles, your bread kissing fry, arriving ducks,
  The diving kingfish, your great blue heron, all wait, 
While the Empress of Creation bides weeks more before
  She will cup and incarnate you,
     In her glass menagerie hands

Hands Off Robert Hayden

Hands Off Robert Hayden

The educated Negro is a prickly pear,
  Do not engage him naïve,
Pull on your Sunday garden gloves,
  Speak mindful, have care,
And respecting his indignant thorns
  You’ll find he’s a rose to share

For he was born to that partitioned world
  Where a cross ‘n’ word was a trigger,
Observant young child, he’d cower and hide,
  Until he found his father’s love was bigger
Than his faint and youthful heart could hold,
  Deferring confrontation,
He sowed the seeds of Jim Crow iniquity
  In the fertile gardens of his mind 

When that near-sighted boy grew to a man,
  A conjugated wizard,
He raised up that unrighteous crop,
  All hateful scarring segregation’s pains,
And cast them out as the demons in his poems,
  To break all free men’s chains

And now? 
  Is it his birthday? Did he die this day?
No, jus’ I remember,
  Feel I ought wright a sumpthin’ mo’

Yet - February, history,
  Was I invited to the party?
Might I tread all wrong your negro streets, 
  Who bid me welcome in this town?

Deep breath, and yes perhaps

Todays black poets, in his mien,
Don’t need me whitewash’n his name

Good Night PyeongChang

Good Night PyeongChang

Plant your bulbs and seeds and things,
Next to dream of what shall rise in Spring

Heavy gray eyelids, pumped up
By the natch of noradrenaline
  I am in the zone at
Two thirty in the morning,
I watch Sweden concede in the seventh end,
  They were just tired, no need to go ten,
Quarter to 3am, Korea conquers Japan
With one more 1-0-1-0-1 to their 0-1-0-1-0,
  Brush by with an extra whisker

Tired, so tired, I dream of sleeping,
  On expanding sheets of glacial ice,
Giant boulders flying,
  Knock-a-block

I don’t know when I awoke to the sky blue of
  Late February, 2018, blinding sun and bizarrely warm day,
Rumbles of mountains bowling, distant, granite,
  Beyond the sky’s horizon

Good night PyeongChang,
  ‘til Olympic glaciers run again,
I will plant my bulbs and seeds and things,
  Next to dream of what shall rise in Spring

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JM6vp4r_hvM

At Valentine’s Office

At Valentine’s Office

I lay the pink roses I bought,
  For her, but not for her,
On the window sill by the coat rack,
  Thinking, though without water,
They might still enjoy the afternoon sun,
  Perhaps their last

“Did you buy those flowers for her?”
  That’s a question no man answers directly,
So she asked again
  “Can I look at them?”

“Alright, but don’t parade them about,
   I need them kept a secret”
   
She picked up the bouquet as one would a baby,
  A a kitten, firmly, but adoring,
Cradling, nuzzling, smiling,
  Her fingers at their swaddling

I warned her kindly
“Don’t tear the wrapping,
  I need all intact tonight”

“They’re beginning to open,” she beamed,
“They feel warm from the window,
  And the scent!”

Then and there, the Office Girl,
  She could have been the Christmas Mary,
Holding that babe more special
  Than all the world,
Which, after a sigh, she placed
  Back on the sill, in that golden shaft of light,
As only a young woman endearing of
  A mans love for another can do

   

Why the Bishop Loves Sundays

Why the Bishop Loves Sundays

It’s Sunday!
  Can I get a Amen?
You can do better than that,
  C’mon, Amen!

I love football,
I mean I love football

When I was a child,
  My Father worked six days a week,
Saturdays too,
  And on Sunday, if there was a game,
He’d watch football

I’d watch with him

Now you couldn’t talk during football,
Except at commercials or
  Between plays,
But Sundays, football,
That was our time, that was my time
  To spend with my Father

So this Sunday we have this gospel,
Here’s this Jesus, just walkin’ around Galilee,
  “La dee-da…”
And he sees these men fishing in a boat,
So he says “Hey, follow me!”
  And just like that they quit their boats and go after him,
Why did they go?
  Next, a little while later, he comes across two more,
Fixing their nets with their Dad,
And them too, right there and then,
  They quit their nets and they go after him,
Who does that?

Would you?

Now, I don’t know about you,
But I loved spending
  Sundays with my Father,
And if I had the chance, yeah,
I’d quit my job too, just to spend
  One more Sunday with my Father

It’s Sunday!
  Can I get a Amen?
You can do better than that,
  C’mon, Amen!

I love football,
I mean I love football

When I was a child,
  My Father worked six days a week,
Saturdays too,
  And on Sunday, if there was a game,
He’d watch football,
  I’d watch with him

Now you couldn’t talk during football,
Except at commercials or
  Between plays,
But Sundays, football,
That was our time, that was my time
  To spend with my Father

So this Sunday we have this gospel,
Here’s this Jesus, just walkin’ around Galilee,
  “La dee-da…”
And he sees these men fishing in a boat,
So he says “Hey, follow me!”
  And just like that they quit their boats and go after him,
Why did they go?
  Next, a little while later, he comes across two more,
Fixing their nets with their Dad,
And them too, right there and then,
  They quit their nets and they go after him,
Who does that?

Would you?

Now, I don’t know about you,
But I loved spending
  Sundays with my Father,
And if I had the chance, yeah,
I’d quit my job too, just to spend
  One more Sunday with my Father

Lark and the Moon Whistle

Lark and the Moon Whistle

I scraped at white edged driveway ice
  With my heavy shovel blade,
Late upon an afternoon hour
  Near the close of cold today

Dusted with powder snow and tossed sand,
  The drive lay bare before the dusk,
Dry white with winter ice salt,
  Evaporated, leaving a salt residue calculus
Upon the drive to seem it too was snow,
  And aglow by the light of an unseen moon

When on a barkless branch of the old oak,
  On a limb faded dry and white as bone,
Began a horned lark to sing,
  Warm coloratura tones

In conversation with, of all things, the horizon’s rising moon!
  Who feckless, face-full, and antipodal the setting sun,
Rose with pursed lips, as if to mime, returning in kind,
  Its recitatives to the bird

Which I could not hear,
  I could hear the lark, oh yes, though (I am sure)
Moon whistles cannot sound the black vacuum of space,
  Nor could any lark song ever greet those cratered ears

Yet all the same,
  From lark to moon
    From moon to I
      Then I to lark

Our song round tripped its course once more,
  And we were home again