Will I turn gold when I’m old?
September-end when colors blend
Gold leaf among the green
Autumn new, a few are seen
Inner rhyme and summer out of time
Autumn equinox, Autumn’s door unlocks
Turn back the clocks
Walk in, the room invites a friend
At the end, low clouds their flurries send
Celebrate Christ’s natal date
In far December
The young sun is an ember
Then it will climb
Toward new Springtime
Dragonflies
With spheroid eyes
Hunt mosquitoes
Tiny flies
Microworlds
We seldom see
Wings unfurled
Glides easily
We are too
A microworld
We also show
Wings unfurled
To disappear
Our winter near?
Opaque except to mystery
Spring wherein there was no sound
Or movement, smooth as mercury,
God looked at the silent pond
Nor was there underneath a toss
Of scintillation or of mass
Until He drew his hand across
The face and then a flutter passed
I heard the sound of whistled notes
Ecstatic and amphibian,
An alternation of the flutes
That counterpointing soar and blend
Through the broken surface rise
Globes that drip the new-born sun,
The wings and keels of dragonflies—
And then creation has begun
Great Blue Heron
Lift your crooked wings
Your crooked neck
Slate grey-blue as winter storms
Your swept back spread
Of tapered wing is wide
Rise!
Air currents of the moving stream
Uplift you
Light,
So large a bird
To lift and glide
Evening flows inside you
As you meet
The downstream flowing dusk
Now
As one you step but once
And stand and sleep
As one
No other but yourself
My envied one
Hans Sachs the Meistersinger
The cricket in the maple tree
One more would make a trio
Cicada’s voice con brio?
Late summer nights, the dampness
Thick and warm, suggest
A waiting soloist
Will someone sing?
Hans Sachs we need you now
Wise, humble and compassionate
The hammer and the mark
To fill the dark
Your cell is being painted so we’re moving you
Temporarily until the walls are white,
When you are returned it will be furnished new—
Dislocated inmate, don’t take fright
Pictures that you loved will be unframed, reframed,
The likenesses of everyone you’ve met,
Those whom you have loved and those you have defamed,
Those you loved and damaged with regret
Furnishings, enjoyments, songs of wasted time,
Sofas, chairs, and hard three-legged stools,
Cabinets containing jugs of soured wine,
Diplomas, medals, portrait busts of fools
Painters and the layers on of golden foil,
Artisans of sapphire parquet,
Glaziers of the crystal windows, all are loyal
Workers in the workshops of the day
When the cell is finished they will call your name,
The door will open musically by sound—
Better than before, the wine unsoured, blame
And praise discarded elsewhere, every wound
Everything you knew before you will not see,
But leading to the garden from the room
Which has no ceiling but the sky and walls of three
Instead of four—O death where is your tomb?
Night, the cricket and cicada choir,
Dusk is flowing into sweet late summer
Veiled the sumac and Virginia creeper
Which by daylight fail into a crimson
More beautiful in their degeneration,
Oppose the green in generous contention
Day by day the sun declines and less
The noon parabola, the days regress
Clear and bright the sky in loveliness
This enough, to see it and no more
To know what final flourishing is for
The secrets that we keep in trust restore
Lighthouse watch above the sea—
The visible was perishing
Invisibility the moving wave
I saw a child whose brain discharged
Lightning struck her frontal lobe
Time and time again
A big storm spun the hemispheres
Where surgeons cracked her cloud-white skull
To see the waves emerging there
Like some helpless ancient gods
They slammed the trapdoor over her
Above the central whirling storm
It will take a year to stop
Or else she will be ever wrecked
And nothing can be done
There was a dark room, walls she sat among
A crowd of six
Who watched her as she waited
Do not look at me, but darken me
For the scar across my head is long and deep
Let no one to see it
But four were there, held up their wings
Kept vigil on the white-capped sea
Not helpless but the ones who cry like sea birds
The fulmar and the albatross
The petrel and the kittiwake
That drink salt water
Two days not more the sea birds dipped and drank
Sipped the ocean, spun aloft
And sailed above the hurricane
And then she said: put on the light
Part the blackened shades, let them depart
Like wings above a wave
I saw and heard myself, for I keep watch—
The storm was still
And the child spoke
These are four birds: the fulmar and the albatross
The petrel and the kittiwake
That drink salt water
You’d better be nice to people while you can—
That’s a corollary to love your neighbor,
Love God
Pray for them when they’re dead
For the dead can pray for you
From Heaven
Be kind and gentle to all things
And when you take an apple from a twig
Say “I love you”
Say thank you for the ripe unworldly taste—
Say “God, I love you too”
Return to Him