The trouble with writing a book about yourself is that you can't fool around. If you write about someone else, you can stretch the truth from here to Finland. If you write about yourself the slightest deviation makes you realize instantly that there may be honor among thieves, but you are just a dirty liar.--Groucho Marx
Juvenilia, 1946-1961
Ascension (After Hearing the Story of the Ascension--recited at age 3, recorded by a proud mother)
When Jesus went up
In the clouds in the sky
He didn't die.
He only went up there that day
To talk to God
In a strange way.
Phoebe Limericks (age 12, written after seeing an actual wedding announcement for Phoebe B. Peabody and William Beebe)
1
Phoebe B. Peabody Beebe
Feared she had contracted some TB,
So she went to the doc
Who gave her a shock
When he said, "Just a slight heebie jeebie."
2
Phoebe B. Peabody Beebe
Was feeling distressingly sleebe.
So she went up to bed,
And she laid down her head,
And a bedbug bit Phoebe B. Beebe.
After the Storm (age 17)
The long night is o'er, with its torrent and thunder,
The storm clouds so black have been driven asunder.
The wind roars, the sun pours its light through the clouds;
The earth has been freed from its stifling shrouds.
The church bell now peals from its steeple so fair,
The small bird now wheels through the clear morning air.
The light cheers; a man's fears are carried away,
And I greet with a glad heart this bright, perfect day.
College Poems, 1961-1967
The Fungus
The Fungus is a lowly form of Thallophytic Life.
Its hyphae, growing rapidly, become extremely rife
And penetrate the hapless host, much to its detriment--
O Fungus! Such a one as thou cannot be Heaven-sent!
The Fungus is omnivorous; it feeds on sundry things
Like shoes and bugs and fishes' tails, and dogs and cats and kings,
On roses and on rattlesnakes, on raincoats and on hams,
On ancient, rotting barrel staves and Grandma's finest jams.
The ugly, itching, burning thing we know as athletes' foot
Is really flesh being eaten by this little creature's "root."
It burrows, in, to our chagrin, where'er damp warmth is found
Depositing conidia 'mong all the cells around.
And although some be good to eat, too many poisonous are,
So we cannot be always sure what's good and what will mar
Our poor insides; but this I know, whatever else I say:
This wondrous little Thallophyte is here with us to stay!
The Alien
The layered swirls of frost obscure
The soundless home wherein
I seek a moment's entrance, sure
That warmth I'll find akin
To fireside leisure, well deserved
In climates harsh and rude
Where simple ends and gods are served
And chief delight is food.
(The loss of such simplicity
Reflects our present state,
With childlike love's felicity
Devoured by lust and hate.)
The entrance is a hidden door,
The windows all opaque
And though the walls are flimsy, or
At least they seem to shake
With every breeze that passes by
I dare not force my way,
For that might prove the whole to lie
On crumbled base of clay.
With trembling heart and furrowed brow
I search the place once more,
And, although sad, no wiser now
I close again my door.
Reassurance
A lifted fog now grays the morning sky;
Chill breakers swirl and drop the passive sand.
I wake to gulls; their harsh and haunting cry
Pervades the slow-receding edge of land.
She lies beside me, sleeping yet, though all
Around us nature's clamor has begun.
Pressed by advancing time, I gently call
Her from her slumber--was it dearly won?
"No!" I protest. "We love each other well!
There were no pleas, no tears that went before,
But soft advance and full surrender fell
Like soothing balm upon an open sore!"
We try to look into each other's eyes
To free ourselves from earth with tacit lies.
Exemplum
It was a hanging darkness
rose quickly dead to faces white
from wrath with lineal black of a descent
from real live apes.
So felt the men
while rope-strained limb
of tree and dangling corpse
burned in their hearts and eyes.
The night deed after
mattered little
whether acted out or not
by shadow-puppets of an inward hand.
The cyclic and perennial descent
to real live apes
so said one watching them
brought on the tears.
Adult Poems--1967-2010
Abandoned
My tears drop into the river,
The river runs to the sea.
I’m likewise tempted to flee,
Bereft of my one life giver.
She said goodbye in the morning,
I went on my confident way.
I thought she was going to stay,
Not noticing she was adorning
Herself for serious travel
With me just part of her past.
How could I think it would last?
Now my life has begun to unravel.
I wish I could have her still,
But she’s worlds away by now.
So I have to believe somehow
Love was something she had to kill.
Exposed
A dream unveils a private wish or fear.
I chase, I flee, I undergo absurd
Changes, become a rose or snake or bird.
My joys and griefs are locked up safe in here.
Even when dreams break out in smile or tear,
Their phantom venue mostly lets me gird
Against the prying strangers who are stirred
By morbid curiosity to peer.
Safest to let a tear evaporate,
A smile die on my lips, to be denied
If others question what I might have meant.
Poems put all things in peril, and I hate
The way they tell a stranger why I cried,
Transmute a dream into a document.
Spring Song for the Crane Fly
Strange that I never saw the crane flies mate
Before. Surprised, absorbed, I watch them dance,
Aloft on feeble wings. As they advance,
Retreat, rise, fall, over my lawn this late
March morning, bodies joined to generate
Next spring's ephemera, I drift toward trance:
One hour ago I would have called it chance
That I found two crane flies to liberate.
I found them in the den--I often do--
Swept air with my cupped hands to make a cage,
And took them outside where I set them free.
These mating ones I see--again? are two.
Did I grant them this final happy stage
Of their brief lives, this dying ecstasy?
Military Intelligence: a Villanelle
(An Essay on Generalship and Formalist Poems)
With steady step and concentrated rage,
Fated to fight in some strange catacomb
My magic soldiers march across the page.
Their battleground's a many-chambered cage.
They must march in beneath its hostile dome
With steady step and concentrated rage.
Want must suffice them when they reach that stage--
They'll have no fresh supplies, no hope of home.
My magic soldiers march across the page.
They must not kill the foes that they engage,
But capture them and never further roam
With steady step and concentrated rage--
No, they must stay and serve without a wage,
Slaves to their captives till they lie in loam.
My magic soldiers march across the page.
Whether they live a day, a month, an age,
Whether they dine on dust or honeycomb,
With steady step and concentrated rage,
My magic soldiers march across the page.
Martyr and Mistress
His
It doesn't matter how I have to grieve.
I know so many different kinds of pain
I will not try to stop you when you leave.
Your face and form would rival those of Eve,
A prize a man might risk his life to gain.
It doesn't matter, though. I have to grieve.
Your mind's a scalpel; no one can deceive
You, though a fool might twist and turn in vain.
So I won't try to stop you wnen you leave.
For you my love was easy to achieve--
No harder than to get wet in the rain.
It doesn't matter now; I have to grieve.
I think I bore you now, and I believe
You've found someone of whom you can't complain.
I will not try to stop you when you leave.
It feels "so huge, so hopeless to conceive"
That we might halt this now onrushing train.
It doesn't matter how I have to grieve;
I will not try to stop you when you leave.
Hers
You pitiful old fool. It's very well
When you must cover up your unconcern
To write your rueful little villanelle.
There was a time when we both though to dwell
Together; now I know you'll never learn,
You pitiful old fool. It's very well.
You never learned how much it felt like hell
To have you turn away from me--just turn
And write some rueful little villanelle.
You loved me? No, you only loved to tell
The world you did, while I could sit and burn,
You pitiful old fool. It's very well.
I've never thought it fortunate I fell
In love so I could dutifully earn
The right to hear a rueful villanelle.
And so I'm gone--and you, you empty shell
Can stay alone and sulk alone; I spurn
You, pitiful old fool; it's very well
To write your rueful little villanelle.
A Safe Driver*
Sometimes lana
or sandra or virginia
or all three
got disabled friday
or saturday nights
and one called me,
her slurred speech
enough to tell me
where to go--their favorite club
where i, sad schlub,
hating the smoke cloud
unable to dance
sober of habit
helpful by reputation,
never entered.
"Come" said she
and whatever i was doing
i got my key
covered the seats and floors of my old car
with thick towels
in case of sickness
and ventured into the night,
heart beating faster
because I was at least Useful
to these pretty women
whose daytime space i shared
in classrooms and meeting rooms
at the college.
We never dated.
I was only the friend they relied on
however much i might wish
things were otherwise
and i was one of the cool guys.
But they wanted no cool guys
to drive them: they were drunk too
and lana sandy virginia
were conscious enough of safety
to want someone safe: me.
I didn't much like being safe
but i did like being Useful.
One night
lana sandra virginia
were all too drunk to walk
or call.
Someone found my number
in lana's purse and tried it.
I did my usual thing
with the towels and got there
soon, found them leaning against each other
guided them into the large back seat,
listened to their silly profanities
and trite endearments
as I drove ever so carefully
these women who spoke intelligently in classes
where history and botany and literature were our daytime subjects
but now I drove them to safe homes
to sleep off their debauchery.
Sandra and virginia clung to me
hard enough to hurt
but I did not mind
when they smelled so sweet
even after such a night
as I walked them to their doors
and they entered, letting me go
leaning on door frames chairs countertops and tables
until they vanished inside.
But lana fell asleep
and i could not wake her.
Her i had to carry
a beautiful dead weight in my anxious arms
to her screened-in porch
where i placed her gently on a futon
wished her well and left,
fearing I would never see her alive again
because I--lustful beast not true friend--
had slightly savored the touch
of all that unresisting
unresponsive
lovely flesh.
*For a flash fiction version of this story, see "A Useful Nerd, 1962" in Chapter 3.
Final Warning
A woman I knew
Shrieked in terror
When a gray creature
Ambled across her lawn.
"A huge rat!" she cried,
Grabbing my arm.
She seemed ready to faint
Till I said, "No, a possum."
Quick as a camera's flash
Her fear vanished.
That's how much
Names matter.
So the next time
You call me fool,
I shall depart
And you will not see
This fool's face again.
Boat People, circa 1978
According to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, between 200,000 and 400,000 boat people died at sea. Other estimates compiled are that 20% to 70% of the 1 -2 million Vietnamese boat people died in transit.
They crowd into my classrooms--
Huong, Long, Tien, Chuong, Huynh--
Smiling, speaking their strange tongue,
Eyeing my entrance with glee,
For I have with them a reputation (why?)
And they trust me,
Trust me with dread memories
Of pirates
Who robbed, raped and killed for sport and profit
But did no more than that
And so were lesser evils.
The greater evils--invaders from the north
Who had stolen their country
And the sea itself--
Had brought them to such an extremity
That some--
Some of these beautiful young men and women--
Ate their brothers' and sisters' raw flesh on the boats
When the starving time came and help did not come,
And what they left
They saw gulls and sharks devour
In the bitter water.
They endured. Yes, they endured
What humans can endure, and now they are in my classes,
Reading King Lear and The Metamorphosis and No Exit and Waiting for Godot.
Did the boats prepare them
For our kind of tragedy and pathos,
Or did the time in those fragile shells adrift in hostile seas
Kill their compassion for imaginary victims?
What hard-wrought armor
Let them finish those voyages
And learn our language and earn our money
And buy our Fords and Chevrolets
And study Shakespeare, Kafka, Sartre and Beckett?
Are they only now getting ready for the real
The radical
The existential pain
We of the West have known
Or are they past it already
And all our authors fools?
Eight Haiku
1
The stone cannot tell
The thrower, nor the wound its bearer
Their deep connections.
2
Red-brown oak leaves hide
My widowed neighbor's driveway.
Three days--no tire tracks.
3
Getting wet--easy
In spring, in these woods alone.
Rough bark meets the rain.
4
Bright winter moonlight
Showering stars of crystal
On a snowy hill.
5
Three scars: a hurt heart
Bids me mend imperfectly
The plate that cut me.
6
Cut thumb and finger
Hold the glue brush: in this place
All healing leaves scars.
7
Questing in the wind
My kestrel calls, its voice
Sharp as eye or beak.
8
Tsunami Haiku
My garden flourished
Until a wall of water
Took rocks, plants, and me.
Winter Illusion
Bright deceiver, that green fire
From a bit of copper wire--
Spring's far off; don't tune your lyre.
Note: the next five poems relate to the accidental death of my son Jim, December 1983
Putting It Off
When it happened I was peaked, ready for running
My best race of five, and I couldn't stop.
When it happened, I was on the last nine miles
Before my marathon, ready
For a thirty hour rest and a race
To beat my personal best, and he was driving
To the lake with friends to carouse,
As scornful of my ways as I was scared of his, driving fast
Into a low bridge and a dry creek bed, the car
Tearing against concrete, turning over, tossing him out
And landing on him.
When I learned he was gone I went on running.
Sixteen he was, almost ready
To be a man, serious, reserved, ready to run
With other men for the trophies
He never would see, and I,
Peaked, hard, tearless for a little longer, ran.
I beat my best time in my big race, my marathon,
Drank the free beer, drenching the chair with sweat,
And started to mourn my son.
Legal Matters Re Jim
Two papers I shall sign, have notarized
And send, lie on my desk at break of day.
Their careful language has not emphasized
The weight of what I’ll use them to convey.
Their purport is to sell a motorbike
We bought our firstborn son two years ago.
He loved it, and although we didn’t like
To lose a thing he loved, we didn’t know
What else to do with it when he was killed,
Crushed in the car he’d just begun to drive.
These papers will suffice; they’ve both been filled
With what needs to be said. When they arrive
In someone’s mail, grief will take one more form,
Dull public record of our private storm.
Vacation, January, 1984
Things in my office, vacant of life, wait--
the earthbrown carpet for the vacuum,
paper for a vacancy in a file,
a clock for someone to need the time
its crystalline cycling the only movement
in this small dead world
since the poisons entered.
Crickets, silverfish, psocids lie about
in corners, under papers, behind books.
I shall find their skeletons when I return--
brittle, dust-light, empty, their dry insect odor
masked by a lingering poison perfume.
I shall check the clock; I shall wonder
how much time is left.
My bones weigh more than an insect's.
My flesh hangs heavily upon them.
I wonder, will enough of me still be left
to interest these insects' kin
when they begin
their long vacation
from us
and even our poisons
decay?
Seven by Seven by Seven
(Muddling through a Saturday breakfast with toast, eggs, coffee, and Revelation, chapter
one, two years after the accidental death of a firstborn son)
This mathemagical apocalypse
Cries the wrong truth.
The old brain's tired; this cataract of words
May wear it out.
Caught in an eastern ray, a mote of dust
Floats wordlessly before me,
Floats into sunlight from the silent shadow.
Men of vast learning speculated here,
Proved themselves fools.
They sold their minds, they waited for the end
And still they wait.
This toast with English marmalade spread thick
Defies my comprehension;
Dully I sit in sunlight and in shadow
The strange surrealistic images
Confuse the eyes.
Sword tongue, brass feet, and hair as white as wool
And eyes like fire
Have no place here by this chipped coffee mug,
Pot, plates, fork, knives, and napkins
Set here amid the sunlight and the shadow.
Old fiery sage, yours are transcendent truths
About the world,
But I must have one simple earthly truth:
My second son.
Fourteen and tall, he wolfs down scrambled eggs;
I watch, and my world steadies.
He grows in both the sunlight and the shadow.
The old doxologies—what alien mind
Can give such praise?
To him be glory and dominion in
What unseen place?
"That shirt looks good on you; it fits just right,"
I venture; he nods gravely
But glad in his own sunshine streaked with shadow.
Baffled by words too hard, I close the book
And put it by.
What sane man tries to wrestle with such texts?
The sports page calls.
And yet a phrase, to him who loves us, seems
To pull me back. He loves us,
Trapped here between the sunlight and the shadow?
Huge formless thoughts well up, hitting my brain
First, then my hand,
Spilling some coffee. Wide awake at last,
I mop it up.
Tomorrow, or perhaps another day,
I'll play the theologian,
When I've more sunlight and a lot less shadow.
Epitaph at Laurel Land Cemetery (partly adapted from a poem by Walter Savage Landor)
Two things you loved: Nature and Art.
You strove with none; instead of strife,
A pencil's whisper bared your heart.
Your swift young hands, so warm in life,
Grew cold so soon for such a start.
Meditation Upon Loss
We all learn what we hold most dear
When things we cherish disappear.
Afterwar
for Vaclav Havel
He caught the smells of oil, of gasoline,
Of well-worn wool and sweaty leather straps.
Steel and copper blended sharp scents
With rubber running board treads and tires.
All these smelled "Packard" to a boy of four.
No longer a rider of buses,
He stood on the front seat beside his father,
Now the long war was past, and plain people
Could drive again.
The Packard--pre-war, a '39 One Twenty--
Far from the finest in the Packard line,
But swift and sturdy and smelling like heaven--
Held the boy who had never known
These rich scents heretofore. The city buses
Smelled good enough: the diesel fuel and multitudes
Variously washed and dressed
Gave these great wheeled boxes their own
Pleasant effluvium, while trains,
Ridden but rarely, had yet another:
Sharp with metallic undertones was their
Scent music. But the Packard smelled the best.
One whiff, and he needed no further bribe
To change his agenda from toys to travels.
He stood by his father--
A tall man then, fearless, invincible,
Not yet shrunk, drained, terrorized by time--
And watched the huge
Pageant unroll on the windshield's movie screen.
No--it was better than movies.
Leaving the Packard, he was
Where the screen showed, not on the cracked
Sidewalk in front of the Roxy
Whose rich popcorn-scent kept calling him back.
No, this was travel, this was truth,
And the wheels of the Packard
Turned swiftly, turned at his father's will,
And the land gave itself,
Its vast expanse,
To his inspection. Here, here was the point of all
When he was four, and a Packard smelled better than popcorn.
But this gray rainy day he is forty-six.
Relieved of a longer war,
He feels too weak, too old and ill to help
A world so scarred, so scabbed, so sick.
He stays near home when not at work. Travel scares him,
Shows him horrors before he is ready to look.
See him now at the cleaners, picking up shirts,
Face lined, eyes dull, heart hidden, he hopes, from view.
In the chilly drizzle his car is warm.
He unlatches the door, and he catches the scent,
Perfect, complete, the scent of the Packard.
No time, no change, no age-dead nerves
Prevent his noticing. Then it is gone
Into memory's locked box whose combination
Is spun by chance alone,
But he knows once more the ecstatic four-year-old boy
Of that postwar world, too prodigal of its joy.
(published Dec. 1990)
Fred Holt, 1908-1988
Covering a wall in my study
Laden with heavy books
Is a bookshelf he made
Thirty eight years ago,
Sturdy enough to hold a ton
Yet light enough to carry, disassembled, in one hand.
In my garage
Stands a wardrobe, finely crafted by him
Forty two years ago,
Framed with aluminum
Faced with polished maple,
Lined with lovely aromatic cedar.
He shared with me his love for
Cabinet making and Coleridge
Baseball and Bach
Stonework and Stevenson.
Scholar, athlete and craftsman,
He worked with his hands
And relaxed with his mind,
Making music and poetry
My childhood constants
When all else quivered with constant change.
But my hands and nerves were not his
And I turned from all things
Needing his quick reflexes
And clever fingers
To the things of the mind alone.
Half the man
My father was,
I have been a teacher of writing,
A spinner-out
Of articles
Poems
Stories.
Words are the only tools
I handle with any skill.
So his play
Became my work
And his work
Except for a few things he made and others kept
Died with him.
Shopping
I drive. She shops. She never learned to drive
And blames her long-dead husband for that lack.
No remedy for that at this late date;
She's eighty-nine, forgetful and so weak
That entering the car takes all her strength.
The seat belt balks her fingers; I must help,
And I must hold her hand if there's a curb
She has to climb to reach the clothing store.
But once safe in, she seems to draw new force
From everything the store displays for sale.
She doesn't know what she is looking for;
The hunt itself excites her most of all.
The blouse she buys today she will take back
Tomorrow, or she'll put it in a drawer
To look at in another year or two.
I doubt that she will ever put it on.
She shops some more. At last, I drive her home,
Where she's been visiting the past three weeks.
My wife, her daughter, smiles when we return.
The two retreat to talk about her finds
While I, with nothing more to do for her
Just now, head for my study, where my books
And papers wait. I cannot comprehend
Her urge to shop, nor can she understand
My work, my passions. But I do my part.
Love works this way between us these last years.
Victoria and My Job
My cat Victoria hates the simple fact
That she is not the center of my world
At every moment. When I have to act
On other obligations that are hurled
At me from where my time is not my own,
She stares into my face and looks betrayed
And seems to wonder how my love has grown
So cold when she herself has always stayed
So single-minded in her deep devotion.
I try to take sufficient time with her,
But duties multitudinous as the ocean
Consume my days. She hates that I defer
The moments she depends on me to give
For what enables both of us to live.
Farewell from the Faculty to an Exceptionally Talented Honors Class, circa 1999
You're casting off so soon to go your ways?
You can't moor here a few months more, or weeks?
Those boats of yours--have they been checked for leaks?
And you're provisioned for how many days?
For two years now you've earned our honest praise;
You've borne with open minds all our critiques
Of your materials and your techniques,
And having built your boats, you want to raise
Sails to the breeze, and you've no more to tell.
But still we want to give you something more.
Can we impart some secret yet untold?
Are we reduced to waving from the shore?
We know you need to leave, and we won't hold
You longer. All of us now wish you well.
Miracle
Even this cat
May forget his feline magic
Momentarily
And make an awkward move,
But then he gathers
Himself,
Leaps with absolute grace
To the countertop
Where I have opened
A tin of tuna.
He looks up
As if to say grace
To me,
Clumsy provider,
Before eating.
I stroke his sleek head.
Miracles need
Plain things first:
Food, water,
Someone to care.
Given these,
Sometimes they occur
In time for us to see.
Keeping a cat gives us many chances.
Love and Fear Recollected in Tranquility
(for Jeff)
The day you were born, the untrimmed nails
On your flailing hands scratched up your face,
And when I informed the smiling nurse,
I am sure she thought I lacked the grace
To let the professionals do their work,
Interfering on the very day
That I should be grateful that no worse
Than this slight annoyance came my way.
But I was reminded of many tales
Of the harm begun by small distress,
And I kept insisting, like a jerk,
That they trim your nails and acquiesce
To a nervous father’s foolish demand
That his child not be hurt by his own hand.
Critique on Jeff's Poetry
“My suffering made his real”—James Baldwin, “Sonny’s Blues”
“Placed on this isthmus of a middle state”--
The words of Pope, his summary of all
That man could grasp about his rise and fall,
Re-echo in these poems of love and hate.
I can identify with every trait
Your men and women show. Though they appall
More often than delight, when they recall
This “being darkly wise, and rudely great”
To me, I breathe a thankful prayer, now glad
That when despair drives some so far within
Their convoluted cages that they seem
Unreachable, your images will gleam
In shadowed places, strong enough to win
A few who might have otherwise gone mad.
For Granddaughter Allison, Lately Entered into the Temporal Realm
Ignore time at your peril; flowers close,
Fruit ripens, rots almost before your eyes,
And nothing you imagine or devise
Will stop the flying moments. Notice those
Who strive against it all their waking lives.
They want more hours in every passing day,
And stint their sleep and will not pause to play.
They hate the knowledge that their death arrives
As surely as it does for placid souls
Who ride time's stream ambitionless and free
Greeting new dawns with simple hearted glee,
Lightly dismissing missions, plans and goals.
These are extremes. No doubt some compromise
Is what you'll settle for. You'll eat the fruit
Before it rots, enjoy the bloom, uproot
The plant, although it may have won a prize
For beauty when it flowered with your care,
But you won't stir the ashes of the past
Too long, and though you know your time won't last
Forever, you will try what mortals dare.
You need not even shun the two extremes--
Just recognize that since they're bound by time
The one cannot complete his ceaseless climb,
The other might as well be lost in dreams.
Many a field lies here for you to plough,
Many a song was made for you to sing.
It's good to do your best in everything
And good to have no wrinkles in your brow.
Landlubber
A lifted fog now grays the morning sky.
Cold breakers swirl and drop the passive sand.
I wake to gulls; their harsh and haunting cry
Pervades the slow-receding edge of land.
In all this strange immensity of brine,
Beside which I have lain a long night through,
Is there some sense in which it's really mine
To use as it seems right for me to do?
My heart says no. This is too much for me.
Whatever use my feeble brain devises
Seems but a trifle to this restless sea
Mother of life, transcender of all surmises.
Shaken, I turn my back upon the strand,
Confirmed in my devotion to the land.
Thanks--an Impromptu Sestina for the Authors on Authonomy
I find it very easy to give thanks
To all who show me any sort of love
Because in all my reaching for the truth
I find it leads me to a place of terror,
And I begin to be afraid of death
Before my work attains its true perfection.
Yet now, because of you, I chase perfection
And have to give unmitigated thanks
For helping me face all my fear of death
With that which overcomes it--your sweet love,
Which takes away the soul-destroying terror
And strikes my shackles off with potent truth.
Dear ones, you've really freed me; that's the truth--
Freed me to try for ultimate perfection
And showed me how brave souls can face their terror.
For such a gift, how can I not give thanks?
Your insights and suggestions draw forth love
As surely as our life draws forth our death.
It's true that what I write makes ugly death
The only pathway to enduring truth,
And that when any person dares to love,
That love can only hope to reach perfection
When those who love are willing to give thanks
For every moment not enslaved to terror.
Even our children have to face the terror
When grandparents and parents yield to death,
And they're too filled with hate to offer thanks
When faced with all the awfulness of truth.
They learn too young they cannot reach perfection
But hope their flaws are overlooked by love.
Then older, wiser, knowing now that love
Is all we have to mitigate our terror,
And that our little lives must miss perfection
Because our work is cut too short by death,
We still will strive to tell a little truth
And when acknowledged, give our humble thanks.
You've seen my terror and still shown me love.
My little truth you've seen before my death.
Despairing of perfection, I say--THANKS!
Time and My Granddaughter
My three years' grandchild spots me at the door
And runs full tilt at me to get a hug
But falls face forward toward the marble floor
When her left foot slips on the padded rug.
Before she hits, I pick her up and say,
"Careful, Sweetheart, I don't want you to fall,"
And she grins at me in the sweetest way
And says, "I knew you'd catch me." But the wall
Seems to slant toward us. Breathing hard, I stand
Straight up with her. Holding her safe at last,
I breathe a prayer of thanks. I understand
Too well what foe is stalking me. Too fast
He'll strike me down and leave this child bereft
Of one friend--yes, but she'll have many left.
Meditation on a Too-Public Death
Whitney Houston, 1963-2012
Years back, each time I saw your pictured face
And skimmed an article or heard your voice
Lifted in song, I was a lazy judge
Of how you might be victim of your fame
And how you might not have too long a future.
Sudden success can bring on sudden death
Too easily, I thought, and deemed your death
Imminent. Hungry tabloids loved your face,
Feasted on it and saw doom in your future
While drink and drugs wrought changes in your voice
And scandal kept intruding on your fame
And every loiterer felt free to judge
You. When you died, I lost the will to judge
Either your troubled life or troubled death.
I've never known the pressure of such fame;
I've never had to see my foolish face
In supermarket aisles, or hear my voice
Droning away for a too-public future.
My path on earth will matter in the future
To family and friends. I hope they judge
Me kindly, keeping memories of my voice
When I spoke well enough to put to death
The times I proved a fool. I hope my face
May stay on my son's wall--that's enough fame.
But you had no such choice. Your early fame
Determined some large part of your brief future.
The magazines and films displayed your face
To millions, and you didn't get to judge
How public you would be in life or death--
There was a sense in which you had no voice
In what would happen to you next; your voice
Was public property, now that your fame
Had caught you fast. Perhaps your early death
Let you escape a bleak and hopeless future
When those you thought were friends would harshly judge
Your every word and deed, even to your face.
I can't judge now the future of your fame,
But death cannot delete your classic face
From memory, or silence your sweet voice.
The Wrong Side of the Bed
Last night she wore my socks,
Claiming her feet were too cold,
And being casually told
This morning at eight o'clock
Why I found them both
On the floor by her side of the bed
I got it into my head
That back when we swore our oaths
To be true to each other till death,
No footwear was mentioned, but now
I recall my heartfelt vow,
And before I can draw a breath
I think of love's many expressions:
Its youthful exuberant flame
That cools to something more tame
And its passionate tearful confessions
That turn to moments like this.
A tenderness seizes my heart
Before I softly depart,
And we start our day with a kiss.
The End
No, I don't intend
To drift to my predestined end
Dying piecemeal, inside and out,
Excessively stout.
This is not the way
To face the unforgiving day
When this too conscious breathing thing
Can no more talk nor sing.
Yes, I shall take care
With what I am and have, as fair
As I can keep it all together
Whatever the weather.
And when I go
I hope to make a decent show
Of having fought a good fair fight
And say good night.