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Fire
Fire
a double-edged sword
Fire
the beginning
and fire the end
Fire
the means of forging
the Omega and Alpha
that surround us
day by day
Fire
surrounds us
but leads us
nowhere
we must create
our own path through
Fire
to the life beyond
Fire
so many things
to save from
Fire
so many things
to be consumed by
Fire and flame
only a fiercer Fire
will free us from
will put an end to
Fire
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Driving at Night
Once upon a time,
my hair was brown and curly,
but now it’s straight and as white as
this drifting snow clogging the windshield.
I smooth down my hair with my fingers:
swollen knuckles, crooked joints.
I burn with feverish thoughts
yet cold blood shivers through my arteries.
Headlights blind me in my good eye.
The other one’s useless when I drive at night.
It’s a long time since I last saw,
let alone touched, my toes.
Putting on my socks or tying my shoelace
is a morning no-no.
Short of breath, of agility, with no ability
to climb up stairs: I stop to catch my breath,
pause, and shudder with despair.
What happened to my youth?
Where did my childhood go?
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Little Boy Lost
I’ll never forget, years ago,
standing in the snow,
looking through a window,
seeing a friend’s family
gathered inside by the fire.
Shadows danced as the children
decorated their Christmas tree:
laughter and warmth and joy,
and me outside in the snowy street,
walking past, on my way home,
an only child destined
to be alone in my lonely room.
I also recall empty rooms,
cold corridors, stark loss,
and the sorrow of surviving
on my own.
So, I created my own family
and filled my mind with
boys and girls, siblings,
people I could see and touch,
a family to which I could belong.
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Golden Angel
He stands beneath guardian trees,
his saffron garments glossed with gold.
Hands cupped, body bent,
he softly swells as he dips
beneath sun and rain.
He speaks to me:
wild prophet from an ancestral book
that I believed in when I was a child,
but no longer read or understand.
I try to interpret the aroma of his lips,
his slow, small growth of gesture.
His winged words are traps
tripping my tongue, clipping my wings,
preventing me from flight.
Shape-shifter, she changes before my eyes
and takes on her earthly disguise.
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A Farewell to Charms
Early tomorrow, my love, you’ll fly away.
Today, you’ll walk around the Beaver Pond
where red and yellow leaves abound. A thin grey
webbing garlands one dead tree. I’m not too fond
of tent worms. I hate them when they swing
from low branches. Give me a fresh green frond
caught by the morning sun in early spring
or else bright autumn leaves so soon to fall.
I love American Goldfinches when they sing
that last departing song. I love most of all
those occasional visitors: do you recall that bright
blue Indigo Bunting with his “I’m-a-lost-bird” call?
The hunting hawks give everyone a fright.
They perch on top of a garden tree
then step off into space to claw-first alight
on some poor songbird trilling away, quite free
from fear, his unfinished symphony of song.
It’s getting late, my love. You walk towards me
out of the woods. I’ll end this poem with a plea:
don’t forget me … and don’t stay away too long.
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Covid-19
In bed, you turn your back to me,
pushing me away, even in sleep.
I only seek warmth and comfort.
Blankets don’t touch the cold I feel,
deep in my body. I reach out to you,
but you’re locked in your dreams.
A grunt or two, a muffled snore, a half-
-whistling sound, sometimes, a cry.
Last night you shouted “Help!” out loud.
I hauled you back from some black pit
where sharp-clawed devils clutched you
and tried to snatch you away from me.
Today, it’s my turn to call for help.
I face a horizon filled with darkening clouds.
They refuse to go away and weigh me down.
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Fear of the Fence
Our conversation this morning:
a sun-dried Roman aqueduct
no longer capable of carrying water.
I envision brown sacking
winter-lagged around leaking pipes,
and me a little Dutch boy stemming
the damage, a finger in life’s dyke.
Each sentence is a wasted
movement of lips, tongue, teeth.
Our words are motionless kites,
earthbound, too heavy to rise.
Dead soldiers, gone over the top,
my thoughts hang like washing
pegged out on the Siegfried Line
on a windless day in WWI.
I have grown afraid of this barbed-wire
fence growing daily between us.
Comment: The penultimate verse is from a WWI song that my grandfather taught me in the kitchen, back home in Wales, when I was a child. “I’m going to hang out my washing on the Siegfried Line. Have you any dirty washing, mother dear.” The words of such songs have stayed with me and recur in my poems from time to time.
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The Beaver Pond
Last October
Leaves walked tip-toe footprints,
delicate, on dark water.
Wrinkled brown tongues lapped
towards dry land. Everywhere
low light fell bright on stripped
white branches.
Open were the pond’s shiny spaces,
dry and withered were its reeds.
Clouds floated in the tarn’s spotted mirror.
Islets of seeded grass marked spots
where underwater logs rotted back to life.
We gazed on emptiness, empty nests,
and a burnt, tanned earth that waited
for what strange second coming?
The wind’s chill arm wrapped us
in the silent thought of oncoming winter.
Charles Baudelaire
He walks past the Jesuit Church
where the shoe-shine boys store
polish, brushes, and chairs overnight.
He walks past the wrought-iron bench
where the gay guys sit, caressing,
asking the unsuspecting to join them.
Nobody asks Charles for a match,
for a drink, for charity, for a walk
down the alley to a cheap hotel.
The witch doctor is the one who stops
the hands on all the clocks at midnight.
He’s the one who leaves this place,
and returns to this place, all places being one.
The witch doctor sees little things
that other men don’t see. He reaches out
and flicks a fly from Charles’s nose.
“I too have lost my way,” it sighs.
Charles thinks he knows who he is,
but sometimes he wonders when he shaves,
rasping the razor across his chin’s dry husks.
The witch doctor, his lookalike, his twin,
stares back at him from the bathroom mirror.
Three witches dance on the waning soap dish.
One spins the yarn, one measures the cloth,
one wields the knife, that will one day sever
the thread of all poor creatures born to die.
Oh hypocrite lecteur, mon semblable, mon frère.
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Northern Lights
Old man looks out of his window.
Falling leaves twist like they did in his childhood.
They spread bronzed carpets across the lawn.
His granddaughter stands by the flowerbed,
squeezing fall’s last blossoms,
turning them into perfume.
Dandelions clutter Old Man’s lawn.
Last summer he lost the strength and will
to stoop down and root them out.
In dreams, Old Man’s spirit tries to escape
and wander through celestial pastures.
For a moment, stars shine brighter
as a new spark adorns the sky.
Walking through the Aurora Borealis,
he understands the way to weave rainbows
from ribbons of color and floating light.
Old Man knows he must share this knowledge.
One day he will share his secret with this child.
