If I call myself Beloved
I cannot trade my life for trinkets.
I must not pursue more than my due.
I may not treat my body like a dumpster.
If I call the stranger Beloved
I cannot smash his head with a bat.
I must remove my hand from his pocket.
I may not force myself on his wife.
If I call the earth Beloved
I cannot mine her oceans.
I must not poison her air.
I may not abuse her wildlife.
I become one with the moth on the screen,
the mouse in its nest, the hawk in
the sky.
Category: POETRY
PERSISTANCE
Why so many rules, Shepherd? Have you no faith your flock will return Wiser and grateful for your fences Glad of food and shelter? Our boundaries are our own Close or far, sharp or smooth Set by instinct, fear or faith Curiosity or passion. Not all live long Some return their bodies early For soil to recycle but Matter abides - ours and theirs. And what of spirit? If the world wastes nothing Do not spirits too persist Awaiting their next vessel?
SATURDAYS
It’s hard not to love the world. A small boy at Dunkin’ Donuts all blue eyes - tousled hair curls his toes on the rung of his chair waves at me through the glass. Leaving Dunkin’, one dad holds the door for another as his daughter spins in her red skirt and her dark curls fly in a little girl’s flirt. Saturdays with her dad. How can I not love this routine weekend trips with children? Media so rarely features bliss, family outings, courtesy better than a kiss is the kindness and joy that hold us here.
DELICIOUS
Forty-year old men have grace unseen in younger men, however fine. Their depth of voice and solid stance shivers my spine. With shoulders for children and eyes for business, tortoise shell glasses for slight correction, they give and also take direction. Aware that stamina won’t trump skill they accept the limits of their will. They’re fathers, lovers, friends of substance with minds like rooms, ideas abundant neither peace nor conflict rocks their stride. They step out boldly or move aside. I could watch, enjoy them by the hour, those thickened backs and thighs of power. I love their jaws with new grown stubble their easy way approaching trouble. I sigh remembering a lover - forty years in the making - one afternoon in the taking.
AT SEVENTY-TWO
At 72, it takes two tries to get each foot into my jeans. I wobble and catch myself against the closet shelf. At 72, I nap each day enjoy my dreams scary or complex, puzzles to ponder in waking hours. At 72, it seems absurd that I remember a child’s great great grandmother. I'm a walking history text. At 72, my 87-year-old friend says I am young. I should not fret but get to work. I have another 20 years. At 72, I think of poems unwritten, songs unsung and return to my desk. The day is young.
HOME
Truth runs thin in homes diluted by pills and alcohol. There’s no hook to hang your hat upon, no rock on which to stand. Mothers park along the driveway at school’s end. Our Buick sits cock-eyed across the curb. I long to be like other kids, but know I’m not. Vodka bottles line the linen closet - a fully-feathered duck rests in the freezer. I show it to my friend. The puppy ate mom’s sleeping pills and will not wake again. School is worse - so many faces whose chatter makes no sense to me. I am not them. Sunday’s comics fill me with dread. There’s no vacation from fear, only blank days that stretch ahead.
MISSING
The Lord’s Prayer went missing today on my knees no words to say. Often a name, a place evaporates as I reach for it. Whole chunks of books I’ve read when opened, I’ve lost the thread. I used to drive with knowledge sure of roads from today and long ago my sense of place, a source of pride. That map in my brain is gone. This troubles me. It isn’t clear what’s normal. What I should fear. I trust the journey - friends, family, God and if I must – will seek in books, maps, stories, prayers to fill my lips and ease my grip upon this world and what remains – the precious gift of days and hours, I ‘ve yet to claim.
ORIGINAL SIN
To which sins shall I confess?
Panic when as an infant, you’d hold your breath and faint?
Complicity moving away from Grandpa?
Weakness, letting you visit your father who was still drinking?
I apologize
for the dogs you did or didn’t like
for shopping trips where you spent money like a Sheik
for not punishing your $300 pre-Christmas phone bill
for loving you when you were your least loveable.
We refract the light that spawns us
Blue permissiveness from black strictness
Green sprouts from shiny white bread
Time unearths our original sin,
imperfection.
ADRIFT
Adrift in time,
days wash by
without regard
for date or name.
A whole week
vanished in August.
There is nowhere to go.
No one wants our dollars.
Once we modeled democracy.
Our story now's a dark comedy.
The President says the virus
will vanish like a mist.
No problem, he’s got this.
Magical realism is fine for
Isabel Allende and
Gabriel Garcia Marquez,
but has no place in a country where
people die alone in crowded hospitals
city folks swarm to the country
morgue trailers line city streets.
A pandemic’s not a minor event,
a slight inconvenience.
It stops the world.
No magic can blind us
to the growing
pile of corpses.
SCOTTIE
Warm at my back, black Aberdeen dreams his fourteen years chasing - never catching cat and deer. Awake he seeks me if I leave his sight. Howls the agony of my upstairs to his down. His almond eyes give the lie to a gentle way companion in migraine patient with children. He cannot hear me when I call – stares heavenward for long spells. Smells better than any dog I know. I carry him upstairs, set him on my bed, turn out the light. Warm at my back, black Aberdeen Goodnight.
