Poems
I’m back again scrutinizing the Milky Way
of your ultrasound, scanning the dark
matter, the nothingness, that now the heads say
is chockablock with quarks and squarks,
gravitons and gravatini, photons and photinos. Our sprout,
who art there inside the spacecraft
of your Ma, the time capsule of this printout,
hurling and whirling towards us, it’s all daft
on this earth. Our alien who art in the heavens,
our Martian, our little green man, we’re anxious
to make contact, to ask divers questions
about the heavendom you hail from, to discuss
the whole shebang of the beginning and end,
the pre-big bang untime before you forget the why
and lie of thy first place. And, our friend,
to say Welcome, that we mean no harm, we’d die
for you even, that we pray you’re not here
to subdue us, that we’d put away
our ray guns, missiles, attitude and share
our world with you, little big head, if only you stay.
Published 1995
Patient
The snow has melted clean off the mountain.
It’s winter still. Yet another indication that Gaia
Is in trouble, that things aren’t sound.
The rocky mountaintops shines
Like the bald head of a woman after chemo
who wills herself out of her hospital bed
To take in trees, the squirrels, the commotion
in the town, sip beer in a dive, smiles
To the child staring at her shining, wishing
it didn’t take all this dying to live life.
Tagging the Stealer
So much of it I hadn't a bull's notion of
at first, and like the usual ignoramus
who casts his eyes at, say, a Jackson Pollock
or "This Is Just to Say," I scoffed at it.
I didn't twig how it was as close to art
as art itself with its pregame ballyhoo,
antics, rhubarbs, scheming, luck; its look
as if little or nothing is going on.
How often have we waited for the magic
in the hands of some flipper throwing a slider,
sinker, jug-handle, submarine, knuckle, or screwball?
And if we're lucky the slugger hits a daisy cutter
with a choke-up or connects with a Baltimore chop,
instead of batting a fish to slug a pop fly.
And if he really fouls up he swings a rusty gate,
caught with his foot in the bucket,
and a ball hawk catches a can of corn
with a basket catch and the ball rounds the horn.
Oh, look, Davo, how I'm sent sailing
right out of the ball park just by its lingo.
But I swear the most memorable play I witnessed
was with you on our highstools in the Daily Planet
as we slugged the elixirs of our Saturday-night beers.
The Yankees were playing your Toronto Blue Jays.
They were tied at the top of the ninth.
I can't now for the life of me remember
who won, nor the name of the catcher, except
he was an unknown, yet no rookie either.
Suddenly behind the pinch hitter's back he signaled
the pitcher, though no one copped why until seconds later,
as the catcher fireballed the potato to the first baseman,
tagging the stealer. It doesn't sound like much,
but everyone stood up in the house Ruth built,
like hairs on the back of the neck -- because the magic
was scary, too. O Jesus, give each of us just once
a poem the equal of that unknown man's talking hand.
The Composing Room
Click the image to read “The Composing Room.”