a friday haiku

no x-rays necessary

 yellow bus bouncing

through the air my child flies

ice tray is empty

In Celebration Of

Jack Gilbert  (1925-2012)

Horses at Midnight Without a Moon Our heart wanders lost in the dark woods. Our dream wrestles in the castle of doubt. But there's music in us. Hope is pushed down but the angel flies up again taking us with her. The summer mornings begin inch by inch while we sleep, and walk with us later as long-legged beauty through the dirty streets. It is no surprise that danger and suffering surround us. What astonishes is the singing. We know the horses are there in the dark meadow because we can smell them, can hear them breathing. Our spirit persists like a man struggling through the frozen valley who suddenly smells flowers and realizes the snow is melting out of sight on top of the mountain, knows that spring has begun. In Umbria Once upon a time I was sitting outside the cafe watching twilight in Umbria when a girl came out of the bakery with the bread her mother wanted. She did not know what to do. Already bewildered by being thirteen and just that summer a woman, she now had to walk past the American. But she did fine. Went by and around the corner with style, not noticing me. Almost perfect. At the last instant could not resist darting a look down at her new breasts. Often I go back to that dip of her head when people talk about this one or that one of the great beauties. More about Jack Gilbert's life and death can be read here.

Random Act of Poetry

Fall, leaves, fall...

Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;

Lengthen night and shorten day;

Every leaf speaks bliss to me

Fluttering from the autumn tree.

I shall smile when wreaths of snow

Blossom where the rose should grow;

I shall sing when night’s decay

Ushers in a drearier day.

 

Emily Jane Bronte

Random Act of Poetry

Bring Me The Sunflower

Bring me the sunflower so I may transplant it
in my native soil burnt by the sea-salt,
let it display all day to the mirroring blue spaces
of the sky the anxiety of its yellow face.

Obscure things tend towards clarity,
bodies dissolve themselves in a weightless flow
of colors: these then into music. To vanish
is thus the supreme fate of all fates.

Bring me the plant that points to where
pale transparencies rise to the heights
and life itself evaporates like air;
bring me the sunflower crazed with light.

- Eugenio Montale (translated from Italian by Margaret Brose)

Fallen Lashes

you sat on my lap

thoughtfully inspecting
the lines of my face
or stripes
as you and your sister
would call them
when the two of you
were so joyfully self-unaware
that such words
one day might seem
by few
to be not so cute

you quite sternly told me
as you held my face
in your small hands
to stop moving
as you squinted to remove
a lash from my cheek

and as you
so motherly
had me lick the tip of your finger
I made a wish
to be able to give you
all my fallen lashes
and the wishes they bring

Born On This Day

Lawrence Ferlinghetti  (March 24th 1919)

Constantly Risking Absurdity


Constantly risking absurdity
and death

whenever he performs

above the heads

of his audience

the poet like an acrobat

climbs on rime

to a high wire of his own making

and balancing on eyebeams

above a sea of faces

paces his way

to the other side of the day

performing entrachats

and sleight-of-foot tricks

and other high theatrics

and all without mistaking

any thing

for what it may not be

For he's the super realist

who must perforce perceive

taut truth

before the taking of each stance or step

in his supposed advance

toward that still higher perch

where Beauty stands and waits

with gravity

to start her death-defying leap

And he

a little charleychaplin man

who may or may not catch

her fair eternal form

spreadeagled in the empty air

of existence