....From The Tree Of...............Seeing Beauty
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_______________________________________________________ Looking For The Lost McPherson Barn across the road, traffic pinging past, and your tall form, determined, long of stride, pushing through the crackle-grass brown and dried as blood. You're tromping toward the railroad cut. "This is where they charged," you say with look of fearsome wonder, peering down into the gulch where tracks and ties and once, a sea of boys fell into misery. They shot down into the roiling flesh, shot up through waves of lead, they shred themselves and here you come to find the missing pieces once again. The Man In The Moon Sophistry aside, I cannot make the moon be anything but that boom mike that bends down to my heart to read its beats and telegraph, I love. I love. That's not a dead star, it's part of the lexicon of what we do, baying here for what we need the most or what we've lost or what we wish for shivering under a cooling sun, wanting what will fill the hollow warp of it, and woof the music to the old man in it. I follow your brown hat just like the 'colors' as we make this yearly stations of the cross- right flank, left flank, stone by stone by stone we stop and strain to see them, looking for the lost. Today, I find a bit of bone, an animal probably, white as snow but perfect, so I keep it cupped and warm. I feel its shape in ways I'll never grasp just why these sacred fields of Gettysburg are not just ground, but spaces in the heart held for the missing. To walk this land is prayer and sometimes something happens, something rises up... A Different Juice I smell words eat words break them they break me. Po-me- gran-ate bur- gun-dy smears my lips I never know if fruit or blood has been there I speak wounds and wear their open mouths sometimes I press them to a page- you lift the imprint knowing how they hurt Lone Duck I stepped from the car groggy in gray morning curdled light and heard a duck, high above me honking, catching wind. November first and all this long September and October I watched mallards making south. This one, mouth no different- but alone, louder than the others ever were. Was he in panic now? Streaking through the clouds, making wake through blue? He may have been their Leonardo writing crabbed and backwards, upside down. He may possess the magic; that is why he chases, brown wings oarring- duck cries rising as he brings them fire and all the sky he claims between one dream and next? Had he nodded off out of time and place, where all the safe and all the habit shaped ducks gather? Bastet The thing about owning a cat is you don't. He lives somewhere separate. In rooms with you, seamlessly breathing but what you see is a myth of fur, a weight of grace compressed. He'd tear your throat if only you'd forget. There is light inside of aggie eyes that looks to places ancient, redly murderous where teeth and flesh curled at the Pharaoh's feet in perfect knowing what is was. Gettysburg After Rain The air is green, the smell is sweet with life and death. Gettysburg air, molecules of fruit tree pollen, tulip poplars, tubered plants and on the wind the waste of battle yet- an iron smell: sulphur, smoke and campfires- horseflesh burning, leather soaked with death sweats, blistered feet in black, trapped boots, the reek of marching meat to bone in woolen socks. Ripe rank of mud- the dirt, the dirt, -the ground they claimed, inch by murdering inch is still as oddly fragrant; sweetened by a sacrifice whose incense is the handing over life for freedom. Farmer's sons and immigrants- all boys died men, in fields, died seed that feeds a nation yet in awe of what is breathed at Gettysburg where after rain, the mists seep through the pores; tell us stories known through DNA and chains of proteins, living cells that link to anguish a century and a half past. We know the ground, these tree lines: whine of Whitworth, arc of gatehouse, death and dying to rise again- relive it- a divet of grass smoothed new; it's never over, nor are the fallen felled forever. Missed Things miss: throw becomes a ball not strike, trees catch kites -breeze breezes by the heart is pitched too short, too late and a door somewhere swings closed when the dog is out, the owner off to bed, the dog to freeze. A thought falls short a quart is bought when a gallon is needed and yesterday in my car when I heard Rosemary Clooney sing old standards as I drove, I realized that woman had the most remarkably talented delivery of song straight to the heart- and now she's gone and how I wanted to tell her how she moves, delights me, and how I couldn't ever- and my shoulders shook. My chest welled up with love. Rosemary- your voice was joy itself. There's never enough Clooney's in this world to butter our days and make our nights turn velvet -'atsa nice' voice; like velvet wearing sprinkles and whipped cream in a soft bathed light. Inside Out Toed in knock at the door, the wee girl grabs a scabby elbow, squints, lets air rush through the space for her front teeth, says 'Mr. Wanna buy some cookies?' In every woman grown, there is that scamp, one leg in a tree, trailing Dolly with eyes stuck shut, hair hacked from playing Beauty Parlour still there underneath the lacquer or the pie dough on her hands she stands and hopes with all her Brownie heart- I like us so much better when I remember that. Enfant Perdu Not been writing; seems a pointless waste of time, but I slept well; slept leagues beneath my usual depth and woke up new. A baby hiccoughing happily, chose to visit dreams. Weren't no ordinary infant; was a fleshy boy, big and peachy-colored. Blue-eyed, cheeks like cheeses, smooth and bite-able: he was half my size. Looked like love in a bowl like something in me jumped outside, roly poly, kicked its dimpled knees for only me; he loved me totally. It's only after, when I woke refreshed, I knew that I had spent a few moments staring at my innocence. It isn't often you get to pick up all your goodness in your arms; walk away with it. evidence found three stones round and warm from sun joy in hand felt living- such smooth shaped satisfaction just holding them a simple thing but nourishment nonetheless feeling in my palm the weight of what has lasted On To Page 7 .............. Return To Contents This site sponsered by 
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