Academy of Natural Sciences, Drexel University, Philadelphia

 

The moose is still there, fifty-plus years later,

raising its antlered head before a backdrop

of painted water and taiga pines. Behind glass

it watches the curious crowds of people.

When I first saw it I was five, six--

probably younger-- I remember--

how it towered over me, the moose.

Since then I’ve stood in an elephant’s shadow

swum in the wake of giant mantas

slept at the foot of a live volcano. But awe

is not innate. You have to learn it. I learned it first

at the feet of the moose.

 

Books Available
Dervish Lions
The Day of My First Driving Lesson
Country Well-Known as an Old Nightmare's Stable
High-Voltage Lines
Knocking from Inside

Rondeau for the Defenders of Bakhmut

In Bakhmut’s fields, flowers grow

though missiles fall and shells explode.

Green shoots spring from shattered paves,

small flagpoles that will someday wave

above the dead, banners of gold.

 

Not here the poppy, nor the rose

defends the fallen who repose

silent in death, in life the brave

in Bakhmut’s fields.

 

So are the names of heroes told:

in spattered blood across the snow,

in sunflower-guarded rows of graves.

Who never knew their city saved,

yet fearless faced the fate they chose

in Bakhmut’s fields.

 

Books Available
Dervish Lions
The Day of My First Driving Lesson
Country Well-Known as an Old Nightmare's Stable
High-Voltage Lines
Knocking from Inside

USNS Comfort Arrives in New York Harbor

A woman dressed in green: her layered roots
dig deep beneath the harbor. Her robes are flutes
of bronze to ocean winds. A mother’s face
inclines above this fever-stricken place
to hear the clamor and the stifled mute.

Silence swallows yesterday’s pursuits,
the hustling crowds in tailored hustler suits,
the taxi horns, the never-ending race.
A woman dressed in green

stands tall and sorrowful, but resolute.
On the horizon, a ship comes into view.
Help arrives: a sisterly embrace
between a statue and a messenger of grace.
This ship, a woman clad in white, salutes
a woman dressed in green.

Available! High-Voltage Lines, Knocking from Inside

On Bended Knee

A bended knee. A silent protest, planned
to echo like a shout across the land.
A shout to rend the silences that veil
the chokehold and the shot, the shadowed trail
that leads back through the years, to bloody hands

that wielded bloody whips. A soundless gale
of grief for every death-marked street, each jail-
cell “suicide.” Does murder not demand
a bended knee?

Now rank on rank with linking arms and hands
they kneel and bow their heads. No reprimands,
no threats or insults can reweight the scales.
Praise to the one who began this warrior’s tale
and showed the world how tall a man can stand
on bended knee.

For Colin Kaepernick

Available! High-Voltage Lines, Knocking from Inside

A Postcard Full of Sky

A postcard full of sky. How odd a thing
to sell: no rainbows, birds upon the wing
or even colored clouds. Just plain and blue,
serene—or maybe vacant. Tell me who
would think it was appropriate to ring

a tongueless bell to call a christening,
or come with laryngitis to a sing-
along? It seems insulting, sending you
a postcard full of sky.

I take it from the rack, considering
a figure-ground exchange, an opening
of eyes to subtler shades. I see it true:
a heaven infinite, unwritten, new.
Next time I see you, love, I think I'll bring
a postcard full of sky.

Collection available! Knocking from Inside

Break Me My Bounds

Break me my bounds and let me fly-- "A Career", Paul Laurence Dunbar

"Break me my bounds, and let me fly!" I heard
a carol from an egg. An unhatched bird
was singing of the vast triumphant sky
he knew was his by right. The will to fly
cannot be crushed in feathered things. The herd

may call a child's dream of flight absurd
and wean him on the pap of hope deferred
but chick or calf, you'll know him by his cry:
"Break me my bounds!"

In February's darkness, Death had spurred
to Dunbar's side. His vision was too blurred
by illness to perceive the hollow eye
that fell on him: Death said, "It's time to die."
But Dunbar only answered with this word:
"Break me my bounds."

Collection available! Knocking from Inside

Spice Bazaar

The spice bazaar is redolent of places
far away, of hazy desert spaces
echoing muezzin's voices saying
"Allahu akbar!", and donkeys braying
as they're strapped into the cargo-traces.

Travelers with seamed and canny faces
share sweet coffee and formal embraces
while they price the goods that they're conveying
to the spice bazaar.

But I'm not in a land of camel-races.
Samarkand's not in these Safeway cases
gleaming in flourescent light. I'm weighing
out an ounce of cinnamon. My straying
odor-fed imagination graces
the spice bazaar.

Collection available! Knocking from Inside

New York Minute

I knew it instantly; the light had turned.
The driver in the car behind, concerned
leaned on his horn, as if he thought me sleeping.
I don't drive fast, it's true: some call it creeping.
I'm not a speed freak, that's all. I've not earned

disapprobation on this scale. I've learned
to take it easy, given up (or spurned)
commuter rat race. When I heard the beeping
I knew it instantly—

he was the type who usually returned
from drives with each last shred of patience burned,
nerves in a tangle and blood pressure leaping.
Unhealthy fellow: does he know he's keeping
time on clocks in courts that have adjourned?
I knew it instantly.


Collection available! Knocking from Inside

Winter Ring

If only it were summer now, I'd fly:
an emerald blur across the lapis sky
a chimney-swift, a swallowtail, a thing
of scales or feathers. Summer on the wing,
a lover's message seeking a reply.

But winter's here, when butterflies must die
and swifts have gone where temperatures are high
and even bumblebees no longer sting,
if only

because they're cold, and can't wake up to cry
alarm against a thief (or passer-by).
The sullen torpors that our winters bring
have trapped my heart inside their icy ring
and summer passions dwindle to a sigh—
"if only."

Collection available! Knocking from Inside

One Way Out

There's only one way out, they'd have you know.
If you agree—well then, that makes it so
and you'll be stuck, without a second chance.
No change of partners in a cold romance,
the tide can ebb, but it must never flow.

Is that how we should be? Content to go
through narrow streets where hanging arrows show
a single path on which, when we advance,
there's only one way out?

If there's a to, there must at least be fro—
from one and zero, many numbers grow
to fill the plane in limitless expanse.
With every drunkard's step, we fill the dance
with random motion. Left, right, fast or slow:
there's only one way. Out.

Collection available! Knocking from Inside

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

is a superb, profound, and disturbing short story by Ursula LeGuin. You can read it here.

Here in Omelas, the days go by
and each is like the last, a cloudless sky
above a city filled with people, fair
and healthy, prosperous, without a care.
But now and then, one hears a muffled cry

from cellar rooms where childhood goes to die
behind a door whose keyhole frames an eye
in mute appeal. We’re queasily aware
here in Omelas,

of sacrifice that underpins our high
philosophy, the very kites that fly
artistic strokes of color on the air
above us. Is it courage or despair
to walk away, rather than live a lie
here in Omelas?


Collection available! Knocking from Inside

Superdelegates

In superdelegates, that select group,
we find tomorrow's headlines. AP's scoop:
another one committed. Few remain
and each is duly courted by campaign
officials glad to jump through any hoop.

A vote in hand is worth two in the coop,
and as these birds fly home, the losers droop
while winners pat their backs and count their gain
in superdelegates.

Who are they anyway, this oddball troop
of party stalwarts, people "in the loop"
who'll make or break the nominee? Explain
before you pop that victory champagne,
how chosen, and by whom? Who put the soup
in superdelegates?


Collection available! Knocking from Inside

Arboreal Desperation

And no-one knows the darkness at the root
that’s hidden by the flower-bearing shoot.
But read it in the furrows in my bark:
a different story’s written cold and stark
about the winter, death and sleep. Struck mute,

we stand all naked, shadowless, and mark
the ravages of time, as sharp as shark-
teeth bared in stealthy submarine pursuit.
And no-one knows the dark

that whispers with the rain, dissolves like soot
in every liquid dawn. Though summer’s fruit
will ripen and hang heavy round the park
where lovers walk, the singing of the lark
cannot erase the tracks of winter’s boot,
and no-one knows the dark.

--readwritepoem

Collection available! Knocking from Inside

August Serenade

The August moon is gibbous. Watch it fade
behind the chilly marble colonnade
of summer’s temple, where an autumn wreath
of red and brown lies on the stones. Fogs breathe
from dew-wet earth, from empty forest glades.

In early August heat, in summer shade,
we sat together sipping lemonade
and spent the evenings walking underneath
the August moon.

I miss your touch. I miss the tune we played.
As summer ends, I find myself afraid
of autumn’s rains and winter’s icy teeth
and spring seems far away. Alone beneath
the temple columns here, I serenade
the August moon.

In The Kitchen

Sunday Scribbling's prompt this week: in the kitchen.

In the kitchen, on the stove, the pot
of water bubbles; pans are getting hot
and fragrant steam is rising. Where’s the cook?
She’s on the porch; come to the door and look.
The clock says half past five, it’s on the dot

but he’s not there. There’s traffic—quite a lot
he must be late—or maybe he forgot—
she won’t believe that, sits down with a book
in the kitchen.

The towels on the rail are tied in knots
by anxious hands; the bread already got
a little burned; the mugs are on the hook
behind the coffee; in the breakfast nook
a woman’s crying for a man who’s not
in the kitchen.

Cleaning The Closet

What’s that door beneath the stairs?
Closet—who knows what’s in there.
Artifacts from ancient hoards,
bare and empty dusty boards?
Throw the door wide, stand and stare.

Unmatched glove that once was paired,
mate long-lost, but who knows where—
scabbard for a missing sword,
what’s that?

Tools needing some repair,
posters faded from the glare,
ravelled hanks of para-cord,
memories all unrestored,
treasure once beyond compare...
what’s that?

Artificial Tears

“Artificial tears,” the bottle says.
I guess you’re meant to use them on the days
(they’re few and far between, it seems to me)
life doesn’t bring the real ones. Can it be
the need’s that common? Truly, I’m amazed.

Perhaps the copy should be thus rephrased—
“A tear-like liquid.” “Lubricating glaze.”
You think I’m crying, but it might just be
artificial tears.

You don’t dare weep; you know that it betrays
your broken heart, the emptiness that weighs
you down. The answer’s in this bottle, see,
they’re tidily contained and sorrow-free.
What dims the hungry crocodile’s gaze?
Artificial tears.

On Silent Wings

On silent wings, edged with fine lace
a moth comes gliding to retrace
the path that leads to candle’s light
to moon’s reflection, silver-bright
to timeless times outside of space.

She leaves no ash nor dusty trace,
no sound of passage through this place,
the air is unmarked by her flight
on silent wings.

There’s nothing there, my reason says.
These moth-dreams fade at break of day,
give up the ghost at end of night.
Confess, my reason has it right—
but all the time, my heart’s away
on silent wings.

For the child I dreamed of having

I dreamed of you and woke to shed some tears.
I dreamed of all the unaccomplished years--
your infancy, your childhood, your teens
the coming-true of all your favorite dreams--
and when I woke, these things all disappeared.

I would have held you close and soothed your fears
and eased your sorrows with a mother's cheer
but waking's hard, for now it only seems
I dreamed of you.

If God in time sends other children here,
we'll love them well, and keep them safe and near.
But I won't kneel to drink from Lethe's stream,
you'll be remembered, child of my dream.
God keeps you now, but don't forget, my dear
I dreamed of you.

Lone And Level

Poetry Thursday's idea this week: Use one of your favorite lines of poetry as inspiration for a new poem.

The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Percy Bysse Shelley, Ozymandias

The lone and level sands stretch far away
smooth-laid from break of dawn to close of day.
Eternal desert, home to kingdoms past
and dreams of grandeur fated not to last
when we have left you, what will others say?

"They were no wiser; they too went astray
and staked their hopes on all too mortal clay--
their monuments were swallowed by the vast,
the lone and level sands."

The day goes on, the hours will not stay.
The sand is ours for now, in which to play.
Our footprints vanish ere the night has passed,
who dreamed oblivion would come so fast?
The sunrise sees the same thing every day:
the lone and level sands.