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Mammoth Find

Mammoth Find

Something fantastic was
Found under OSU—now,
In my part of the land,
OSU stands for “The”
Ohio State

Here, however, we’re
Talking about Oregon,
Where by the way members
Of my family have
Attended

Though none ten thousand
Years ago, which is the
Counting of this find—
Generally, we (and I
Mean you and me) were
Around as early wanderers

And inhabitants and so
Might have run from the
Massive body of the bones,
When enfleshed and nature-
Armed, we have now
As a mammoth—you
Know, the woolly kind

We’d have eventually
Turned and hunted down
The one in stone calcified
That we treasure now

Free away from
Primal scenes and needs
We may make friends
And maybe make amends

With its bones dryly,
Comfortably
Without tooth and claw
To rend in red our fragile
Skin

We (less bravely, perhaps)
May say:

Welcome, Ice-Age ally, to
Our better art and science

(“Nature, red in tooth and claw”—In Memoriam, Tennyson)

0

Willow, on Three Legs

Willow, on Three Legs

Willow, on three legs—
A wolf, one leg ruined
In a trap

Willow protected now
In sanctuary

We had a feline with
Three legs, one leg
Caught in a trap

She was purebred,
And the vet reasoned
That, once marred in
The trap, the cat
Could not be shown
For ribbons and so
Was discarded

My sister gave the
Siamese an exotic
Name, Scheherazade
(“Shahrazad,” the teller
Of one thousand plus
One tales, the tyrant’s
Wife who lives), and
For seventeen years
We lived with her

She was a gentle cat
Except for one trait:
She was the best
Birder in the cat pride
We kept then

Tragedy turned cat-
Happy life (well, not
So much for certain
Birds): Well done!

Well told,
Scheherazade

May Willow live as
Happily and as whole

(Willow introduced
To me, as with so
Many things, on PBS)

2

Tree Kind

Tree Kind

I fell from one
Once and again
And in the breath
I struggled to take
Back again

I still called you
Friend

I cannot make flesh
That has its own
Or invent a spirit
When already imbued

The tree breathes
Out its own

2

31 January 2016 (in the global north)

31 January 2016
(in the global north)

I still wake up with jittery feelings. The sun is bright. The snow is melting down. Maybe I need it gone. But is that the boundary of my fear? I sit and look outside to see the beauty. I am inspired to come back and write a verse of two. Still, fear jumps inside me. At least it doesn’t leap. I’ll feel better, once I write a bit. Drink a hot drink, maybe take a pill or two pills. I know that on a good day my heart still operates in an iffy way. I know that what happened here was momentous. It’s momentous, still, outside. As in ancient Arabian architecture, I cherish space and righter light. Not simply looking out into amorphous glare. Rather the view of a virtuously bright and blue-skied world above with earth of desert browns beneath. Through arches made of genius and of grace, numbering the stars within each stone’s embrace.

I dream this is all easier, if not delightful, in a desert paradisal scene. Where arid becomes beautiful and free air moves through all, spirits borne and carried along. Maybe heaven’s healing wind will pause and wave upon me there, and I will feel and know something of the serene aspect of God.

Too much romance and earthly-bound, I know. But I need this. My fear frankly needs it, as does my hope and peace.

0

Burying the Unknown Dead

Burying the Unknown Dead

A ministry, non-sectarian, in
Boston

Students from a private
School—senior-students
From a private school

Attend to one, an unknown
Man, somewhere with a
Name but no one to claim
And care for his mortal
Remains

“But today we are his family,
We are here as his sons . . .”

Pallbearers, recitations of
Free and liturgical verse—
These youth provide all

To bear the body and,
Finally, kindly lay with
Loving intention into the
City’s yard and ground

In Boston, it’s a frozen
Day, yet there is some light

Because hope of all kinds
And times and mortal or
Immortal prophecies—

Hope blazes here

(reported at npr.org for
25 January, “Today We
Are . . .” by Arun Rath)

2

First Words Depending on Where Refugees Arrive

(response to Denmark’s new law)

 

First Words Depending on Where Refugees Arrive

Welcome to our nation
Give us everything you have

Welcome to our nation
We need to assay all you own

Welcome to our nation
How will you contribute?

Welcome to our nation
We have to screen you first

Welcome to your nation
Let’s get you settled here

4

Claustrophobe

Claustrophobe

Am I trapped on
the second floor?
My town for now
has the greater
accumulation,

And I realize this
is maybe too much.
I look out:

all I see are shapes
of indistinction;
I can’t even see
that well for
vapor pushing
up against my
window, making
visual barriers
in condensation.

The storm is Jonas;
that’s fine. If you
can escape the
hunt of God by

living for days in
a great fish—before
being retrieved by
hunter’s hand (let’s
say)—then I not
hunted by the
divine with the
exception to be
loved,

then I can weather
this—well, you
know–weather.

4

Re: Terror Cuts Pay

Re: Terror Cuts Pay

Slices pay in two

A secret ISIS memo
Leaked (I guess that
Phrase defines itself)
About paid staff
Losing half its pay

Benefits might be
Halved as well, at
Least from the neck up

Since ISIS wants a
State and hates the
Past (destroying
Ancient Arabian and
Asian works and the
Scientists who work
To preserve these), then
A state might be
Provided for the

Group, since there
Are uninhabited islands
In, say, Pacific waters
(Ironic), where UN

Patrols would sail
Sentinel so that an
Island of hate might be
Appropriately (by
Itself) preserved

0

On the Cusp of a Nor’Easter (prose poem)

On the Cusp of a Nor’Easter
(prose poem)

So my friend calls from Indiana. I tell her of my sister’s new job. I am relieved and happy, because my friend’s been struggling with sufferings that would drive me mad. She sounds well and has a chance to tell me some about her family on her way to church to help lead (in technical matters) a Bible study there. It is cold here. It is colder there (single-digit degrees for many days). When she must ring off, she does. I am at the coffeemaker and place the backside of the phone on a spiral burner on the stovetop (everything turned off). While the coffee’s cooking, I clean out some plastic bottles into which I put tap water to drink throughout the day. Not thinking at first, I place the cleaned-out bottles just outside the burner circle set upon the stove. When I’ve done this four times, I have four empty bottles cornering a phone set on a burner plate of labyrinthine form. I’m sure there is a deity for winter (generally, Persephone, though I’m thinking there’s one for winter only), and have I not built a small, strange contemporary altar to her. A narrow receiver (wireless) offered up inside four plastic monoliths keeping in their stillness their own kind of sentinel watching. Is this supplication? I want my friend to be well. I want her husband to enjoy retirement and her daughter have success at school. I want the cold to move on, over there, though for a Midwest winter season, I guess what is endured is rather normal. (Still too cold.) My temps in southern Pennsylvania still have two digits. But we are called to be ourselves storm-ready against a coming, miles-wide soon-arriving gale. It smacks the South and later rounds out to sea—on the way releasing slivering ice and snow and the season’s other dangers onto our regional metropoles: D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York. And in my small town? I pray for navigable roads. In my small place, I pray for electricity’s constancy—that it might faithfully provide sufficient heat in rapport with the thermostat. And now I guess I wait. We wait. I clear the stove and leave on the burner now a single cup, ready for coffee. The empty ceramic vessel a suburban symbol of encouragement and also, I think, of supplication.

4

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