posted May 07, 2007 08:28 PM              

Think back. And so I do.

How did it start? How did it start to end? How
could a thing so worked for and so well built fall? There were signals, sign-posts, maps. Why did I ignore each signal, each sign?

As painful as retelling is, I have to do it for myself. And so I start to reconstruct, rebuild, the life pulled down around me, hoping I can make the replaced structures stand just long enough to find an answer: Why?

Each of us is earthbound, coming from the stars or wading to the shore. Sailing out, we must sail back--even if the voyage stops upon the ocean's bottom or beyond the universe. If there is rest at all, we take our ease not on some distant star or in the middle of the ocean. The notion that the earth is merely a departing place is hardly worth the time it takes to say so. Heaven and Hell may fire our imagination, but surely ground and ground alone is home.

Dialogue cannot be broken, communication lines must never be upended. If we make space within our heads then we should take care to arrive at each and every space we seek, together.

I was sure that what we had, however large or little, was enough to bring us closer to the earth. I need the warm ground for comfort and most of all reality.

WHISTLE STOPS

I go out slowly first,
tentative,
like a bather testing water,
I scrutinize the night.
Will the dangers this time
outnumber the rewards?

Where I have been
impatient in past lives
I am content just now
to venture slowly, if at all
into the darkness.

I know that love
is ladled out,
unloaded
in the market place
like bananas
and transistor radios
and those things
made to last
were built pre-1940.

And still I look
not necessarily to find
but more concerned
that as I lower
my binoculars
I'll lose my place.

How fortunate
the whistle stops
and factory towns
elect to keep my secrets
as they hold their own,
though a secret
is little more
than information
too dull to be passed
from ear to ear
as gossip--
too boring to be news.

Increasingly
if it were up to me
I'd hide nothing
except my face
in private pillows.
For I have almost no one
to protect.
And yet I'm glad
that cities still
continue as our guard
and guardian.

I've stayed within
my rabbit hole
too late, too long.
Perhaps I now enjoy
the solitude
I always fought
so hard against.

What have I learned
as I've gone traveling?
That I'd lie motionless
forever maybe
or die easily
within some known
or unknown arms
that wrap me up
and leave me
for the mornings's mischief.

One more man, I am
trying every way I know
to make it through
even one more day.
--copyright 1978

posted May 07, 2007 10:12 PM              

Entry Two: A Statement

You fill me with your anxiety and that is better than not being filled at all. You open up your life to me--could I ask more. I have no quarrel with the men who've loved you, only appreciation for their taste.

posted May 11, 2007 01:03 PM              

THE FIRST TIME

Beyond the trees
of what the world
terms wilderness
there is a first time.
Not to be confused
with anything
that's yet to happen
or what has gone before.

It feels not merely more,
but all there must be
all there is.
Skating on your smile
each night
I know that I am safe.
And I am privileged beyond
whatever God there is
to watch with you
the man-made stars
and those the master
scatters out himself.

Far off
unpeopled planets
dart the heavens.
If I can glide
along your grin
the other worlds
were truly made
for only us.

Away from you
I don't exist,
nothing's true
or even false.
I've no one
to dress up for
no reason
to leave home
or even share what's left to share.
It must be that the learning stops
now that I've learned to learn
with you.

MORE WINE

Drunk I love you
sane or sober
until the wine of wanting
passes from the vintage
to the dregs.

And as the carpenters
and the village vinter's son
make up the casks again
aiming for some year ahead,
we fill ourselves
with one another
vintage wine enough.

And now a toast;
I wish you heady harvests
every day of every year,
no unsure hours
or sleepless nights
and earth enough
when you're in cities
to make the valley's
of New England
and all the greenest hills
in France
stay forever green
inside your heart.

A LINE OF ANTS

A line of red-black ants
disappear below the corner
of the house.
Their single file trail
followed backwards
leads across an open space
precarious at best.

The open space
a gravel driveway
where no bridge permit
has been requested.

I've got till six,
no later,
to plan diversions--
a belt of honey
in a safe direction
sugar spilled across the lawn
to start the worker ants
skirmishing and stumbling to safety,
before you come driving home.

To keep you from the guilt
of even little murders,
my sleeves are rolled
and in my head
a battle plan
is starting.