Loose Endings
Violin Repeats
Other
than
is put
in words
violin repeats
itself,
insistent,
soft,
volute
dictations,
penetrating
crickets’ talk
and tinnitus
in forest
orchestration
quivers full
its range,
bombo
drum to trombone
flair--
violin repeats,
a yearning
bow,
articulate
no other way,
translating
deaf to mute:
its pointed ears
closed crosiers,
introspecting
need
so,
decrescendo
root
to
earth.
Other
than
is put
in words
violin repeats
itself,
insistent,
soft,
volute
dictations,
penetrating
crickets’ talk
and tinnitus
in forest
orchestration
quivers full
its range,
bombo
drum to trombone
flair--
violin repeats,
a yearning
bow,
articulate
no other way,
translating
deaf to mute:
its pointed ears
closed crosiers,
introspecting
need
so,
decrescendo
root
to
earth.
Science
"As if there was a bright scienza outside of ourselves..."
Wallace Stevens The Auroras of Autumn
Do we have any beans?
Feeling in the dark, retrieve one bean.
Yes.
How many beans do we have?
Lay hand on an opened bag,
from which the one escaped.
Then do we have enough for soup?
Soup for how many?
Count them round.
How thick or thin must be the soup?
How thin is too watered to be worth?
Does our supply meet need?
Yes, we have beans, unless your family comes.
How likely is their coming?
Ergo,
provisionally, under certain conditions,
within such limits, we have beans--
otherwise, yes, but not significantly, no.
Let us consider whether we have rice, then.
Look, do we or don't we have beans?
What do you mean by "have?"
Golden Years
Our picture, four years past--
we’re, God, so young,
you, so pretty, I, substantial--
pretty and substantial, you and I--
before you let your roots grow out,
before my back goes out.
My sister calls to kvetch and moan
that she is sixty-six. I say
I’d give an arm and leg to be so young.
When she’s my age, I promise her,
she’ll call her sixties golden years.
The energy, what strength these youngsters have--
she still thinks “long-term” means some years!
She is my little sister, so she miffs a bit
at tough love switched for sympathy,
but maybe, sotto voce, hope’s continuo creeps in her chord.
Our skinny grandson weighs now more than me--
knowledge heavy on the brain.
He fixes phones and straightens out our lap-top,
while I teach him how to drive a stick.
He offered to come and fix things anytime.
We’re running out of inedibles
he hasn’t mastered, to offer in return.
It takes me twenty-two years back--
when he is born, you’re a sylph, and me,
I’m more than I am now.
A cousin’s husband, at eighty-eight, turns out a play,
his first; his seventies, so rich and busy,
he had no time to sit or write.
At ninety, now, he commentates on politics.
What he would give to be where we are now--
the golden years, love.
Meadow Hill
We amble through tamed flower beds,
to native sun in autumn fields.
“Isn’t it good?” It is.
We set the hill-brow useless goal
to go for walking’s sake,
and keeping company
among the working bees.
A little talk, not listening much,
the bird calls we’d remember more,
though they have called
as beautifully before.
NOTICE:
meadow burns in natural cycle,
hot, red renewal sweeps up-hill.
Much the same for us
to fire breaks mowed at edge of wood.
Turned, we wind us
down the sunny slope,
well weary, sore, restored
from friends and kin,
the big world’s sounding
brass and din.
Bayard, the Beinoni
All birdsong seemed to me the same,
all hearts, one bottle;
it would fill, soon empty,
empty to be filled with song.
Joy turned tedium.
Myth mistook, petrified to Mass.
No, not seduced by beauty, nor
drawn poutily to purity,
soon great with cynicism,
I grew wiser than truth.
No little foolish, a great fool,
outwaiting joy for apotheosis,
accepting sortilege and knuckle bones in lieu.
I strolled the woodland, tripping
over hidden roots and rocks and turtles
in each other’s guise, and fields
of dappled knowledge, daisy dictums,
thymy theorems, found pluckable
from context, but still, comforting—gorgons’ heads,
when my growth had rendered them extinct.
Open space—land not lacking trees,
that lacks for men.
Our…, my presence changed the setting,
shaped then to the space I took:
larger than expected.
A swallow’s beak brings butterflies
without the flutter of their wings.
Our toddler’s fist brings butterflies
crushed for beauty’s sake.
Abstinence in statuesque silence,
appreciation’s most fit form,
it made a monumental life.