I never noticed it before
That look upon his face
Not really mad or even sore
I now know it’s disgrace
The sense of failure that he hid
Despite achieving much
He sealed his lips and would forbid
To share another’s touch.
So are we destined every day
To wander in a crowd
Of wounded souls who’d rather slay
Themselves than to be proud.
April 9 2023
I’m lucky I’m not that prone to insomnia
Tonight is an exception I can’t sleep.
Who thought my heart would end up with arrhythmia?
Lying to the left I hear it beep
In irritating syncopation—now
For the first time I sense mortality
So many decades blissful, unaware
Reveling mindlessly in quiddity
Relishing much for much there is to care
For in this pulsing, fragile outward orb
The Earth that is, I worshiped far too little
Absorbed by books, above all and by forb
And now I sense the minutes start to whittle
I never thought I’d end up broken hearted!
Kaleidoscopic life become a fib
So many I have loved are now departed
And my own death adumbrates with AFib.
Life is perhaps just an experiment
Consisting of shattered fragments
Of perception: telephone poles flashing
Passed us we attempt to stash
In our memories, not to mention
Tender caresses or the gentians
By the million on Pontresina’s slopes.
What are we but a bundle of tropes?
A constellation of quiddity
Swirling in an alembic of liquidity.
April 26, 2023
The Rockies were painted by Maxfield Parish
This morning that Alpenglow pink to the West
The eastern horizon, while not quite so garish
A flannel pink aquarelle (crows just transgressed)
Each morning I sit on my armchair relaxing
Hot tea by my side, laptop on my lap
Scan the weather, the news and redacting
the tasks to take on and which ones are a trap
That will shatter the neatly constructed illusion
(Those mountains were once far under the sea)
The light fades and the diurnal confusion
Rends the painting, brings me back to me.
February 4, 2022
When life gives you avocados
Turn them into guacamole
If life gives you abogados
Just play “Whack-a-mole”, eh?
We proceeded, expanding as we went
Around the littoral, the coves and bays
There we were safest and most content
Occasionally venturing inland on forays
A few settled up there on the harsh steppes
And even flourished for a while until they came
Brandishing scimitars. We left the lame
Behind, perhaps the horde would miss our steps
And we’d be safe again here by the sea
And so we were a century or two
Until they’d gathered forces with a view
To coming down. So went our liberty
The hinterland was vast and uninviting
For us, for them it was a sort of wellspring.
What do you do when the country’s going South (literally?)…write some pseudo-haiku, that’s what! (or what I did last weekend).
1
Forsythia in December?
Just the backlit leaves trembling
On a willow. Sorry.
2
Oblique light on the dun horizon.
NPR starts playing Borodin’s Steppe suite
Coincidence?
3
I’ve turned this corner ten thousand times
And only just noticed
The loveliest Euonymus in the city.
4
The republicans passed the devil’s budget.
I planted five hundred bulbs the next day.
I win.
5 Sadness
Her daughter’s post on Facebook said
she died in August. I search for an obituary.
There is none.
6
Went to see “Ladybird” on Saturday
Sweet tale of teenage girl and mom
Fiction is now truer than truth.
7
Buds branches bark and berries are OK…
I keep looking and Lo!
A fresh flower open on a crocus!
It is to encounter the poetry of one’s life
On Facebook of all places. I so remember you
With braids in 7th grade, watching me
as I walked by in the distance, and I watched
You as well, your lithe Germanic form the way
The long blondish braids would change
Sometimes forming a crown with a pony
Tail swishing away, and your always
graceful carriage, like a dancer and I’d be
Choked up trying to talk to someone so
Ridiculously beautiful. And you were bright
Too boot. “I don’t know why people are so
Fixated on the color green: the West is
Beautiful because of all the other colors of
the Rainbow” that silly sentence probably condemned
me to a life of championing the Steppes.
I know now it’s no accident my love today
Is tall, Germanic and often has lopsided braids.
Our distant romance (which I realize now
Was mutual) stayed always distant and aloof.
Just as well: it took a German like yourself
To consummate and to possess you.
He (tragicomically) died four decades ago.
Alas. I have remembered you so tenderly, the
Doe-like beauty of your face, the way
You moved like a graceful antelope and
Stirred my heart like a spoon in a cup,
And drove my hormones into high gear.
For the helluvit I type in your name, dubiously.
And there you are on Facebook with your maiden
Name, definitely you (same high school,
Same age) but with an unrecognizable face.
The metadata say this shot was taken precisely
on October 21, 2013 at 12:24 PM and metadata
rarely lie. Already by 2003 the emerald beetle
has been at work in Detroit (says Wikipedia
which rarely lies as well. Although they add that
the EAB had likely been introduced “a few years
earlier on pallets” from China no doubt.That’s that.
Somehow the facts are cut and dried and very clear.
Now that is. But when I showed this very tree
to Adrienne and she marveled
Had to have been the year that in Detroit
Some entomologist finally unraveled
The reason the ashes were dying left and right.
I was flattered a year or two later when she had
the plaque made up and affixed to the trunk
or was it in the ground: my mental metadata
aren’t quite as reliable I fear.
I fear as well as that this exquisite tree
That turns is autumn purple mixed with gold
Might perish even sooner than me.
If the emerald peril expand from their base in Boulder
(whence I came too!) and proliferate as entomologists
Claim (they too will rarely lie) the beetle will breed
By the billion and consume millions of ashes
Throughout the Denver metropolitan area
in the next few years. Of course, there is recourse:
You can spray with imidacloprid (it’s classed
alas as a neonicotinoid) but apparently
can keep the bug away for years. Although you’ll have
to spray again eventually, and keep this up for
who knows how long? Perhaps the borer
will get bored or be controlled or settle down
to a dull roar as a quasi native by then and ashes
can once again be overplanted. But what about me?
And my ash? will it be neonicotinated?
How many other innocent bugs will perish
along with my beetles? and just how long would
that ash have lasted anyway? Funny. The beetle’s
in Boulder still and yet I’m quietly grieving
for my ash. What beetle equivalent might be lurking
Inside of me. Will it show up in the Channel Nine
Health fair metadata soon and help accelerate this race?
t
Here it is, the memento of that moment
When I realized the house had been
Ransacked: what all would be missing?
How would I tell Jan, who has a tender
Attachment to things sentimental and hers?
The police lifted fingerprints from the window
Where they’d broken in. The back door was
Open when I got there, but the cat hadn’t left
And didn’t seemed traumatized in the least
Who knows, maybe Secret was entertained by
The two (there had to be two–they carefully
Lifted the glass fronted bookcase off the trunk
To ransack its contents–almost all antique linens
Boy would I have loved to hear them curse
Our eclectic, worthless possessions: tons of books
And plants everywhere, worthless plants.
The electronics were all prehistoric.
They did steal two Macs and an I-pod, the computers
Are worthless-you can’t access without passwords.
One of them wasn’t even working. But the diamond
Stud earrings, yes those were worth something, and the pearl
Earrings. The necklace I bought Jan in Manhattan Beach,
Good gold, with malachite–the only thing I’ve given her
In almost a decade of sweetest companionship she treasured,
That left a definite sting. And roughly $5000 worth of
Possessions stolen, which we may not recover much of.
Everyone knows the violation of a break in–the sense
of vulnerability the fear each time you come home
Wondering if a thief’s been there before you this time too.
Acantholimon 