2-28-22 As Long As The Road Runs Ahead

all is lost, alas
 
so
I have this poem I wrote
that is not a very good poem at all
but as a poem-a-day poet
I have to either post it or write another poem

it’s like spending your last $8.99 on a shirt at WalMart,
not realizing how ugly it is until
you get it home
but you have to wear it because
you paid for it

so
I’m thinking
that surely is a pretty peach-colored sky
to the west, a reflection
of the sun cresting the horizon
to the east, and I’m thinking
well
so what
this peach-colored sky thing
happens every day so how is that better
than an ugly shirt from
WalMart

so
I’m thinking well
look at the pigeons
peck pecking on the pavement
in the parking lot,
isn’t that worth a nice poem
but I’m thinking
what’s the big deal
about pigeons peck
pecking
on the pavement in the parking
lot, has anyone ever seen
a pigeon not
peck
pecking
on something
somewhere, so

I’m thinking,
look at that big bus
passing on the interstate
taking someone, somewhere,
while I sit here peck pecking on my computer
like a pigeon
and, besides, I’m thinking
who cares about buses going somewhere,
last time I was on a bus back in 1967,
I got off in Atlanta
and flew the rest of the way
to my destination
and I bet buses are no better
now
than they were then,
and that was
pretty
bad

so
I’m thinking,
look at that huge oak tree,
bet it’s full of
squirrels,
but I’m thinking, I’ve done squirrels
recently and aside from their bushy tails
they’re basically rats
in trees
and who wants to read more about
rats
in trees

so
I’m thinking
now I’m stuck with two lousy poems
and I’m going to have to post
one of them
for my poem-of-the-day
and I’m thinking
damn,
I wrote a really good poem
yesterday

I wonder what’s happened
since then
that leaves me with two lousy poems
that I have to choose from

the glory of the day before
lost
all lost
like Richard
who lost his horse
and ended up buried in a parking lot
with British pigeons
peck
pecking
right over his head
​

the dangers inherent in writing poetry in the afternoon

semi-bright
day
Wi-Fi at the coffeehouse
crashed

leaving
dead time for me
with ten thousand things
(at least)
I want to do

I hate dead time,
it is reminding me too much of
dead me,
when all the little fizzlebillets
that connect
this little brain bit
to that little brain bit
goes on the
fritz
and I’m stuck
candidate for a career
in any one or more of the zombie movies
which seem to multiply
like gruesome little bunnies
overnight,
turning all my best parts
into
corned beef hash,
which,
I don’t know about you,
seems really disgusting
to me
and I’m thinking
that instead of allowing my fizzlebillets
to turn into corned beef
hash
I should maybe try some mental exercises
but I get stuck at 6 times 6
so, it may be already
too late…

​

campfires
​
around campfires
beings not so unlike us
as we imagine, told stories
of the trials and victories of the day,
shared news of the hunt
with their clan brothers and cousins

many stories reached into the hearts of those who heard them
and were told again on other nights
around other campfires, passed on through generations
and geography…

traditions were born, expressed
in all the many languages of
man…

and we
who call ourselves poets
bear the weight of that tradition
with every word we
write, a burden, but not heavy, light instead
and full of promise

an invitation to join
kindred souls, to retell the old stories
and sometimes our own new story,
so well told
its telling sets a new spark rising in the dark night,
passing  from our own campfire to others
brightly burning, we will never
see…

keeping aglow
the ancient embers…

it is our job,
undertaken with the humility
of those who understand their place
in a long and vibrant
history…

it is our joy,
however well or poorly
we do it

​

an ambulance passes, patient cabin lit
​
old woman, white hair,
some lying across her forehead
like foam advancing
from an impatient tide,
cheeks sharp-edged, planed
like lava run on the side of a mountain,
asleep, blue
blanket pulled to
her chin, attendant quiet and still beside her,
no lights, no siren, unhurried
passage home,
far-traveled trail-rider
nearing trail’s
end

​

An actual new poem, from a story in the weekly New York Times Science section.

double trouble

a clash of Titans
falling into
a clash of Titans

one black hole
pulled into
a larger black hole

blackness,
darker than the desert
at midnight

gravity
slipping like a saucer
of melting wax,
pulling apart all the tiny parts
of me,
atoms and electrons and
neutrons and quarks and barks
pulled and scattered
to leave the ghost of me
adrift in the black
of all

even darker than clash
of elementals

imagine the power
of such dark
forces,
rending the universe
leaving the black portal
to never ever land

never ever land
the smile of Alice's Chesire Cat
mocking in the dark 
the white ghost of me
adrift in the ever never land,
asleep in forever-ever land 

​

trail mix
 
made dinner
last night, steak,
macaroni and cheese (for color),
and beans…

cowboy dinner -
not a green thing anywhere

```

my son’s dog is Ayla

she loves to play chase the ball

throw the ball and she’ll run and get it and bring it back
for another throw,
throw the ball and she’ll run and get it and bring it back
to continue the game

she’ll do it for
hours

I decided to play the game
with my dog, Bella, so I threw the ball

she ran and got it…

took it the far-back corner
of the back yard
and buried
it…

that’ll be enough
of that

```

he had a wife
and two children

who he loved and cared for
above all else…

he wasn’t a
philanderer at heart

but every woman
between

eighteen and seventy five
wanted him

and he was no good at all
at resisting

temptation…

he was
my friend…

I wonder if he’s still
alive,

still
not resisting temptation

```

on the other hand,
I knew a woman, good mother
and wife, except that being such
left her feeling unfulfilled,
seeking such filling
with tennis pros and other men
on the margin seeking always
someone else’s good wife and mother
to fulfill

```

“on the wings
of a snow-white dove
I found my own true love,
sent from above,
sent from above”

country folk in the old days
knew about religious music, praise
music that looked to God
in their own rough life, understood
the gifts of life and love
he gave them…

a barista in a coffeehouse
where I used to go liked to play
modern praise music, sung and played
by sincere-faced yuppies, puppies
whose closest experience with their God
was the dollar and a quarter weekly allowance
they used to get from their mom and dad, awful music,
unimaginative wailing, heartless, crass and dull as the worst
pop music by the worst teen sensation…

it was a church-supported coffeehouse…

you’d think they’d be more careful
about demeaning the supposed glories
of the God they claimed to
worship and
adore

```

and speaking of
godly missions,
fulfillment,
steaks, and great accomplishments
of the previous year
I was very proud, after years trying,
to master the arts of the omeleteer
late in the previous year, finally
learning how to prepare an omelet
in the proper masculine
fashion

it’s a man’s food to fix
you know, what with all the
swifting and spiffting and stirring
and stirring before easing
the eggs into a pan heated
to the exact best temperature,
selecting all the proper
ingredients to be added to the eggs
in the proper sequence and
at the proper time
as they fluff, swirling
the rising eggs around the pan
(properly buttered before-hand of course),
then with that gentle yet resolute
flip that is required so that your omelet
has the proper slight browning
on both sides, it is a manly thing to do,
this creation of the perfect
omelet, requiring all of a man’s greatest
attributes of delicate strength
and keen observation...

I am very proud
today, as I consider this, my accomplishment,
perhaps my greatest accomplishment
of 2013…

new mountains to climb
in 2014, new vistas to explore
and conquer…

perhaps buttermilk
pancakes

​

a girl-child plays in a summer park
​
a girl-child
with long braided hair
and deep violet
eyes
runs in a park
blowing soap bubbles,
a stream of soap bubbles
caught by the wind,
blowing through the trees

there is your true God

a pretty girl-child
blowing bubbles, each bubble
a universe let fly by winds of chance,
one bubble yours
and mine
where we sleep…

innocent
and unaware of all sharp edges
in the matraverse
in which our God runs, blowing
translucent universe
bubbles
watching them drift in the wind,
watching them pop
as harsh and unwelcoming
space and time
finds them

arbiters of order,
all the mechanics of space
and time, hostile
to such free and open flying

​

​I’m just tired of it
 
Well,
It’s true…
 
I’m an old man,
Codger dial set to most curmudgeonly,
Crotchety, just as a 78-year-old man ought
 
But damnit, I’m tired of how
Nothing works anymore
 
I’m tired of rough, pot-holed streets
That only get worse
After our incompetent street department
Fixes them
 
And I’m tired of incompetent, at best,
Politicians
And the weasel-in-a-snakeskin politicians
Whose incompetence is the only thing saving us
From disaster

and I’m tired of great television programs
That I can only see after I fi-diddle-diddle
Some kind of “fire-stick”
That will never light my fire
 
And I’m tired of good restaurants
That set aside their blue-plate-specials
For some frou-frou menu of pasture greens,
High prices and tough steak
And good old breakfast diners that put
Jalapenos in their biscuits and gravy
 
And modern automobiles that look like multi-colored snails,
Instead of those great finned monsters
That set our imagination aloft
 
And the Spurs, my basketball team, who play
Great basketball for 45 minutes before blowing it
In the last three minutes of a regulation 48-minute game
 
That’s just pretty damn discouraging
To us disciples of the round ball memory
Better days of yore
 
All of that,
Then,
In the midst of all my high codgerishness,
I see pictures of our Mars lander,
Mars, for Christ’s sake, there we are,
Putting our robot’s footprints
On the red planet, leaving a plume of red dust
As it traverses the plains and canyons
Of our most ancient memories, preparing
As it passes, for a day not far ahead,
When it is human footprints on Mars,
Mars, for Christ’s sake….
 
And that new telescope
That will show us the beginning of time and space,
The only everything we know, seeing it from minutes
After the “big bang,” having eyes on the creation
Of everything, everywhere, and everytime…
 
Thinking we ought to get the people
Who did all this and put them in charge
Of everything else as well

leaving me, thinking of this, that worthy things
May still be possible for our kind,
Lulled
In a kind of poly-possible unlikelyhoods,
Satisfied for the day
Except,
Still pissed about the Spurs

​

she’s probably heard it all before

pretty
young black girl,
barista at the Starbucks
where I go when my regular coffeehouse is closed

beautiful hands,
I notice
as she gives me my change,
and dark, deep eyes…

smiling
as she waits
for the next customer,
thinking, I don’t know what,
probably what every pretty young girl
smiles about
and on this young girl,
it is
especially fetching…

I’m looking at her as I stir my coffee
at the sugar and everything else bar
and she sees me
and comes over, thinking I want something…

how do I tell her how much I want
at least some of the years
lost
and how much I enjoyed
watching her smile

but I don’t even try
to tell her,
since,
it’s the way it is,
she’s a pretty young black girl
and I’m an old white man, probably,
in her mind if I say anything,
a dirty old white man
and she’s heard it all
before
I’m
sure

​

as long as the road runs ahead

birthday coming up,
number 78 this time,  
a week to think about it

and I will, because
this one unlike others seems irrevocable...

I do not dread the advance
of time and time’s inevitable denouement

because it’s like what Darrel Royal
used to say - you dance with one who brung you

and the years have “brung” me
much that has been satisfying, rewarding

me with memories
I would not trade for any extension

of years spent dull and dreary,
without the pleasures that come with things done

people known, places been,
even the mistakes as real in my mind

and as important to me as all the times
of smooth and proper sailing...

this life, like an ocean, the deeper the better,
stagnant ponds where life is encrusted with the waste

never doing, never trying, never flying, never falling, never
choosing at a fork in the road, a dull life of sitting

at the intersections of life
afraid to move, afraid to choose

~~~

I will think more of this in the days ahead,
and, as always, as I think, I write…

my conclusion now, well,
wait, this story not yet ended

as long as the road runs ahead,
there will always be horizons to reach for…

​

the aliens on our streets

five foot two, maybe three
on her tiptoes, stern, got-business-to-do face,
sharp nose, sharp chin, blond hair
pulled back tight, giving the appearance
of a profile on an ancient
Roman coin

sits straight backed in her chair,
the uniform tight,
her broad belt and attached accessories
remind me of my son when he was about three,
a toy tool belt with toy tools cinched around his middle,
covering about a third of his body…

she and her partner don’t talk much, I see,
both with their professionally unreadable, got-business-face,
business, despite all the television stories, known only to them
and their fellows, a life both inside and outside
the life the rest of us laze through,
so comfortable and smug...

her face softened, broken with a smile
as I pass and say hello, a human face flashing
behind the cop-on-the-beat face
she wears most of the day, and, if she’s lucky,
is able to leave at work when she goes home
at night to her husband and maybe children,
somebody’s wife, somebody’s mother,
living inside, outside, the face she carries like a shield
all day…

~~~

I am reminded of the “pigs” of my younger days, the appellation
rising again among many, referring always to “cops” as if it was a dirty word,
and I wonder if they’ve ever known one,
if they’ve ever seen one
behind the
mask…

I think not

I think most people live a life so safe and secure
they have no way to ever understand
what lives beneath the surface, organizing their life
around myths instead, never understanding what commitment
it takes to keep that underlife
away from their door and the tidy life
they live behind
it

​

it’s all in the game

with thanks to Tommy Edwards and Nat King Cole

“Many a tear has to fall,”
he sings

and I wish
I was sixteen again
when I understood the truth of things
long since forgot

I remember thinking,
I should be writing this down,
but I didn’t of course,
being sixteen, truth passes quickly,
captured in a moment,
too delicate to keep
in a closed palm,
released,
the memory
seared
forever we think,
forgetting, at sixteen,
about getting old
when even the plainest memory,
the most obvious truths
of youth
fade

---

but
for a moment,
in the music, I see its
shadow

​

harvest
 
a great morning
after 10 days of cold

sun
bright and yellow

pasture fresh mowed,
golden grass
fresh cut
and thrown from the tractor in rows

deer
graze along the rows

little holes dug
around the base of oaks

holes
like those doodlebugs
make in fine, loose
earth

holes made by squirrels
retrieving
their bounty of acorns

winter sustenance
earned earlier in the labours
of summer and fall
gathering

I,
nearing another in a very long line
of birthdays,
gather my own, right here
right now

here…

let me share my harvest
with you

​

​

​a hole in time

all these years later,
there are moments when something,
some sight, some sound,
just something,
triggers the past, a hole in time and in the instant of an eye-blink
I am back in it…

this morning,
passing a hotel in the dark,
a side door, light burning, and
seen through the door a long hotel hallway,
blue carpet, hotel wallpaper color walls,
and I am standing outside such a door
in early morning dark thirty years ago,
waiting for the mayor so I can take
him into a meeting room
and introduce him to assembled out-of-town VIPs…

Luther Jones,
a lovely and beloved man who, after his political life was over,
would stop by every couple of weeks to talk
to the children at the elementary school
named after him, known
to everyone from his sparkling city by the sea,
for me and many others,
a mentor and champion over the years,
passed on in his 80s in 2001…

it was a funeral large and crowded full of friends and citizens,
but simple, like the man…

a hotel’s bright-lit side door, a beacon to memory
this dark morning, and I am awash in remembering
times and so many good men passed…

sweet sadness begins my day...

​

​

Amethyst

A deep stone with many streets,
its light holds itself in with 
blue, the pours sunlight
over the windowsill. My fingers
run like water over its edges
and I feel a small rose opening, a pulse.

I gave off light like this once, listening
to poems beside a man I hadn't
known long, feeling my thoughts
simply braid into his.
We didn't touch and later we stopped
writing letters, but that night
a sheath of heat held us, and the light
rising from me for once was muted.,
not diamond, or daydream spending itself
in sparks, and it never quite left.
One morning, expecting tartness
and seeds from purple grapes that appeared
along a stranger's fence, I tasted
sunlight. I tasted snowmelt
washed down form rock and pure air. 
At times it seems that benevolence
thrives in a small enclosure.

Today the sun turns the grey
mountains gold, dusky pink, the spills shade
over their canyons which deepen
to blue as tdhe light begins to leave.
The bay gelding walks
to the end of his pen and dips his nose into
black water, not drinking, just
splashing it, playing,
making it gleam in the soft dark.

bench-sitting, people watching
 
the day started early

4:30 the dog’s early walk,
coffee from the lobby;
several blocks to the plaza,
around the plaza
and back to the hotel, all the morning
necessaries done

back to Starbucks down from the plaza
at 6, most of the same folks
from yesterday - the woman, tiny woman
with a tiny doll face, beading some kind of jewelry
while her husband drinks coffee and
watches; I saw them later
at their spot
on the square, business less than booming

then, at 7, breakfast at
La Fonda, eggs benedict with their own-made
hollandaise sauce and tomatillo, best
ever…

then,
time for the business of the day…

bench-sitting and people watching,
a bench on the plaza facing the sun
and the sidewalk, looking and listening
as people pass -
(learning as I wish I had learned 50 years ago,
beautiful women love to pet beautiful
dogs) -
people stop, scratch the dog’s head, cooing and
coochie cooing, like the beautiful German tourist
and her mother talking to Bella in German, a
multilingual dog, Bella seems to understand…

a month’s worth of attention in just a few hours,
spoiled dog will expect the same daily
from now on…

sitting with my back to a group
of mostly men, homeless, street people, ladies
and gentlemen of extended leisure, habitues
of a park salon, expounding on issues
wide and deep, football, the day’s menu
at the mission, interviews of famous people
heard (it's Santa Fe, after all) on National Public Radio,
the advantage of knives over guns,
the crazy fuck who hangs out on the other side
of the park…

probably the most interesting conversations
I’ve been privy to in a long, long time…

meanwhile,
Bella soaks up all the attention of the passing
crowds, mostly old people in the morning, old
women with red painted toes and old men
with silly-looking hats they think required during
vacation rambling in the mountains - and no,
my hat is not the least bit silly, being, as it is,
the naturally required hat for vacation rambling
in the mountains…

and
speaking of mountain rambling,
that’s the plan for today, Espanola to Los
Alamos, then through the national forest
and across the Sangre de Cristo range
a five hour drive of lofty heights and wide
vistas, perfectly timed for the leaves
changing as we pass, a wonderful day
of deep forests,
high mountain passes, and clean mountain air…

tomorrow,
we don’t know yet,
maybe north to Ojos Calientes
or south to Van Horn, the long way home
on Highway 90, through Alpine,
Marfa, Marathon, Del Rio,
across the desert, skirting the Big Bend’s
border mountains…

two more days of driving

and seeing all the
sights

​

Elizondo Road
 
I just learned
that Freddy got himself
a road…

up near Bluetown,
a tiny town a couple of miles
from the small town where I grew up,
just a cotton field
from the Rio Grande River…

a little Mexican beer joint
there where I used to go to buy
beer when I was about sixteen,
no questions asked
until a new guy asked me
what year I was born
and I couldn’t get the math
to work in my mind
so I turned around and walked
out

lucky for my drinking habits
the new guy didn’t last
long, costing the owner too much
business, I’m guessing,
so things quickly returned to
normal…

```

(this is supposed to be about Fred,
not me, which I often forget when in the midst
of poeming...)

so,
as I was going to say
before I so rudely
interrupted
myself,
Fred was a very nice fellow...

a nice fellow, my co-worker
for a few years,
a farmer, a social worker
who helped farm workers and labor contractors
find each other for the annual
migration, a friend to all who might need
a friend, and, come election time,
a gatherer of Democratic voters, filling
his big farm truck with farm workers,
insuring they all knew
by the time they reached the polls
who the Democrat was and how to vote
for him…

a man with all the normal South Texas
prejudices, but like with most of the kind,
prejudices applying only to those he didn’t know,
never to any he knew and made his friend,
in short, a very nice fellow and a good friend
to have in the best and worst
of times…

if I listed of all the people I’ve known
who deserve a road, it would be a
very short list and right at the top
would be Fred from Bluetown, Texas,
a man I know would be
very proud
of his road, a man i knew
and liked many
years
ago

​

anniversary thoughts on a winter night

the cold night seeps
through the window 
beside our bed,
damp, coastal cold
that makes midnight fog
fall to the ground, frozen,
reflecting the pale light 
like the tiny sparkles
of broken glass
you see scattered on the street
after an accident

the window,
when I brush against it,
is a cold jolt
that pushes me across the bed
to lie closer to you,
to wrap myself around you,
embracing your warmth
like an animal
drawing tight around itself,
seeking the internal fire
of its own warm heart
to protect itself
from the cold hand of night

you are my fire
tonight
and nights to come,
the warm nest that saves me
from cold and loveless nights,
the light that sustains me
through dark and lonely days

you are the center
of life and warmth for me

you are,
​and so, i am