HERE AND NOW
(AGAIN)
 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
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