Bedtime Stories

 Tell me a story said the child

No said pragmatic it’s time for bed

Sensing tactics the skeptic smiled

Just close your eyes denial said

And dream said ignorance sweet dreams

I’ll be in the next room said fear

I love you said despite what seems

Maybe tomorrow said next year

We’ll read two stories busy lied

If you’ll be good condition said

Now say your prayers the hypo- cried

And go to sleep said get to bed

Said once upon a time good night

And nothing read turned off the light

Motion Pictures

Some movies leave you feeling sad
worked up or happy, but they leave you there
retwisting scenes, revisiting the air
and sorting out the ugly good and bad.
They try to linger in your soul.
The best films take a hold and don’t let go:
they dare to move beyond the picture show,
they grip you past the credit roll
and draw you on the empty screen
the winner relishing the victory,
the tragic hero bearing the defeat,
the voyager letting where you’ve been
and what you’ve seen ultimately
define you far beyond your theater seat.

You will remember this.

                                 Some shows
are only popcorn, local strangers all
faced in the same direction, a big wall
reflecting light-and-shadowed rows
of patronage, a flattening screen
that turns all living colors into grey.
The worst ones don’t have anything to say
but good flicks scream in every scene:
They sing and laugh and make you think
and turn you unexpectedly
into a kindred soul.  As light projects
on screen, as sound tracks into sync,
as motion makes its own reality,
you find your spirit in the cineplex.

Truth

We are books & blogs on shelves & screens
Collecting dust, the timeless mask,
And who will have tomorrow’s task
Of reading remnants of ourselves
In search of truth and what it means
Beneath the leaves, behind the scenes?

Between the lines, before each word
Was written true, reality
Turned into shards of history,
And who should have the thankless chore
Of faithful repetition, word
For word, unspun, unchecked, unstirred?

Our government’s gone partisan.
The fourth estate’s gone commentary.
Truth has left the sanctuary.
Cyberspace is shopping carts
& garbage cans.  The classroom’s gone
To Googling itself.  Log on,

And look beyond this timeless mask
Of our neglect, beneath the dust
Of idle grayness over us,
Past existential grime: our time
In history remains, the task
Of truth prevails.
    But who will ask?

Inauguration Day 2009

I

Paine wrote it,
Washington read it,
Obama retold it
in the depth of winter:
“Let it be retold...”
and “Let it be said
by our children’s children...”
...that when we faced
our coldest cold,
our hardest hardship,
when it seemed nothing
but hope and virtue
could survive,
city and country
came forth to meet
their common danger
together, braved
the icy currents
and coming storms
and safely delivered
that great gift
of hope and virtue
to their future
generations.
And now we mark
the day again
and remember when
we carried forth
God’s grace upon us
and wouldn’t let
our journey end.


II

Seward proposed it,
Lincoln pronounced it,
Obama proclaimed it
with the resonance
of fighting words:
...stretching out
from battlefields
and patriot graves,
the mystic chords
of memory played
from Concord to
Gettysburg
and Normandy
to now:  This time,
our time, has come
to choose our
better history,
to summon the
better angels
of our nature,
to remember
who we are, how
far we’ve come.
This is our moment.
This is our time
to be renewed
and reconciled.
This is our
day to take
responsibility
and seize our duties
gladly.


III

John Locke asserted it,
Jefferson declared it,
Obama offered it
as old and true:
“We hold these truths...:
and carry them forward;
Paul said this too:
we set aside
the things of youth
and see at last
what must abide:
our faith, our hope,
our charity,
and equally,
intrinsically,
our rights to life
and liberty
and free pursuit
of happiness:
These things are old.
These things are true.
And now we return
and rejoice in the truth,
that precious gift,
that noble idea,
the God-given promise
that all are equal
all are free, and
all deserve a
chance to pursue
the fullest measure.


IV

Carry it forward,
Thomas, George,
that we may bear
the winter winds
and see the spring.
Carry it forward,
William, Abe,
that we may hear
and learn to sing
the battle hymns
that came before us.
Carry it forward,
Thomas, John,
the glorious burden,
price and promise
of our birthright.
Carry on, Barrack,
that we may know
the greater purpose
of our present
season.  Carry
on, that we
may take
responsibility
with what we’re given,
the old and true,
the truth renewed.
You know what's true,
now carry it
and call on us
to serve with you.

Reflective Study of Wallace Stevens' Man and Bottle

The mind is the great poem of winter, the man
    The heart is the rose and ice of spring, the child
Who, to find what will suffice,
    Who, accepting everything,
Destroys romantic tenements
    Creates the real poetry
Of rose and ice    
    Of life

In the land of war.  More than the man, it is
    In a state of grace.  More than a child, it is
A man with the fury of the race of men,
    A child full of the innocence of youth,
A light at the centre of many lights
    A rising sun, a breaking light,
A man at the centre of men.
    A child at the edge of truth.

It has to content the reason concerning war,
    It never questions the cause or concern of grace,
It has to persuade that war is a part of itself,
    It never argues that grace is out of place, it is
A manner of thinking, a mode
    A matter of feeling, the core
Of destroying, as the mind destroys,
    Of creating, so the heart creates

An aversion, as the world is averted
    A convergence, as the dawn converges
From an old delusion, an old affair with the sun,
    To a new awareness, a new affair with the sun,
An impossible aberration with the moon,
    The inevitable deviation from the moon,
A grossness of peace.      
    The end of night.

It is not the snow that is the quill, the page.
    It is not the rose that is the dawn, the spring.
The poem lashes more fiercely than the wind,
    The ice breaks, the winter melts away
As the mind, to find what will suffice, destroys
    As the heart, accepting everything, creates
Romantic tenements of rose and ice.
    The real poetry of life.

Sunday's Coming

Old man barely middle aged
Once predicted his demise
Or at least the timing.  Time
Flies.  I’m feeling parsley saged
Afraid of death and otherwise
Out of breath with hills to climb
Over of my own, the time
Ominously rising.  Old
Man said No to nursing homes
Or planning for retirement
Often said Don’t worry Son
I’ll work until my day is done
But home is heaven and I can’t
Wait around for it to come.

Dawn

Dawn gently breaks,
    not as a sudden thing:
the sun
    of a day’s ontogeny
        does not surprise,
nor does it sound
    a loud awakening
or slap
    the first breath out of me
or shine
    hard light accusingly
        into my naked eyes.
Dawn is the dark’s
    slow unraveling,
        the day’s revealing rise.

Time dawns on me:
I am inclined
    to set alarms at night
and run
    cold showers when I wake.
        I want to face the day
before it faces me.
    I need light
to put
    my clothes on properly,
but usually long
    before the break
        of dawn I’m on my way,
letting dawn
    distinguish those who work
        from those with time
            to play.

I am determined to beat the day,
though dawn,
    and in dawn’s easy pace,
is when
    and how I ought to rise,
        letting nature have its say
instead of doing
    it my own way, chasing
shadows
    to the next horizon,
courting ghosts
    of healthy, wealthy, wise
        to my dying day;
despite the dawn,
    I keep on facing
        life the other way.

But dawn keeps on
and on
    that day of final rest,
if I
    should wake before I die
        I pray the rising sun
will shake
    me from my sleepiness
and let
    me see the morning sky
wash over me
    once more before
        my daily dawns are done,
before
    my final east to west
        and the pull of a setting sun.

March

March starts
like more of February;
they say it roars
but I just hear it groan
with the heaviness of
a tired coat of wool
felt warmer in December
when the wind
was not as sharp, the hope
not as brittle.

March middles like the winter’s edge;
they predicted
a revival, but the dawn
still casts its shadows
and the breeze still
blows the spirit out of me
and I can’t see
the daylight saved, the equinox
or whatever it is that happens
after Lent.

March is spent
on so many passing
celebrations,
like the day the city dyes
the river green
or the night they sit around
waiting for Elijah.
We speak of eggs and rabbits,
connecting symbols of a pagan life
to a feast of sacrifice,
but I will feel the March wind blowing,
stirring up the doubt

Until the wind dies down
and the spirit goes out.

Twentieth Palm Sunday

This will be the twentieth Palm
Sunday after my father died
(All the importance we put in a day).
“Sunday’s coming,” he used to say
In the evenings, preparing to preach.

He was fifty one; another month
He would have been fifty two.
We plodded through that Holy Week;
By Maundy Thursday we were driving home;
Good Friday, watched them veil the cross;

And Saturday, turned the television on
To see March Madness with brother Josh
Blowing a horn with the Illini band.
“Sunday’s coming,” Dad used to say,
As if every day were Saturday.

Another two months and brother Dan
Would graduate from college,
Dad’s college, his old alma mater
From thirty years before.  It felt to us
Like Dad was there all over again.

And suddenly it’s twenty years ago,
Twenty years of Sundays coming.
As Dad would say, I’m doing okay.
But it will be harder at number twenty five
When I will be fifty one.

gray

if you could read my mind it would be gray
i mean to say
                    the color of a stone
without distinction neither right no wrong
without apology no will no wont
be coming home tonight
                               how was your day
you said i said its funny but i dont
remember much about the black or white
of it the colors turn to monotone
and the lines begin to fade
                                  away
i find myself with nothing more to say
and nowhere else to go the day
                                         is done
and i am going home to you tonight
instead of going off somewhere alone
to lose myself in my private shades
                                           of gray

River Cinquains

water                                       secrets
ever bending                              untold stories
discovers the ocean                    ducking behind corners
delivers the distant mountain          hiding beyond the horizons
water                                       secrets


river                                         journey
slowly turning                             stretching travel
reveals only ripples                     to a destination
of its whitewater history                left to the imagination
river                                         journey


                     bridges
                    river crossings
                   giving me perspective
                   over the ever-bending water
                   bridges

Bridge Sonnet

Each road’s another story:  paved or gravel-
Roughed or leveled, mud or dirt,
always life extending ridge to ridge;
Down one of them I came upon a bridge
Across a valley’s hidden hurt,
of bolted metal topped with graded gravel
Stretched from bank to bank across a river.
If not for journeys of my own
I would take time to learn the river’s song,
The something pushing pulling it along;
instead I turn to what is known:
The road that takes my path across the river.

God grant me all the power I have to travel
through the shadows of each vale,
Look after me God, bless my soul, deliver
My heart my weary way from ridge to ridge
and road to road, and with each tale to tell
Apply me steadfast to the grinding gravel
But lead me not into the mystic river
of unknown sources heavened or helled
And let me walk instead across this bridge.

Crossing Quatrains

How long will this river flow
the country’s culminated streams
connecting unseen mountain sources
    to the ocean,
bringing dreams to distant dreams?

How long will the water run
beneath this road turned into bridge,
    beneath the feet
of all who pass from bank to bank
half grateful for this lifted street?

How long will this stretch of street
    in time remain
suspended shore to shifting shore
above the rise and sink of seasons,
of mountain trickle and ocean roar?

    This river will
outlast us, all our lives combined
and every street along the way,
and even as I form these words,
I feel the bridge begin to sway.

This bolted iron in the wind
is likely to outlast us too;
we may grow old together, but
if time’s the measure we cannot do
    what bridges do.

Long Ago

Long ago

when it felt like
the day was young
every morning

the sun would rise
on a world of
possibilities

and I would wake up
smiling and you
would be there beside me

with an arm to keep
me there a little
longer.

Starry Night on the Rhone

The sky above, the earth below
The city stirs, the river flows.
We walk at night that we may see
The stars and know we’re not alone,

That we may breathe a different air
And walk along a quiet shore,
Stand silent where the river laps
Up to our feet.

The earth is black, the sky is blue.
The river bends a mirrored view
Of city lights and stars familiar,
Heaven down and shore to shore.

We meet the night. We take the time
To be together, you and I,
Across the river, in between
The city and a giant sky.

We breathe the sky and feel the earth
And find our place beneath the stars,
Your arm in mine and mine in yours.
The night is ours.

Far and Away

I look into your eyes
and in them find your heart
full of the sorrow
of far and away.

Far, the color of your eyes
and the story of a journey
stretching out to the horizon
with a word approaching fear
but incomplete:
far, the distance of uncertain,
like measuring a mountain
with the space and separation
between near and disappeared;
far, the feeling
between effort and defeat.

And then away,
another story of
a day after the journey
is over with an order
of divorce:
away, the echo of forever
in the opposite direction,
with the posture and position
of a disconnecting turn;
away, the feeling
of rejection and remorse.

I want to see
the distance and direction,
the echo and order
of fear and always
in your eyes,
let them tell their stories,
feel them fill my heart
with the sorrow
of far and away.

She Folds My Clothes

       1

She folds my clothes,
the tailored rags
once piled in the dirt and
smell of days,
      which is to say
      she picks them up
      and separates them, cleans
      them, load by load,

these that I call
my own, not of
my soul, but nearly so:
my second skin,
      my shield from sin,
      my covering
      and saving from
      all elements and eyes,

weekly redeemed
by this routine
of flattening and
giving shape to what
      was without form
      and would remain,
      if not for this,
      a wrinkled pile of rags,

if not for one
who takes the task
of caring for me, more
than I deserve
      who tells me so,
      but knows that talk
      is cheap and love’s a chore.
      She folds my clothes.



  







 
         2

She folds my clothes.
I give her all
my threadbare socks and
dirty underwear,
      which is to say
      I leave them on
      the floor of lower standards,
      and forget

they are my own,
my stains, my sweat
and toil, my respons-
ibility,
      and I should be
      ashamed of der-
      ilictions, but I play
      the fool instead,

weekly relieved
of turning life
around, restoring order
to a world
      that needs reform,
      and even in
      the time it takes to write
      this silly poem,

she is the one
who does it all,
and I’m the one who
doesn’t tell her so;
      my love is cheap,
      and finding words
      is work.  And while I write,
      she folds my clothes.

The End of Spring

The end of spring’s beginning never fails
to bode a mournful middle, even as
the grass seems greener than it ever has
been, flowers are in fullest bloom and sails
are carrying the winds of summer across
the bay: it always takes me by surprise
to finish rubbing winter from my eyes
and rudely find the unexpected loss
     of innocence that comes and goes too soon.

My spring has sprung and all the birds have flown
away.  My spring has sprung and all that was
awakening begins to settle down,
and even as the warmer dawns of June
exhilarate, I hesitate, because,
as morning dews of May dry with the sun,
     my innocence, by the toll of noon, is gone.

Now middle age begins, yet I feel young
and ready as I ever will be to
leave spring behind and shake away the dew
that never satisfied me.  Spring, if sprung,
be damned: the summer’s beckoning me now
and I’ve got vernal promises to break
and miles to go before I let sleep take
me; that will be a cold night anyhow
     when the ghosts of innocence steal me away.

My spring has sprung; all memories of birth-
days celebrated have blown out their fires.
June’s been stuck on the wall for months and months,
mocking the paper trails of time and youth.
I’m never home; it’s not home anymore;
I’ve gone away for summer, for all it’s worth,
     forgetting spring, refraining innocence.

Scavengers

I’ll start this one in the middle:
We’re fighting even though, or just because,
We both believe in the same things
     And nothing really matters
Beyond the business at hand.
     We jump into our wars

And pick every little battle
As scavengers collect aluminum:
No scrap is too small
     As long as it’s redeemable;
Never mind how silly we look
     Dragging garbage down the street;
     They’ll weigh it in the end

And we’ll have some money to eat.
Here’s one of those positions, by the way,
We share but fight about endlessly:
     Having enough tender
To pay the bills, a little more
     To get through rainy days,

That, and being allowed to be a dreamer:
See, I’ve, and you’ve, had dreams of better days
And both of us are wondering
     And worrying the same things:
About the balance of suffering,
     Today and tomorrow, and how
     We’ll bear it now
     And weigh it in the end.

North Side Story

Compare: the rich fools and the poor losers,
happiness and misery, as if the surface was their story
through and through, as if the smiles upon their faces
ran as deep as the scowl on yours.

And more: you dream big dreams constructed of envy,
green as grass, born in shadows,
from which the mansions in your mind stretch higher,
around which the bitter grass grows greener.

Despair: it is not fair, the way they never finished high
school, how they cheated everyone to get ahead, leaving you
looking through fences, cursing the gods of sides,
of giving and taking.

But what for? Your misery wins you nothing,
your curses even less, the vacuous disapproval
of your neighbors shaking their heads, tut-tutting
and casting down their eyes on your poverty.

Paris and Valentino

I’ll never trade you in for Paris, Baby
And you will never have the man
Who makes his million Euros
At a Metro sandwich stand
With a fifth grade education,
But I yam what I yam
And you will always be
the one for me.

We once walked along the river;
I still hold on to the dream
Of lovers on a starry night
Before the stars became
So complicated.  Anyway,
I yam what I yam, etc….

Stand me next to Valentino, Baby,
I will never have the tan
Or the money or the fame
But I’ll keep doing what I can
To make you happy….

To My Wife, On Our Anniversary

July begins like June: the summer pace
Still fresh, the early dawn still kissed with dew
And wedding bells still ringing in my ears,
Which makes me all the wearier when
Sunlight begins to burn by 8 a.m.,
And all the kisses evaporate before
I’m out the door (with ringing in my ears).

My morning coffee pushes me along
A path of obligations to be met,
And on one corner of my desk is you
Being held by me, romantically:
It was another summer, long ago,
We danced the dance of newlyweds in love,
And in this frame we’ll dance a thousand years...

July continues batting. August waits
On deck, taking some sweltering practice swings
While April, May and June all take their leads;
They will be running with the pitch:
Two outs, three balls, two strikes, and two runs down
In the bottom of the ninth, playing at home.
All set, the pitch – and everybody cheers!

My second coffee, sugared up between
Sweet reveries imagining July
In terms beyond a life that’s otherwise
Decaffeinated, pushes me
To meet my obligations, nothing more.
Hot liquid on a hot day only works
To shift a body through its lower gears.

The day grows long.  Sweat trickles down my face,
Cool dew replaced with hot salinity,
And as it rolls my energy dissolves.
The summer pace turns casual.
Somewhere around the early afternoon
My thoughts of June, and you, begin to change:
the freshness fades, the ringing disappears.

Yet I would hold you even as your sun
Beats down on me all of these thousand years,
As you steal my coffee’s edge, and as we dance
In silence on our wedding day;
As August comes to bat, still one run down,
And as the runners take their two-out leads
I’ll stand up and resound the nervous cheers.