The Trickster Legends of Nova Scotia

A man in the paper
(which could be any man,
Since everyone hits print
At least three or four times,
More if he’s a criminal,
A President, a rock star)
Was killed by two coyotes
On a Canadian hiking trail,
Though coyotes are shy
And usually easily shooed,
So these two mangy mongrels
Must have had a bad day,
Been looking for a scapegoat,
And along comes a man
In boots and L.L. Bean,
And for once they didn’t run
But demanded he share the trail
And, when he ran at them,
Fat city-raised arms flapping,
The two just snapped
And jumped on him and took
Him down in the tall grass
Near the bend by the river.
I feel for the man’s family,
And for the Family of Man,
But a large primal part of me
Could be a coyote easily.

Post-Vita

What sound does the world make
When starting to wind down—
A sigh like failing wind,
Slow hiss stretched tiredly
Across the universe?
Perhaps only silence?

God may have tired of us
As we have tired of Him.
We catch the shimmering
Of His languid retreat,
watch the remaining stars
to black fade, one by one.

Faucet Song

Some water’s running
in another room,
barely audible
through the heater’s hum:
last sound before sleep.

Step

A ladder stands in our living room,
Its aluminum legs spread-eagled,
blue plastic top step a parallel plane
to our floor, our ceiling, our lawn.
We’ve no other place to store it,

So it’s taken up sulking residence
Between the book shelf and the sofa,
The tallest member of the family,
And with by far the finest posture.
We suppose we’ll have to let it stay,

For we’ll certainly need it some day
As we stretch our anxious arms
Toward the waiting, textured sky.

Two Hours West of Tulsa

Who knew the sky flew so close to the horizon,
That the stars sang like the wind in her hair,
That the trees hung from the bluff with regret?

Who knew the words to open the mirrors,
The spells to dispel all the blues in her eyes,
To morph her sorrow into linen and light?

Who knew what questions to throw at God,
Safe in our memories, sated with man-prayers,
Yet fading into these questions we never ask?

Under a Clouded Moon

Walking my dog tonight under a clouded moon,
I met myself walking a dog not unlike my dog,
With white matted fur not unlike my dog’s fur
And small black nose and eyes not unlike my dog’s,
And I finally had to conclude the walker wasn’t me,
But that the dog was most definitely my dog,
So who, who the hell, was holding that strange leash?

Omens

The accidents kept on occurring:
Glasses shattered, spares shredded, the clocks
Falling like mere dying metaphors
To flat reality of tiled floors.
And all through that lingering autumn
We watched each other’s faces for signs,
Some clues of carelessness, thoughtlessness.
But all we could read in those shadows
Was harried joy, dismay, random love.

Where the Land Meets the Sea

Waves came faster, foaming white wishes
through my desert imagination

flying like herons over cattle
grazing deeply in the greenest field

breaking into random molecules
misting our pale Midwestern shoulders

yet we are mesas, cacti, and sun
our memories run like grains of sand

through some stranger’s dark and trembling hand

The Prophet Who Wrote the Book on Juggling

Looking at an online card catalog
For an obscure part-time seer,
I found instead a book by a juggler
With the very same author’s name,
And I imagined cryptic questions,
Doubts and fears, budding aphorisms,
Flying though the air in oval patterns,
Touching flesh for the merest moment
Before flying back into the hot air
Of some crowded vaudevillian venue,
The clustered metaphysicians frozen
In awe by the gurus and sages
Tumbling through all lives, all time.

The Fall's First Frost

When you told me you had only months left to live
But that the months might hold their breaths for a few years,
And you asked how I’d spend those days if I were you,
I stupidly quoted Joseph Campbell and then
Spent several minutes explaining about bliss,
When really I know precious little about it—
Just this—only that it ends. Only that it ends.

Remember What Never Happened

Who knew when the rain started,
When the midnight stars parted
To let the moonlight beam through?
I know I did; maybe you
Still stalked the rain-slick terrace
In the middle of Paris
Until the oui hours of day,
You and I two pillars of clay
Shining in the clouds’ shadow,
So resplendent though sad, so
Mired to the meaning of we
We could barely see to see.

The Old, Old Testament

Who knew that our Lord God hid so competently,
So completely, we couldn’t behold Him at all
After around 1700 but instead
turned our stern gazes toward the fractured mirrors
in which we beheld as if for the first time our
own fractured faces, long and ever lengthening
as the full weight of our loss began to sit in?
The joke—something profane about rabbis and priests—
Was most definitely on us, as we soon found
we didn’t even need God to kill each other,
though He’d always come in handy for that—still does.
The joke wasn’t funny. All we can do is laugh.

Toward the Sea, With Attitude

Several times a day
The river ignores us
With haughty, wet disdain.

We try to catch it looking,
But always find its silver back
Arching under moonlight.

All night we listen to whispers
Around the blackened rocks,
Secrets washing downstream.

At sunrise the herons gather
Wading the slow shallows
Of its winding insolence.

Unknown Wings

I wish I knew the names of birds
The way I know some songs and books.
Then I’d say, “Hello, warbling wren,
And just how the hell have you been?”
Instead I stand mute underneath
restless flutters of rising wings,
random tune from 1980
rising unbidden to my brain
as a blue shadow of beauty
glides namelessly into the sun.

sign high overhead

insides of my eyes
sparkling like water
as the sun rises
within me
this very morning
shall be the day
of my glorious eclipse
visible to all nations
but only if they peer
carefully cautiously
into a shadow box
of crumpled dreams
gripped in trembling hands

Little Book Rock Room

I need to book a room
In Little Rock

Or is it

I need to rock a room
In Little Book

Or perhaps

I need room for a book
In Little Rock

On the other hand, it could be

I need a little room
For a book and a rock

Meanwhile, back at the ranch

I need a little book
But with room for a rock

My therapist always says

A little rock needs me
Like a room needs a book

So I have only one final question:

Will you read me like a book
Here alone in this our room
Oh lover my little rock?

Desert Rat Haiku #5

Moon has no shadow
But I still stand underneath—
Where else could I be?

Forecast

Nine days of light rain
no sun no moon and no stars
except inside us

Another One for Pam

In the desert of my domain,
Down in the languid dunes,
You appear daily, a mirage
That dances over the sand,
Pitcher of cool water in hand,
Love deep enough to bury
Deep under these sacred grains.

Theological Sonnet

This morning rain and now a low, light mist—
The sun’s been absent for seven days straight,
So I’m afraid we’ll just have to get pissed,
Sit in this woe-filled house and simply wait
For some bright god to break this depression,
Bringing beams of light, cascades of sweet song
To us poor sinners needing confession
For all the right we meant to do, the wrong
We didn’t but compulsively did well.
But can a god or goddess find us here,
Mired in the muck on the pathway to hell,
Grinning into a mirror neither clear
Nor particularly accurate, yet
All the glimpsing of heaven that we’ll get?

A Simple Question on a Simple Night

Mountains of rain on the horizon
And sky blue day overhead—

The wind brings us its secrets
On the dark arms of the night.

Have you ever heard the voice
Speaking deep within your belly,

Your belly which vibrates to a song?

How Mysterious Are the Workings of Our God

They wheeled her into ICU,
Cancer running through her like flames.
For three painful years she’s endured,
Praying only God’s will be done.

What if this horror is His will,
Some sick diversion from boredom?
Above, the angels pray daily
To escape His divine notice.

No such blasphemy does she hold:
Her faith has endured as has she.
The hands move slowly on the clock.
I imagine Him still plotting,

As she, hands folded on her breasts,
Silently sings His due praises.

A Scrap of Paper: 2059

The last bear lives in my basement.
I feed him drugged squirrels,
Sunday potluck leftovers,
A very occasional honey pot.

He misses the woods, I know,
But they’re not safe anymore.
The priests with their bulldozers
Clear space, clear space, clear space.

I think he may be depressed.
He watches TV all day,
Channel-surfing with one shiny claw.
He especially likes the Food Network.

The last bear lives in my basement.
He misses the woods, I know.
I think he may be depressed.
I’d better recheck the lock tonight.

Desert Rat Haiku #4

Rain, thunder, then sun—
All day long, old Mother Earth
Changed and changed her mind.

As a Bone

I’d never say it doesn’t matter;
I’d never tell that lie.
You’d know the awful truth,
That my memory stutters
Every time I’m near reality
And then I’ll say anything
To make the past retract
And give me back my conscience
Clean and white as a bone

Sistine

Michelangelo knew
Himself as a sculptor
And not as a painter.

The pope sent his army
To bring the sculptor home.
And then the work began,

Hours on the scaffolding,
Arm stretched above his head,
Hard work for a young man,

Which the sculptor wasn’t.
But still his calm hand moved
Across the chapel space,

And God’s immense hand stretched
Across a universe
To touch the first maker’s,

And God said, “It is good.”
And Adam stood, stretched, sighed,
simply said, “It is God.”

Occasionally, a Moment Such as This

Green and orange sky
On October 5
like algae, tangerines,
random simile shades
Under a cloudy moon.

You’ve to bed hours ago,
The dog’s still vet-drowsy
And the children in bed,
So it’s just me and the sky
Suddenly raining down.

Raining down.
Raining.
Down.

Wash and Wear

I was washing coats
As a prelude to winter
And pulled out my wife’s parka,
Leftover from Minnesota days.
On the care tag I read,
“Dry on low
With clean tennis balls,”
And I am baffled.
I’d never throw dirty balls
Into a clean dryer
With a clean coat,
But then I don’t play tennis
So I own no such balls.
What’s a man to do?
Would other balls work—
Perhaps yellow softballs
Or dry wiffle balls?
I hang the coat back
At the far end of the closet.
Taking care of lovers
Shouldn’t demand
Such absurdities,
And, besides,
It’s only early October.

Existential

If it is indeed true
That the first bomb
Dropped on Germany
during World War II
killed the only elephant
in the Berlin Zoo,
then I am again humbled
before an absurd God.
How mysterious His ways?
Give me a fucking break.
Forget His ways, his means,
His inscrutable theology.
Our lives are as random
As blips on a radar,
Dark spots on an MRI,
Radio static on the dish
Searching for alien life—
As pointless as the rain drop
Sliding down the elephant’s trunk
The moment before.

Desert Rat Haiku #3

Rouge lips at twilight
As the deer cross the meadow—
This wine, those deer, us.

In the Kiamichis

Swerving the sweet mountain road
Sun high in your mirror shaded eyes
You suddenly hear music
A minor key in your ears
Blues jumping up like grasshoppers
Into your quiet mind
So you slow and pull over
In a meadow filled
With black eyed susans
And try to train your brain
On some little things
Her lisp when excited
The bright flash of her words
Early on an autumn morning
Yes some little things
Like lines from old songs
Playing through your head
In a field full of nothing
Beside a mountain road

The Middle Ages

Warm breeze after too-short sleep
The bitter stout tongue of coffee
Birds’ bleeps and tweets high above
So this then is the promised land
Flowing with silk and money
I promised myself if I ever got here
I’d promptly blow my brains out
Yet now and yet now
I grasp for dreaded contentment
Addict jonesing for normalcy
Aha What a sack of shit
For most mortals this boredom
Would be sweetest paradise
This angst no worse
Than after dinner burning
In that most vital of organs
Where peace flows out and in
In the mundane pump of blood