The Seasons

I New Orleans

The blues the man plays
Are like the early flowers
At the end of our walk —
Fragrant, perennial,
And eternally sad.

II Lake George

The lake was exquisitely cold.
The day unbearably hot.
The water like crystal. And you,
An apparition,
A memory, a promise.

III Cleveland

The night in the upper boxes smelled of sulfur
From homerun fireworks exploding at eye level
Then hanging above the field like gray clouds
Because no wind would push them over the lake.

IV Wolfeboro

The incredible silence of snow
Beneath the pine and birches. Only the whispering
Skis telling secrets to the groomed surface
And you disappearing ahead where the trail turns.
A premonition. A secret fear.
Dispelled an hour later at a table
Looking out over the sun glossed ice of the lake.

Originally published in A Matter of Mind, Foothills Publishing, 2004.
© copyright 2004, 2009 the Grandpa at The Word Mechanic Blog.
All rights reserved.

Piano Bar Blues

(1)
I'm just a man
like anyone else. I can
command
respect when I place
myself at the keyboard, face
bathed in blue light.
I do alright.

Not like Mary.
Fell in love with a fairy
used to come in all the time.
His name was Harry.
He'd sit here at the piano making eyes
at all the guys.
Mary never got wise.

(2)
You know
one thing I know
is you
can’t kiss away the blues.

Not the real blues.

Not the hollow note
deep in your throat
kind of blues
that wake you in the middle of the night
because the silence gets so loud
you can hear starlight
fall.

(3)
It's a job.
last week some slob
laid fifty bucks beside me.
Forget what you see,
he said. I'm not here.
My wife wouldn't understand.
All I did was hold her hand,
not like I planned
it or anything. So I fanned
his fantasy for a while,
played My Funny Valentine and with style
closed my eyes tight.
I said, I don't see nobody tonight.

They go away.
Next day
my wife,
who's best friends with his old lady May,
asks how'd it go.
Real slow,
I say.
Didn't see a soul I know.

(4)
I tell people who come in all the time
you can’t kiss away the blues,
not those lonely in a crowd blues.
Those caged bird
wicker domed
watching from a swinging perch
blues.

The kind that weigh
you down even when the door is open
because you get so hungry
not even love
can fill you up.

(5)
You know when I saw you two come in
I felt sick
like I was watching someone commit
sin.
A no win
situation,
like when you begin
a set
and get
an undeniable urge to piss.

Maybe I shouldn't say this.
After all I see a lot of dirt.
I’ve watched a lot of men chase a skirt.
Jesus, I don't mean that.
It's just when you've sat
where I've sat,

you get tired
of watching friends choose
the place you gotta be to play the blues.

(6)
No,
There’s no way.
You can try,
but you’re gonna loose
because there’s no way
you can kiss away
those blues.

Originally published in A Matter of Mind, Foothills Publishing, 2004.
© copyright 2004, 2009 the Grandpa at The Word Mechanic Blog.
All rights reserved.

Song of the Cuckoo

Listen to the cuckoo coming after the doves,
Mocking their cooing, mocking their cooing
With its strange double note.

Listen to the cuckoo mocking the cooing doves
While the owl turns her head
And the hawk falls on its prey
And the gull sails above the ash.

The cuckoo is a clown
That sings of love
Gone foul.

Cuckoo, cuckoo.
And the owl
Turns her head,
And the doves fly away,
But the cuckoo has found
A place to stay.

No other birds sing quite the same;
No other birds claim,
Cuckoo, cuckoo.
Who?
Says the owl.
Cuckoo. Cuckoo.


Originally published in A Matter of Mind, Foothills Publishing, 2004.
© copyright 2004, 2009 the Grandpa at The Word Mechanic Blog.
All rights reserved.

A Garden Verse

[1]
i’ve tried to tell you how i feel
but your eyes
keep falling shut

[2]
just this once
can’t you stay up with me

[3]
you once said i was insensitive
because while i slept on the ground in our tent
a storm from the lake filled you with terror.
i recall seeing flames from what we thought
was a dead campfire
glowing eerily against the tent wall.
you thought we were going to die.
now you sleep upstairs while i wrestle this demon
& i excuse you.

this devil is mine

Originally published in A Matter of Mind, Foothills Publishing, 2004.

© copyright 2004, 2009 the Grandpa at The Word Mechanic Blog.

All rights reserved.

Letters to Caroline

(The title refers to the poem that comes after after the note. The note is to the people in the Blogosphere, not Caroline.)

Note: I'm feeling a little guilty because I haven't been able to spend as much time as I would like in the blogosphere for a couple of weeks now. The first week I was on vacation. This one I'm trying to catch up on my work after being on vacation. The good news is I'm almost caught up and I'll be able to respond to people's comments again pretty soon. Just don't give up on me. You guys leave the greatest comments. They make me feel good. (It's great to feel that way without having to use some foreign substance.)

One more thing. We had a visitor at our house a couple days before Christmas. He was in the neighborhood and just wanted to stop by and say "hey" because he's often too busy this time of year. But it was good to see my old friend Nick and get caught up on what he's been doing.

Letters to Caroline

1.
We've been a month without snow.
Last month, it seemed it would never stop;
now the ground in spots is bare.

Since we've stopped talking, we've lived side by side,
lying in the same bed without touching,
so well we've learned the impenetrable zones,
even in our sleep.

2.
Only a month of winter left,
but then no real spring,
only weeks of mud
and unfulfilled promise.

I remember the cat standing at your feet
in front of the couch
while you read the newspaper. If you'd put the page
down and let it,
it would have leaped on your lap. It stood watching you,
wanting, as cats want,
to be touched, then gave up and lay beside
the rocker.

Snow's predicted tomorrow night,
twenty-four hours
too late to help the skiing.

3.
If I asked about him, would you tell me he listens?
That he leaves messages at your terminal?
That you like the way he laughs?

And that he doesn't need and so
makes you young again?

4.
Two suns in our morning skies;
five days in parallel worlds,
we expand and contract, knowing neither
what blue nor gray winds fill
the other's days.

Then at night, I cruise the space between,
seeking light from familiar stars that inhabit both
our skies: Evidence of love we can both remember.

5.
The usually clear walk was strewn with pebbles
thrown up by the tide. You pointed it out
as we looked for words to break the silence.

Kids playing with kites ran over the rocks
at Odiorne Point, through the winds that blew in along the shore
and mastered the land in a way the waves
only pretended to do.

But it was the waves, Caroline,
charging, pounding, I felt rip my heart.

Low tide and no boats.
We could see the Isles of Shoals.
We could hear the waves.

Originally published in A Matter of Mind, Foothills Publishing, 2004.

© copyright 2004, 2009 the Grandpa at The Word Mechanic Blog.

All rights reserved.