I do not keep my secrets well

I keep my secrets mostly at the bottom of the old water well.

Every Spring, some of my secrets, on beautiful wing, flutter out like so many determined, yellow-black butterflies and float in the earliest of winds from hither and thither, to this or that bush seeking my family tree to settle and smile and taunt me with their lovely wings and gust for life . . .

They keep their secrets better than I!

Recalling dance steps

I am already yesterday's asterisk
and almost tomorrows obituary.
If you are on a faster, newer disc
you may already be in mortuary.

Back step if you can as I am able,
we can glide to shore together.
Somehow we are writ in fable,
lithe and sweet as any treasure.

I may jump once I know the dance.
I will not stop until we both grin,
our twirls and scissor steps prance,
with us outside the world in a spin.

Storm clouds, hail and rain, it is our ride:
we know where to meet on the other side.

Some nights are not meant to be remembered

Still awake at five a.m.
and still learning about each other,
something else perhaps in the silky night.
I fashioned some rant about lack of understanding
to soothe your tears talking about him.
We paused, reminding each other
that we were members of a special group,
friends who totally trusted
and could share without fear.

You brushed back tears more than once
but never lost your shy smile
and so we sat on separate ends of the sofa
with our crossed legs sharing middle space
only sometimes touching and your fluttering hand
like a butterfly, took my eyes from your face.
Each time, returning there were your eyes
nestled somehow with mine in the space
above our crossed legs.

When you finally slowed to full pause
and I somehow talked about her,
you became some surer self,
your hand stilled and lay at rest in your lap,
your legs still crossed, listening with full face,
I talked into a trance and back, tired,
saw you sleepy returned as a hostess
ready to offer me the sleeping bag.

One last exchange we shared at dawn:
"do you think we've reached some understanding?"
"yes."
but there we were yawning again,
two sleepy heads at dawn.
You with afternoon classes to teach,
me with afternoon classes to attend.

I do not keep my secrets well . . .

I keep my secrets mostly at the bottom of the old water well.

Every Spring, some of my secrets, on beautiful wing, flutter out like so many determined, yellow-black butterflies and float in the earliest of winds from hither and thither, to this or that bush seeking my family tree to settle and smile and taunt me with their lovely wings and gust for life . . . they keep their secrets better than I!

A rock in your pocket may be worth a moment of thought

I put rocks in my pocket when I am out and about and want to remember a moment or thought. It doesn't always work. But maybe your scribbles are efficient. Mine are not always. I end some trips with heavy pockets but some of these stones are rockets returning me to where I've been. Sometimes they are just rocks in overloaded pockets. I like to move rocks around the world.

A bike ride on a hot windy day

Sometimes I see best without a fat pen in hand:
just a bike ride through wetlands I've never visited.
Nothing much going in, pockets of world coming out.
Sometimes we have to go to know where we want to go.

My Memory, on being reminded of Hypatia

My friend, from some distance, Hypatia in name, not only built astrolabes and hydrometers, she could utilize them to measure distance to stars and density of liquid of friends. She was brilliant even as a pagan, and she agreed to tutor both Christians and Unitarians whatever their merit (or lack).

Synesius, bishop of Ptolemais, or another silly city on the Phoenician coast, was victim. Ancient sources record that Hypatia was widely beloved by pagans and Unitarians alike and that she established great influence with the political elite in Berkeley and Houston. Trumpets tooted, drums rolled.

Just before her death, my Hypatia argued with Orestes, the least perfect Roman of Alexandria and in the midst of this ancient feud with Cyril, bishop of Alexandria, silly lies spread accusing her of inventing ice cream. This was her dismal end. She was murdered by a mob led by a lector named Peter.

Amen.

Sometimes, Wandering

Sometimes, wandering before dawn,
curtains drawn against the moon,
I have bumped into you
in the hall leading from my bedroom.
You stand, mostly huddled into the wall
scribbling at your yellow notebook
as though your life was at risk.
I wonder that you never warned me,
or was it so enormous.
that I in jerky male youthfulness never saw?
But Betty, my love, our poetry was crude -
like your death:
you were never Sylvia Plath -
But, when they found you - water-logged, nude -
that gaping hole through your head -
I was lost without tether.
Your parents were embarrassed
and prayed loudly for some poor lost soul.
I was not so bold. Oh I cried; I wept,
but at home, at night alone.
I slept some before and after,
and only sometimes, wandering,
am I totally aware of you at all.
Why have we not let go?
Why do you huddle and scribble
so many nights in my long empty hall?
Do you practice your verse? your rhyme?
Do they let you do that?
Some seldom times, on darker mornings, I hear you call
and try to go to you, but you are immersed,
busy, bent to some task, and ignore me.
Standing near you in the long grey hall
I am almost paternal, full of guilt. I wonder
that we never guessed
that such a fragile existence
must surely end abruptly.
I miss the cadence of a voice.
I miss the silly giggles you never mastered.

Looking for a ride

I am an emotional basket-case
lost in an ocean of accidents
searching for a back door
from somewhere on the 13th floor.

It is a mess of eternal fuck-ups
from sometime before last year
and totally worse than we feared.
But look for blue if the clouds clear.

I'll try to meet you at our old corner.
Just drive the hearse; I can be a mourner.

Bill K. Boydstun

A touch of dumb shit

Not mierda tonta; just a puzzle in the wind,
a twist or two on the old clock and we're back
at the beginning of the origins of apple harvests;
we return to yesterdays without many tomorrows
the days when we loved one another more than god.

Changing scripts in midstream

I completed my career as a lawyer
which was mostly yesterday.
and stretched backward to remember
but find I am mostly still alive today.

Don't jump, rhyme, pull your hair,
but yes, poets have corners to pray
Poets Corner with father Geoffrey Chaucer
where kneeling or no, we have our say.

I can scribble, warble and even flare
without totally knowing what I pray.

Early bird meeting a dove

I am an earlier bird than you
and dance along the sidewalk;
we pass with your coo coo coo
maybe prance a bit, smile and talk
your jargon is mostly way too much
I ain't used to strangers talking mush.

On the Commitment of a poet, 18 years old

for Barbera (revised 08/
03/2020)
If we had known the depths of your quiet
or looked at eyes as often as at words
we might have quelled the silent slow riot
behind your eyes' caged fallen birds.
We did not hear the keen of crumpled wing,
the sudden low departure. Only you
could feel the bird's last great try to cling
to air no longer there, nothing clear nor blue.
And now you grasp your song in muted stead,
in sterile space with tall blank walls of white
where no one comes or goes, but some are led.
You move if moved but cannot sing at night.
We sound your words, their razored edge is gone:
we sing some words, we cannot sing your song.

Looking for a ride

I am an emotional basket-case
lost in an ocean of accidents
searching for a back door
from somewhere on the 13th floor.

It is a mess of eternal fuck-ups
from sometime before last year
and totally worse than we feared.
But look for blue if the clouds clear.

I'll try to meet you at our old corner.
Just drive the hearse; I can be a mourner.

How some birds take wing

I was not who I am.
I am not who I was.
I am freed. I give a damn.
And I can sing; so, I sing.