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.

July, Nikos, crows, and Theodore

July is not as hot in Eugene as in Houston
but the rains of winter and spring are long gone.
Our primary chorus continues to be the geese
but the crows are abundant, cheerful, and loud.
I seem to enjoy the geese arguing overhead
and the crows arguing in our yard. They are our bards.
I have not thought of Nikos Kazantzakis in some hours.
We like our red geraniums and miss Theodore Roethke.

I recognize sometimes that I am a lost ant on a large leaf
drifting through turmoils of crappy conditions
and that I float north on the Willamette
going in the opposite direction of much of the world.
I am okay with alternate directions and can smile
without quoting lines of poems from Theodore Roethke
as we do our daily walk through the Delta Ponds.
I do sometimes repeat bits of Nikos Kazantzakis on the trail.

My Poem July 2020

My poem, like some others,
is mostly a gentle searching for words
that give my morning coffee taste
and pull my supper from the blues.
I intentionally always dance with you
I mostly sing at the top of my lungs.
I don't yet scribe in tongues

nor sing my words in thought.
I am but the fish you caught.

My songs are mostly smiles
searching out some rounder, prouder world.
We may wear mostly scarfed bandanas
against the whirls of terrible yesterdays
but sometimes it is also tomorrow.
Our masks are not meant to hide
but merely guard our love and abide.

We do not need to borrow from hope;
a step in time is all it takes to cope.

Fractal Horizon

We may start out smiling, walking some fractal path
maybe admiring the abundant buds of new flowers
and as we encounter more paths and change our aim
we do not fault our discretion nor calculate our math
until we see that there is no intersection of worth.
We scan the horizon and complete our final curve.

Rejoicing Well

Euterpe dances in pellucid dress
against the sea. She is the ocean stone
that toils toward the shore - her tears caress
her riven cheeks. She clicks, bone against bone,
a fictive note, her long toes zither fast
among the breakers as she sways the wind
against the sea. Her singing cannot last
a printed page, recognition is the end.
No painted face reflected in the long
morning's moon, just a clack of spent coin
in an empty glass; a formal song
that stirs no wind - each song is sung but once.
We float to shore singing from her sea
searching inland, repeating from memory.

Yesterday, and now Today

It's tough times.
We ain't stepping down.
Not sure where to step?
just avoid the shit if you can,
but keep your head up and smile on
and treat people like people.

When you can, offer a helping hand,
and know times have been tougher . . .
times have been way fuckin' tougher
and people did not always step up
but just waded through shit like it was normal.
Wading through shit is not normal.

Avoid the shit by stepping to the front
say hello offer your hand or shoulder to lean on.
Don't tread through shit if you can avoid it.
Help friends who feel threatened or pushed.
There's no rush, just do it now.
Reach out. There is our total world around us.

Early Days

I admit very little. I do admit some few homes and each, different. Many voices calling me toward home.
I am never homeless, nor ever, maybe, quite at home . . . I am most at home when I slow to stop and sup on local cuisine.
I eat, from post-war 1943 bananas in Klamath Falls, Oregon to crawfish from ditches in Archer County, Texas.
I scrap and scrape the perch from Archer City Lake to mingle with the backyard corn and scrawny tomatoes.
I was a child of some plenty, with no electricity nor flush; a puppy among mad dogs feeding their pups.
It seemed to be always them or us.

II.
I remember turnips, carrots, potatoes and even varieties of other fragile greens
with bullfrog or catfish, washed, scrubbed and chopped into something worth eating
and trading bites at the table to see who grabbed the more delicious bites
riding the school bus back from Antelope, Texas and Barbara Allen cutting strips of my hair while I pretended to sleep but dreamed, totally awake, of her fingers clipping my salted hair
I was not hungry, angry, ignored nor aware that many people spent their lives mostly afraid and without food
I was mostly poor but sitting on the top side of a world tilted on its side.