New Year New Life

 We are hopeful.

Arrival

 

Had you sneaked yourself here

From among the stars

A bit of mischief

Arcing across the quiet dark

To take your place before me

I’d have come up short in wonder

Listened for a boom or a whoosh

Cocked my head for a better look

To see you turning yours up to me

Ready to jump

Ready, ready, ready

Go

More Boys Coming to the Party

 A poem for December, 2020, inspired by the twin boys who will make their appearance as members of the family in the early months of 2021.

Twins

 

Like you, I know no moonlight where I sleep

A swish—one passing car—wafts through

My windowpane

 

I wonder what you sense

Your purchase fresh but strong now

There within my girl

 

A world without abstraction

Warm and wet at least

But what is that to you

 

You two

 

Entangled in the mortal sprint to light

More like me every day

Or what I might have been at least

 

At best my night surrenders to

The morning soon and soon enough

We’ll all three bathe beneath the moon

Something Political for November 2020

 There is usually a wafer of a firewall between my politics and art.  Hard to maintain that these days.  U.S. Attorney General Barr declared Seattle to be an "anarchist jurisdiction," for the purpose of extorting something with the threat of withholding federal money, or something.  It was silly, but not funny.  So, too, the poem.

Abcdarian Jurisdiction

 

Anarchy

Becomes us in Seattle,

Coming as it

Does with Nordic sense of order.

Effortless in

Fact. Who would have

Guessed? We make everything so

Hard as a matter of course.

I think we should thank Mr. Barr

Just this once. I

Know it seems so strange but

Little isn’t anymore. I

Mean he saw it on TV and

No one can doubt he had advice

On what an anarchist

Place would look like on the tube.

Quite frightening, I guess. I was

Remiss in not

Seeing the report on Fox

TV. It seems OK here though,

Unless I’m missing something

Vital, as I sometimes do.

We’ve all learned something new,

eXactly what I can’t yet say, but

You should know I love this chill

Zen Emerald City—anarchy & all.

 

Tardy Posting of the October 2020 Poem

 This one is based on a real set of memories of a short period of time many years ago.  

Hong Kong—First Approach

 

The ship pushed aside thickening new air,

Warm, damp, candied by the breath

Of people in precarious urban hives

On the musk green hillsides—

A caramel perspiration over

The fresh salt of open sea.

 

Flat glass and steel shards intimidate

The shore, rising like kept promises

Between the teeming bay

And the random ridgeline.

Stark puffs preen with quiet impudence

Across the brazen blue above.

 

A world uncanny that calls to me

“Welcome home.”

Chosen

The new reality has put each of us into a bubble.  Some are obvious or essential members of the exclusive container.  Judgment is required.  Judgement of risk, and of trust.  I'm old, and it seems to me to be a more familiar decision than one would expect.  I've had my bubble for some time, and I admit new members with care.

Chosen

 

In our bubble, overlooking another man’s mown grass,

              (Still bright wet from morning sprinklers)

              The stark dagger of a fir shadow threatens from the south.

I see it all through the iridescent film of our isolation.

The sunlight plays on the lawn at the speed of the light breeze,

              Highlighting the subtle shades of your eyebrows.

We breathe easily—no one is upwind or down. We are chosen

              And we choose with care with whom to share

              The warm and lambent light that makes it through.

Gifting

Gifting

 

The other day you popcorn-popped

A skyfull of stars for me

And with each rounded stride

Placed spheres among them

On their courses.

You then held a comet

Gently as a fern

Between two fleshy fingers

Spouting dust beneath a bear. 

Allowing me a taste of it

You chuckled to yourself

And held my eye as surely

As the rising moon.

Little Guy's First Birthday

My grandson is completing his twelfth month in the world pretty soon.  So I wrote about him this month.  He is a compact person, though tall and robust for his age.  The form of this poem is very compact and demanding, in tri-meter with five hard rhymes.  Little Guy expects a lot, but he earns it.

The Wisdom of Infancy

I want to find you wise

But there’s still time for that

And maybe you know well

Behind your wide young eyes

What I should seek in you

Whom my sweet girl begat

And how your joy will tell

Me what I really know

Or don’t and gently show

What won’t and what will do

Contrails

I have been jogging in the Washington Park Arboretum most weekday mornings since the social distancing suggestions were introduced.  The Arboretum is pleasant, especially in the morning, with wide paths, some paved, some not, and consistent maintenance.  The width of the paths and roads is important, of course, to allow safe passage of pedestrians, joggers and bicyclists going about their mornings.  There is a friendly intimacy to calculating approaches to maximize distance, and to avoid leaving exhaled droplets airborne for others to encounter.  Hope, care, and bodily fluids among strangers.

Contrails

 

Inside her smile it is her breath

That may be poison, virulent,

And so I cut hard right across the trail

Returning her kind look and cheating death

In this light moment as we jog and cross.

I worry for the cloud of where I went.

Before we passed the droplets fail

To fall I fear and scatter in the air

Across her path. It can’t be right to share

With her so damp a truth, such loss.

A Love Poem for May

The new poem for May goes out into the box tonight.  I make no effort to make the poems fit into current events, or the holiday schedule. I write them the month before they appear, so they are whatever I'm thinking about that month. Nothing in particular suggests that I should write in Middle English in March. 

The world is convulsed with the pandemic as I write this, but a couple of weeks ago I found a Carl Sandburg poem with an interesting form, so I make a love poem from it.  Love is a cause and cure for some convulsions.  More may be required this time.


Lovely



  The damp and softened earth is lovely here,

As unseen enterprise is opened to the air

By the sharp hiss of the blade to the earth.



  Sunbits and shadow are lovely under the oak,

Tossed like a thousand dice among the leaves,

Come to me alone with ancient light.



  This strong woman is lovely too—

With quiet breath and sweet spoor alive as

The rich warmth of just turned earth.

Little Guy

My recent poems have come from a mind and heart immersed in the joy of knowing our new grandson, also called Guy, and born 8 July 2019.  He is extraordinary, of course.  No, really.  He is joyful and active, quick to smile and responsive to attention.  

I wrote this poem in October of last year, when he was in his fourth month.  As my hearing deteriorates I was thinking about his, and wondering what I could do to enrich that part of his life.

Songmaker 

I will capture the noise of the world

For you and from it

I will sieve the urgent jaybird

And the mooning cow

Small dogs in their confusion

The lowing jet and wheezing bus

The knowing nearby voice of love

And from it I will find a song for you

To sing for me a song to rainbow

All you hear into a thing we share

With two beginnings and no end

A song of your discovery and

The noise of our amazement

Starting Up Again

The box on the corner is now in its 14th year--one new poem (at least) each month.  I haven't been using the blog for years, for a number of reasons.  I'm starting anew because of the Covid-19 pandemic.  It is not necessarily safe to be reaching into the box for a poem, as an average of 140 or so have each month, under the current circumstances.  So I have provided information on the exterior of the box to allow folks to find the poem here if they are interested to see what I have written.

The blog includes a beautiful watercolor of the box.  It is the work of Gabriel Campanario, the Seattle Sketcher, who publishes regularly in the Seattle Times.

This past month, as the seams of world order loosened, I was working at something completely unrelated.  A seasonal poem, with obvious inspiration from the Fascist poet Ezra Pound.  (Important poet, idiotic politics.)  Oh, well.  So one poem in two forms below:


Sōmer Ibēn Icŏmen



Hard-herted winter sōne passen

Ich ibēn wīnden mīn cōlden fāce

Thĕ air warmen whīle sŏmer ibēn icŏmen

Bēs and brĭddes taken to flīing

Bē fīnding flŏur, bĭrde fīnding bē



The softe sŏun of sŏmer ayēn-cŏming

Ich cŏnnen hēren this forest līves

Yŏng squireles behīnd mōder this night

Ich iben not mi-self al-ōn hēr



Rein softenen this păth

Mīn shō slīden adoun as ich clīmben this hil

Ich lōken bifōre face bifōre the wind

---


The Summer Nears



The hard-hearted winter will soon pass

I expose my cold face to the wind

The air is warming as summer nears

Birds and bees take flight

Bee finding flower, bird finding bee



The soft sounds of summer are returning

I can hear this living forest

Young squirrels follow their mothers at night

I am not alone here



Rain softens the trail

My feet slip as I climb the hill

I look forward with the wind