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
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
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.
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.”
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
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.
