New Poetry

Post-Sesshin

Having spent a week at the heart of all things,

I feared I might miss it, but as it turned out,

The center of the cosmos kindly followed me,

Remaining just under my feet wherever I went,

Until it was at last  revealed to be  located

Just under yours as well. Then

I saw a musrkat in Irkutsk on

The TV, and it turned out to be

Under his too.

 

On Cuteness

Let a kitten, fawn, or whelp

Come in our view, and we can’t help

But sense our mind’s unhardening:

A piglet moves the heart to sing.

More fearsome members of the zoo--

Wolves and lions, humans too--

And all the rest that mean us harm:

Their cuddly offspring also charm.

They’re not yet captive to the meme

Of our great hierarchic scheme,

These young, and this explains to me,

Their sweet adorability.

They’ve not yet had to hunt for prey,

Or be a dad or fiancée,

Or get a job or PhD,

Or wrestle with theodicy.

The pecking order of existence

Remains for them at quite some distance.

It hasn’t yet concealed their light,

And thus we love them at first sight.

Their naïve equanimity

And vuln’rable placidity

May, thankfully, return someday--

Though only when they’re old and gray.

Wisława Szymborska  

(1923-2012)

Rummaging through your bag
At the end of the day, you
Discovered bits of verse you’d
Scribbled on scraps of paper
And hoarded there against
Memory’s unreliability, like
Postcards written to yourself.
And, seeing that you hadn’t been 
Wrong about what it was that
Flashed through those words’
Inadequacy, you
Slyly smiled.

Making my way now again
Through the familiar book
Where these wish-you-were-here’s
Have been wrestled from your 
Slavic tongue into my 
Semi-Germanic one, a sly smile crosses
My own face on seeing what it is 
That flashes through the
Even less adequate English.
And I give thanks for something for 
Which I’d never anticipated 
The need to be grateful:
That I don’t speak Polish.

On Anniversary of My Father’s Death

I was sitting at the bar with my beer and black bean burger

When I saw him seated across from me, and was taken aback

Only for the few seconds it took me to realize

I was looking in the mirror behind the schnapps bottles.

This had taken fifty years.

Thomas Merton

 (1915-1968)

In Prades,

A boy looked up

To Mont Canigou,

The tallest peak

He’d ever seen,

And he cherished the

Memory of that sight

Throughout a life spent

At lesser altitudes:

West Midlands,

Amsterdam Avenue,

And the hollers of Kentucky.

(Sorrow wrestled with privilege in him:

An orphan with the means to be profligate,

A hermit with an embarrassment of friends.

Vowed to the silent life and blessed

With the gift of articulation.)

In Darjeeling,

Five decades thence,

A man looked up

At Kangchenjunga--

Thrice loftier than the

Pyrenees

Of his youth--

And knew there

Was nowhere

Left to look

But to the sky

Above.

 

Observation at 62

I lose track of a sentence’s beginning

When I’m only halfway through speaking it,

With as little control over the memories

That flee this once-dependable mind

As I have over the ones that, inexplicably,

Take up permanent residence there. Like:

The girl who had written “Beatles”

On a scrap of binder paper and bobby-pinned

It to her hair in my elementary school cafeteria,

The morning after that fateful Ed Sullivan Show.

My father’s outburst over some plaster that didn’t set,

Like Jesus’ anger at the fig tree.

The bowl of cooked turnips my mother

Dropped on the floor and left there.

The shocked delight on my English teacher’s

Face when he saw that what was he was trying

To convey about poetry had actually registered in me.

The woman who determinedly strode up to me on

Boylston street, screamed, “Your fucking ass

doesn’t mean humility!” And then walked away.

The tiny wildflower I cradled in my hand on

A Kodiak Island mountaintop

One sunny four AM in June.

The first time I saw a cantaloupe.

The light on the library wall one afternoon.

All these remain. Where I parked my car at the store

Fifteen minutes ago remains a mystery.

Memory

When I’d attained the age of four
I asked an uncle old and sage
What life was like in days of yore
For him when he was of that age.

He looked at me like I was mad
And chuckled at my wondering,
And said: “Those years are lost, my lad,” 
“I can’t remember anything.”

It struck me that I stood to lose
The joy that then surrounded me.
Alarmed at this unsettling news,
I sat myself down by a tree

And vowed to burn into my mind
That moment’s every small detail:
The tree, the grass, the hedge behind
Me. And my broken fingernail.

Next, I set about to call
That image to my mind each day,
Thinking that I’d thus forestall 
That era’s slithering away.

It worked. That picturesque tableau 
Stays vivid in my memory bank
As though it were a day ago.
Though on the rest . . . I draw a blank.