Posts for June 9, 2021 (page 6)

Puppy dog bath time:
“We wouldn’t have to do this
If you weren’t so gross.”

Green and overgrown, the June rains
have opened up the soil. Worms rubber-
neck the concrete to save themselves
from drowning. Uneasy, I step over them.

Too soft for my own good,
I used to get into trouble for crying. 

Myself, now I try to be distant
and fair. Halfway successful, 
I imagine a faceless something
with one hand, passing
one grain of sugar to an infinite line
of ants. With the other hand, it flattens
each honeyed ant dead.

The world hardens itself. Time
hardens then softens me. 

This is an abstraction.

What I mean to say is,
nature is as cruel
as anything impartial.

Sultry cloud un-
          moved over immobile
                    shadows     fingers
                              slowed in the warm syrup
                                        of noon     ennui of sparrows

accumulating all heat 
          color tinted meadow-
                    shade as if by thought alone
                              a somewhere continuum
                                        of sky & grass & air

that swirls endless
          an antique world containing
                    itself     an amphora frieze played
                              out on soil-stained fragments
                                        chalky figures desperate
                                                                                          
                                                                            to trespass into the orbit
                                                                            of another.

Solitary

she’s robining ashiver perched
upon a telephone wire. Height and stillness
may offer scope to hunt that flight often misses.
Preening feathers sometimes can provide
a scant iota of warmth and work
to shed some damp. Anyway, it’s worth the view,
the hunger and acuity of being

solitary.

in the end
after untold years
of passion, clashes, apologies,
wishes and withdrawal, this is it:
me by your side when you are too weak to rise,   
a cool hand on your brow, a toenail
trim, a bowl of ice cream
to lift your spirits
absolution               

Twisted and tangled and tied up in knots,

Four weeks out of port
and I’ve only arrived
at the Nantucket dock
where Devil Dam, Tit-bit &
the claw-footed Pequod squat:
12 more chapters before Ahab appears
but Ishmael’s slept with Queequeg
whose has his own show 
with a tomahawk pipe & ebony idol

Sixty years since I plowed these waters:
then I tore through to the sea
to see the leviathan first hand;
now I’m mired in the nets 
of ignorance, online annotation
and wikipedia (i.e. did you know
the Pequod were a tribe massacred
by the pilgrims for killing 
a drunken, adulterous pirate?)

I call the librarian for an extension
Give me a year I say
Buy your own copy the reply 

January morning, cloudy and mild,
in Galway, Ireland: a red fox crosses
the yard.  Not a cat, not with that brushy tail
and pointed nose, white muzzle I see
when he stops and looks straight
at me.  He can’t know I’m at the window,
but he stares, waits, then turns, trots
along the hedge, red against the green,
turns again, crosses the road and
disappears. 
                        He looks at me but
doesn’t call, unlike that other fox
who stood under my father’s window,
a continent and two decades away,
who stood, feet planted, tail low, at dawn,
the day we buried my father. That red fox,
who couldn’t know, that red fox looked at me
and keened. 
                          How spirits slip past us,
take stock on their way to enter earth,
how they lodge in our breaths.

the words i use hurt me in my sleep
creating mountains of dreams that do not repeat
the effervescent, bubbly feelings when i wake
never stay long enough to get past the daybreak
the pain and the worries that rot my brain
breathing in for nothing but their gain
the one place that it could be safe
is wrapped in a nightmare that i tend to chase

Dave says the Civil War was fought over states’ rights.
I say, yes, a state’s right to uphold slavery.
Bullshit, he’s yelling now, because
(and he doesn’t actually voice this) I’m a Midwesterner
and he’s a son of the South and how can I possibly understand.
              Our spouses say,
                                              stop it you two!
But Dave and I are eyeing each other like bull and matador.
I’m pretty sure I am waving the red cape.

MaryJane tugs him out the door.  My husband says you know
you aren’t going to win this agument.  And I say,
Dave’s splitting hairs with a sword.

That night I dream I am running with the bulls.

deafening drumroll of hooves
wild flamenco of snorts and shouts and mangy sweat
an undercurrent of danger surging us forward

Up ahead, in the plaza, I see hundreds of confederate flags waving
in a windstorm of defiance.  The glint of gunmetal jolts me awake just
as the ghost of Jefferson Davis slips me a sign
that reads:

Historical truth is a banner flapping in the breeze of opinion.