Posts for June 16, 2021 (page 5)

Your breath hit hot

Herd Movement

The Chinese elephants made the news this week,
and like most headlines, there’s more to the story.

They’d wandered north of their protected preserve.
A few frightened farmers tossed firecrackers.

At first, I think of these farmers as Frost’s stone savages,
armed in their own Chinese platitudes of what makes neighbors.

But spring is the mischief in me, so I google why elephants
are moving across China. What I find goes deeper ago.

Once the whole of China knew Asian elephants. Royals
sat higher than subjects, warriors rode them to battle.

Then came the ivory trade. Now, there are 200-some
wild Asian elephants enshrined in a southwestern province.

But elephants remember where their food is sweet
and ripest.  They don’t regard the boundaries of protection.

They don’t know that groups of Dai people are trapped
within the same borders, too poor to migrate, born to farm.

The farmers plant their corn. The elephants come at night
to eat, leave behind wet footprints, cool off in the waddles.

The sentence for shooting an elephant is death.  But maybe
desperate men can fuse a little flashback, defend with sparks?

They tell a student from the U.S. that the elephants plunder
every night.  They show her last night’s muddy evidence.

For now, the government is pleased with the herd’s return
to Jinghong. For now, citizens point all visitors toward the park.

See Wild Elephant Valley where you can have your photo snapped
astride a wild Asian elephant who kicks a soccer ball for her dinner.

                  “We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are.” -Anais Nin

Why should I assume my next-door neighbor
sits in front of the TV when days pass
with no sighting of her? Why do I imagine
an emptiness of purpose behind sturdy brick?
Didn’t she struggle this winter as I did

with strings of silver lights to festoon a house,
yet hers, rented?  And what of that burly son
who comes and goes, whose hair changes
color more than our seasons? What if he lightens
her silence on icy mornings? What about the

times I try to greet her during rare sightings
and she turns away, silent, only adding fuel
to my frustration? Why don’t I feel guilt, cursing
her for her rudeness? Who was I to spray water
from my son’s upstairs window, pummeling

her immaculate doggy, yapping as voluble by degrees
as she is soundless, whose yip annoys, whose name
is unknown to me but whose small body might be
the only touch she knows?  Why do I feel loftier
because I believe my border collie behaves, only bays

at police sirens, trained to hush by a tap on the window,
and my no bark command, but listen, isn’t she the woman
I see at the White Castle carrying a newspaper inside
while I wait for coffee at the drive-thru? the same woman
who answered the door last week when I knocked

to complain (in a neighborly way) about her yellow
porch light flooding my bedroom, that sacred place
where I try each night to rest, to leave the noise and need
to say hello behind? Yes, she is the woman who stepped
back into the dark when the door opened, whispered,

but, I’m alone, alone, then closed the door.

Remember the eclipse?
It dropped by some years ago,
casting shadows about,
throwing shade like
masked moms among
hordes of anti-vaxxers,
calling us to question
our unconcern for our
environment, this
pale blue dot that
we leave out of daily
equations.
We laid back, lensed,
protected from her rays,
then gasped at
the total perspective,
and wept.

#WaybackWednesday

This chapel, this box of silence           
          Wakes to the rhythms of praise.
This place where prayer-pilgrims            
          Pause, murmur. Into day’s dawn,
Under the window holding blue,            
          Voices in brown stanzas raise
Sacred poems in a sacred circle.
           Then the Word in words is drawn
From the world into this room            
           With the now-risen sun’s rays
Marking the wall through crossed-
           Panes, the cross on the wall beyond.
Intent on bread and wine, faith-
           Transformed, the brothers gaze
Fixes, ‘til—that hold released—
           Laughter breaks them free upon            
           The grasp of common peace.

My lover knows 
what she wants,
made that clear
at the end of our
second date in front
of a fire in my garden,
sparks in the air
and her time 
too precious to waste.

I don’t want to live
with anybody, don’t
want to get married.
There’s three things
I need from a boyfriend
and I already know
you can make me laugh.
But will you travel
with me, a lot, 
and will you take
me dancing?

Fifteen years now
we’ve laughed and danced
in basement clubs–
hottest spots all seem
to be underground–
to driving Brazilian blues
at a dive in the Mission,
Afro-Cuban in Havana,
old jazz on a drizzly
late night in Paris.

So tonight at the end
of a quaranteen year
when old trees aren’t
the only things that seem
to fall without warning,
there’s a dance band 
in the park so I’ll try
to kick out a few jams
while staying upright.
At worst I might die
in my sweet baby’s arms
and that wouldn’t be so bad.

i wish it wouldn’t rain
and i wish the sun shined more
but i want the sky to drain
and roll along the shore

i know the clouds mean well
and the wind lifts sails
but i want to find a shell
and languish in its details

i know their rules
and i want them to change
but i can’t help but linger
and watch the moon phase

A paradox

We can only live now, but there is no now
Only future and past
Each moment evanescent
Try grasping it, but  it’s already gone
The next moment already here
and so soon passing away

Oh, those neighbor kids who flood
my quiet time with laughter
echoing off the breeze shushed
treeline – my walk in the woods,
alone with shadows and slant
sun, chastened by a nagging
discontent with others’ joy.