Three painting by Stanislav Plutenko that I admire plus a lovely tram painting by Jacob Schinkaneder from c. 1910 and three poems of mine.

Michael Madden is a genius whose music never fails to inspire me

TRAINS

for Michael Madden

The sound of the train owns the night.

It finds itself in all the distances and landscapes.

We need never move and it swirls by, mars light orbiting,

Wiping the night as if it had an intelligence. It does not.

It is not there. It is gone before we hear the sound.

We may see it in the distance crossing a trestle or

Running into a central valley full to overflowing with

Red cars and tank cars and flatcars and cattle cars.

We are not invited to see its passing, waiting

In an automobile at the edge of the track at night, the clack-clacking

Trucks counting something, gone now. A single red eye

At the end of the snake’s body winking out in the huge night.

This beast is the neuron, the impulse moving on its own

Highways through our county, known by all, coated with its

Own history and lore, its legends and heros and more steam,

Diesel smoke and soundtracks for dreams than that body

Can absorb. It is our magic glowing room throwing itself

Through the great American night as cities and towns flash

By, always on its way to somewhere, crying the land in steel voices

.

ULTIMATE LENITION

I didn’t mean to speak

That softly and get lost

in your voice, but here I am

Unhinged and dangling,

Changed from strong

To weak just by the sound

Of your voice calling to me.

THREE GIRLS

The wind begins to describe

The movements of three girls

Who believe themselves to be

Messengers of a group

Dreaming the sounds of all

Beings breathing together.

As if a dance of this

Kind were possible without

Words.

What is possible is to hear this voice,

In patterns of rain across

The concrete, against car

Windows, racing down the superhighways,

Leaning upon the surface of the water.

Nothing will come of this detailed

Report. It will be simply weather,

A late arrival at a glittering doorway,

The arc of headlights

Around a street corner,

Necklaces of lights, the night only.

Should we see these girls

Without this kind of late brilliance

About them, they will seem

On their way to school,

Talking together, puffs of

Laughter mixing just above

The hiss of tires, disappearing

Toward the park, becoming

A part of the evening.

The poems and four random photos

COMING TO OUR SENSES AGAIN

When I touch you, all is mystery.

Ripples through the skin

Unlock one thousand doors

Within, stretches a history

Almost too much to pin

Down, to clutch, fingertips

Whorling, whirling, waking to

Knowing angels, breathing in the wind.

When I see you, see you,

See you clearly, really see

You there, before me, morning

Wound round you, nearly

Pushing up, neat as a hemline,

Every time I see you, me, we, thee,

These, together without sound,

Dancing eyes in the field of delight.

When I hear you, speaking,

Singing, loosing the girdle

Of language, untying the verbs

That wind around us

Like the ghosts of kings,

Full and with their million stories

Moving on your lips, alive again.

A music flaunted before time.

Your mouth moving to shape the fields

Where words are the kingdom and sound

The castle keep.

When I smell you, in the room.

Nothing in the room.

Proust tells us that when we find

A memory from smell alone,

It is the most powerful.

It is the one most kind,

The true bone from which

The flesh is grown to grace

Again. Rooms of you fill and fall

Away to empty space.

A chemical disturbance of the mind.

Nothing in the room, in the room,

When I smell you.

When I taste you, mouth to

Mouth or drawing with the tongue

To find the salty landscapes there,

There is suddenly no room for

Sense to be other than the

Slippery buds unveiling where

All love has wrung itself

From pore the pour against

The door of teeth, the core

Pretends at cooling, but melts

Before the lips and celebrates

Such food that is ourselves.

FALLING INTO THE FIELD OF TIME

From the edge of the boat

We could see the stars

Reflected in the water. We knew the

Many names of the moon and sang

To the fishes there below, the ones

Who swallowed stars and dreamed

The night sky beneath the sea.

The fish beieve we are their rapture

As we sing. We believe the fish

To be gems of priceless value,

Wandering through the mind,

Bearing the names of the seas.

That night we slept on deck

Listening to the wind and waves

Tell stories of fire on

Islands so far away that one

Can but learn their names,

To visit these places is simply

Not possible in a single lifetime.

When dawn came we could no longer

Tell if we were male or female.

Deer gather at our feet. We

Feed them from bowls. We see

Death with its flocks of birds

Wheel and circle overhead.

We decide to make music forever.

We dance and sail on.

HARPS

These harps that collect

In the eddies of lovemaking,

We find them, days later,

Still strung with the silk

Strings that bound us so together.

I carefully lift them from

The stream, thinking they

Have belonged to angels.

They are hung with wet and

The sweet smell of childhood,

Bright with wagons and the

Ghosts of dogs basking near

The door yeard.

They shine so, it is hard

To believe they were once

Ourselves and we played upon them,

Full and drenced in passion,

Smiles, music on our lips.

I reach to touch the part

That makes the music and all

Is water once again, a riffle,

Then a rapid, then a tumbling.

Over and over again until the

Room is great with longing,

The river spreading itself

Before me llike a song.

A couple of poems and some Wyeth paintings and one other

WALKING ALONG THE ROAD WE STOP NEAR A STREAM IN SPRINGTIME

You have found bits of song caught

In the spillway of a beaver dam. They

Are church-like in their praising. They shake

The collection of sticks

Piercing the face of the dam like so many

Bayonets. A rain begins and spills

Upon the surface of the pool, each drop a book,

A crowd, a child, a Golden Heart siging to the fools,

To what is left of the dancers, the poor shoulders

Of the river made to bear a cascade of tears.

They have built a monument on the edge

Of a cliff. It is impossible to get close enough

To look at it without plunging into the mind of God.

We stand watching the little fires in its towers,

The pitiful way it seems to contemplate the end

Of day. A vibrant eye peers from every window,

Some of them weep as only ones who have seen murder

Can weep. Ships send up flares to illuminate this place.

We walk along the edge of the pond where the grass

Grows tall and yellow. We stop and kiss each other

Before deciding to lie in this place and create

Another world, full of wings and the silence invented by snow.

We are unquenchable as acrobats before the highest throne.

House, knife, wonder, tears, cold, a flute,

Lambs, bridges, hills, the beautiful dark,

Silver bells opening like journeys, a crying,

Weaving a web around the heart that it may

Not break. All of the heavens resting

In the corners of your smile.

ONE HUNDRED POEMS

The way light eats the horizon.

The way Japanese ghosts

Have no feet. Birds gather

In the trees. They say things

To each other that we can hear

But are unable to understand.

A glass reflects the rising

Of the moon. Reading secret

Messages in the pattern of leaves

Upon the ground. There were

Pieces of conversation stuck to

His teeth. A great cultus of

Admonition flourished around

Any mention of the present tense.

The rafters were draped

With banners showing the most

Intimate secrets of the verb.

Landscape is spoken of only

In regard to feelings. There is

No middle distance. It becomes

Inevitable that dense conversation

Cover the face of the moon,

That night untie itself

From any reason and reduce

All poetry to whispers which

Remind one of the wind.

One hundred poems are written

At exactly the same moment.

They are mistaken for oceans,

And fished and thought of great

Depth. One crosses them

Full of wonder, lingering as long

As possible to watch

The waves, the shadow

Flight of birds across

Their sweet surface.

Water Trance; Views of the Mendocino Coast

Blowing up Table Rock at Niagara Falls. It was too dangerous. People might be killed. It might collapse.

DAYS WITHOUT YOU

Before you even feel it.

Before you see the burns.

Before the serious night enters

And hides in the corner of the room

Waiting.

Before the question start.

Before the walls turn red.

Before the dreams come

Carrying their cloth bags, damp

With slender breathing.

Before these things,

All language will stop.

I will hold you

With my eyes, as if

All other instruments

Were broken and we

Had nO right to come here.

The thickness of our bodies

Shall be of great comfort

Then. The heavy verbs

Of our movements shall

Appear as dance.

Then, I will kiss you

With my lips full upon

All that is your reason.

And we will be transported

Together. And they who chance to see

These things will be unable to remember

Our names or if we stood

Before them. for them,

And their time, we shall

Have only this recognition : love.

WHAT DO WE WATCH

The mouth opens, unaccustomed

To the finality of body encountering body

For the purpose of feeding, an expression,

Lip to lip and touching deeper than language

Allows. The fireworks from the edge of the trenches

Says that fulfillment is in sight, a knowing from

One body to another, explained in ripples of orgasm,

Delineating the parameters of the embrace. I embrace

You. To say it in French; my language no longer includes

The mention of your name. You pulse through my nervous

System, lit by the light of your own loins burning brightly against the

electricity of electronic media. What is left to say? I reach

To bring my energy across the air to you. I express myself in

A final emission that sticks to my hands as I rec

NOW I COULDN’T REALLY SAY

Now I couldn’t really say

If it was morning coming

Around the corner with that basket

Of bread in its hands, but

It was smiling and somebody

Was moving little strings

And music was a funny man

With garlic round his throat

And fire in a cup.

This seemed good.

I kept my eye on the top

Of the hill for about an hour.

The sun was a little late, had

A harder time getting ready.

Clouds caught in the trees or bumping

Along the ground, half asleep. Still,

There it was like everyday I had imagined

It. Fat and round and very bright.

It walked on my skin and moved into my eyes

Like it lived there. Some birds flew past,

Either inside me or outside me. It was one

Of the other, but never both. A song was

Starting a little further down the road.

Reason enough to go on.

Go on.

Four recent poems and a couple of my photos

JULES ET JIM

Todd found the word near

The edge of the water. It was small.

Not more than a few syllables, hardly

Full of portent or deep meaning.

It was however a significant word.

What portent it had, it held delicately as

If in a handkerchief. It seemed to have

Suffered from too much time alone.

We stood admiring it, trying

It upon our tongues, finding sentences

Where it might open itself, exercise

It’s postures and explanations.

We are in love completely, without

Knowing quite shy, but without question.

Just as quickly, it began to change.

There was nothing we could do.

We made promises to each other.

We thought perhaps we should

Never know another such word.

Words such as this are rare.

We provide them audience.

We swear we will never forget them.

We part from them realizing mystery.

*

Years later we see it again,

rolling through a conversation,

Waltzes and gallops providing.

We realize we are still bound to it.

We attempt to find the old intimacy,

but it seems something other now,

As youth changes itself from

Year to year, to mean differently.

Once again we believe we are in love.

Once again we stand near the edge

Of the water, trying the same

Syllables in our mouths.

“I’m not sure.”, Todd says.

“I think it might have been

A place...or something else.

Perhaps we could learn to say it again.”

*

We drove up the road using it,

Believing we would once more

Understand the word as we once had.

Without meaning at all it suddenly sank beneath

The water very delicately. so quickly neither

One of use could remember it precisely.

We did not expect this to happen.

As with all words we realized only one

Word would be faithful to us at a time.

Morning would still come. We would still speak

To one another using it. We would recall everything.

Now, when we speak it, the slightest

Conversation is full of portent, as if

The word has at last found us. It is like

Feeling our bones being ground to powder,

Like the sound of dry leaves skidding away.

The water hiding its true identity from us

Forever, even as we struggle to explain ourselves.

NORTHERN LIGHTS

You can’t just throw it away. It’s

Not like a morning on the water in the

West Indies, the glide of white and gray

Gulls across the small harbor, the air

Easy on the skin, a perfection of clear

Water. It is more like the night

Sky trying to hold all those stars,

Keep them in the right order and still

Convey the information of constellations,

Ancient stories and ships sharing the

Points of light to get from one place

To another. I will forget my way

Home eventually. Tracks in the snow, some

Kind of animal. Endless white

Plains. Fumbling through it looking

For a campfire, remembering a conversation

Not realizing the importance of it all,

Until the Northern Lights start up

Totally unannounced.

PRIVATE DANCES

Now this wind was an old one,

Gray and wandering almost

Aimlessly, disturbed at the alley,

Unwilling to find its way down there,

Barely moving the paper littered

On the ground. And that voice...

I’ve heard better sound on the desert,

On the sand dunes where the marks

Of bitter winds show their pictures,

Show their stories with fabled

Hands and private dances

Owned by the night and the hare

And the coyote and the soft-footed lizard.

Still, we will listen to it. It is all

We have now and we are no longer

Ourselves young. We pull our coats

Closer to our throats pretending

It is cold or relentless. It is only

Old and finally we must climb

The trees discover where it

Has come to dwell in the high branches.

THE REMEMBERING WIND

Spring to Summer, Summer

The vernal pools with their white birds

Gathered at the edges. The gold

On the rocks. That oak tells

Everything it knows. This is

The remembering wind. This

Is its time. We will see it so

Seldom we will try to touch

Its tall choirs swirled with clover

fields and flowers of a thousand colors.

We catch at its fine strings, shaking

Ourselves to believe. This is the

Remembering wind. It glistens

Like jewel stone glistens. We are

Learning to speak once again.

The tall ships move into our

Language, their sails full of

The Remembering wind.

It is morning.