BREAKING TEMPO / AND WITH YOUR SPIRIT

This poem appeared earlier this year in Medusa's Kitchen.  It is part fiction, part remembrance.  Baxter is E.R. Baxter III, my best friend back in Niagara Falls, NY.   He is a poet, novelist, and a wonderful essayist with more than a few books in print.  His Niagara Digressions is a lovely collection of essays.

BREAKING TEMPO / AND WITH YOUR SPIRIT

There is a slight rise just at the edge

Of the wood where the trees seemed

To have decided they would go no further

Than this.  A rise pushing up with

Visible boulders and short grass.

When I used to go there it seemed

Very important to get right to the brow

Of the place.  There one was even with 

The tops of the trees and could look down

To the ice-edged creek that named the place,

The Baxter Run the people called it.

Baxter had had a farm not too far

From the rise and the stream was a quick

One, moving over rock, heading for the lake

With a couple of deep holes

Where dark fish dwelt, sun fish,

Perch, crappie and bullheads.  Raccoons,

Foxes and raptor birds liked to come here.

I decided to come here for the same

Reason these creatures did,

To know the place.

A place to put my heart and to know it

In my blood and feel it in my bones.

A place where, no matter who came there

They could never find it as I had.

In the silver of summer, if it were quiet

I could hear the lake water lapping

Just at the edge of sound.

A place where I could image old Baxter

Getting up from his kitchen table, lighting

A cigarette, putting on his coat and boots

And making is way to the barn

Where the few head of cattle he kept

Waited for him. Their lowing in the night

Air just above the waves.

He too would walk by the Run.

He too would see the same water

Curl around the edge of the farm,

Past the cabbage field and into

The hardwoods to the rise.

Some evenings I could hear him talking to the cattle,

His voice deep and resonant, a caring.

Then I was the fox and the raccoon,

Then I was the darkened wing headed

Into the woods to find where the night was safe.

Now I wake from deep sleep

In a bed on the other end of evening 

And I am on that rise above Baxter’s run.

I wish for a moon.  I get one.

If I want to see the water rushing

Just beneath the thin ice, I am able

To do so.  If I wish this place 

To become forever, it does so and I become

The place, the rain, the snow,

The wildflowers of Summer,

The insect orchestra.

The tendrils of each day breaks

And there will never be anything

Greater than this peace.

FOR GENERATIONS TRAPPED IN THE GAS VANS

FOR GENERATIONS TRAPPED IN THE GAS VANS

“What exists as reality can be so substantially

Altered that when we kill those who disagree with us,

There will be no notice of the event.  They seem to,

Then do, rush to the light, to where the light

Closes upon them.  When we open the doors,

At the end of the operation, they are crowded at the rear doors.”

I keep waiting to see the big rooms.

We must be able to find them, open,

Light streaming in, the angels of

God, seated quietly, composing the

Sounds of what we will come

To know as the language of loving.

Here a touch, from the heart

To the groin.  Here, a kiss,

From the name of time to the

Second Drawer of Spring, as it

Reels its petals full force into

The face of desire, unaware

Of the vicissitudes of the 

Seasons, full and culpable

To the caprice of the erotic,

Slitting its lips open to accept

The dogma of the carnal.

The roads only lead to the north.

Direction is a function of the loins.

Yielding and penetration of ideas,

Debate by debate, circumcises itself

For the benefit of an acceptable

Resolution of the source of a particular

Season.  The mouth closes over

The tip of the concept and fills

With a million ideas.  All of time

Begins understanding its own creation.

FRUITS OF THE EARTH

Victor Bregeda

FRUITS OF THE EARTH

Night decides to take over the conversation.

The shadows stir, the spiders begin

Their spinning toward the dawn.

Spring begins its work toward those

Seasons it will never see. The exuberance

of buds and bright flowers, the dazed

Spinning of elm seeds through the green

Air.  Soon there will be no room upon

The ground for all will be growing.

We do not wait.  We dig the soil, find

The seeds of plants we want to see

In particular, begin the garden rituals.

We too become fruits of the earth,

Laboring toward the harvest, privileged

To entertain the dance through all the seasons.

The morning excuses itself from the night.

The night pales before her great might,

Calls the dark spider back to itself

And bides until the story changes once again.

WALKING ALONG THE ROAD WE STOP NEAR A STREAM IN SPRINGTIME

This poem is from a forthcoming book THE NIGHT MARKET.

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 singing 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. 

IN THE RIGGING: TEARS BEGAN TO FALL

IN THE RIGGING: TEARS BEGAN TO FALL

We were near Cinfuego waiting for pirates

We had been there for over two hundred years.

The stars had migrated and had chosen

Other places they wanted to visit.

We have been here previously. We had

See the constellations form and reform

Many times.  We have been to other worlds

It was indeed the sea that carried us there. 

They had propped the king in a corner

But he had been there so long

He looked like a pile of sticks

With some bits of cloth.

Sometimes the sea would turn 

Bright yellow as if the light

Came from within, the wave

Tops glowing.  At other times

Even in the night, the entire

Sea was a violet as if rubbed

To a burnish and then the next

Moment, opal, perfect opal.

We would take to the high

Rigging to see this. It was the sea.

They had me on gallants working all

The way to the Moonraker. 

Sometimes men seemed to be 

Walking in the surface of the water.

They were not ghosts.  They were men.

We lived in rooms filled with sand.

The tide came in blistering the sand.

We were above the wave line among

The lemon trees.  The sands looked black.

The water sounded pleasing.  The king 

Surely would return from that pile of sticks.

Surely he would return.  These seas shall

Remain unknown forever, mysterious and clear.

The clock weaving in and out of what we choose

To call dreams only because we are

Old and cannot but be the dreamer.

It seems a fair, fair wind follows.

A clear water indeed.  We know no longing.

We are captured by the History of

The Night Borges spoke of, our eyes

Still scanning the horizon, should there

Be a place where we might land.

HORSE LANGUAGE

His family had been red and wore

The clouded suits worn by those

Who could not mark the truth

With words but bore it rather

In the patterns of colors on their horses

They speak by gathering groups of these

Beautiful horses into certain configurations.

They run them past one another

Changing their order on every run so that

The patterns are read differently

Each time.  Some are so skilled

That they can write music with the horses.

When we came to them the voyages

Had been going on for quite some time.

Things were being traded that would

Not be understood for many, many years.

We asked which way the children

Had gone, what they had carried

With them and their ages.

It took two full days of horse

Display for that information to be conveyed.

We have been on the trails now

For over four months.  Everything

Seems just beyond our understanding,

Slightly out of reach.  It is very

much like mining a poem to get

Any information.  In the evenings 

We sit and watch the light depart.

We listen for hoofbeats  through the dark,

The cries of wolf-like creatures,

Flames of red eyes circling our

Campfires, sure that we will fail

To find the children.

We find ourselves forgetting their names,

How we became separated,

Why we speak the way we do today.

WHAT WE WANT

WHAT WE WANT

To hear the voice tell us stories.

The heart went questing with true

Love and its page Ardent Desire.

To know this is true, as true

As clouds lifting against the 

Horizon, building higher than ideas.

Oh please tell us the truth.

Tell us about Mister Death

And his lovely dances full of leaps,

Full of daring and challenges.

The color of the sky at twilight.

When we wait at night for the

Lights to quit and make soft

Cloaks around our thoughts

So we may sleep.  Children,

Families, lovers and deer feeding

Beside streams full of moonlight.

Let us stand here together.

I will hold you to me and kiss

Your lips.  I will tell you and you

Will tell me.  We will be able to see

The silver of enchanted light through

The trees.   We will agree that our lives

Shall always have this sheen about them.

Far to the North, just before the snows

Begin to own everything for months

At a time we hear the voices again.

Cantatas that overcome death, leave

Us choruses swelling with prayers,

Rejoicing beyond measure, the seasons

So full we wash in them and they flow

Over silken skin as clouds lifting

Against the horizon, building higher than ideas.