Wendolene

  

just here

a small dog, paw on my leg

where has she got to?

Corson's Inlet/Windsor

Windsor

From Corson’s Inlet A. R. Ammons

“ like an inlet’s cutting edge:
there are dunes of motion,
organizations of grass, white sandy paths of remembrance
in the overall wandering of the mirroring mind: “　

Days hot as a train burnished penny,
small footprints traced in asphalt.
Stop and go, hide and seek
childish shrieking until the streetlights come on.
Sitting on the porch while the day recedes
cats drowsing in the heat of a window ledge
nighthawks rising to the currents of dark
each dawn seems life foretelling death.
Day no more than a featheredge
like the inlet’s cutting edge


rolling to night’s sleepless sea.
Sparkles, fireflies, fireworks
and a fat moon face in the window.
Great search lights ever scanning
giant footsteps ever stamping
foghorns on the river, dream of the ocean.
The man at the top of the stairs; no light can dispel
rain sounds, headlights, great snakes of shadow.
Sliding slithering englobed by a nightmare sea’s devotion
there are dunes of motion,

sky great clouds and swirling curtains.
Remember a park big as the world
with all the world’s knowledge at its heart,
piled with leaves, flowers gone to seed
swarming bees, red birds, bugs in jars.
A fathers time, a childlike allegiance
evening, walking past the baseball diamond
sucking on a straw full of candied sugar.
No relentless waves of truth can unbalance
organizations of grass, white shady paths of remembrance
　

of tales told in a graveyard night
cobblestones eroding under waves of cars.
Home from church in the dark
the moon now no more than a rind.
Freighted so with emotion in today’s dawn,
thoughts of return sadly declined
as every wave propels the swimmer forward,
no tide can carry back the past’s lost child
to a nonexistent city now confined
in the overall wandering of mirroring mind:

Guy

Form Glosa

Carving A Bufflehead

Sitting here on a hard wooden chair in my room at the Capri Centre, It looks like the wind is rising and I see lightning in the distance,

I am restless for home.

Riffling through things I could be doing there, I remember books, errands, projects and a small wooden duck now long gone,

can I carve another?

I have done it before, so no doubt it should rise a small winged shape whirling up from the turbulent surface of my mind,

has it been there all along?

No longer than my hand, a small black blemish from the black paint of the eye staining the clean basswood of the head,

enshrined now in a coat of vanish.

Is it there, the person I was still buried in the person I became, can I reclaim that person with each stroke of the rasp on the same blond

wood that gave that other bird life,

I want, I need to summon back that small delicate migrant, to float once more a calm still shape in my mind

can it find its way back?

Carrying  on its wings the feathers and pinions of not just one me but all the selves  that loved white pelicans floating in a northern river,

drumming grouse at dawn.

What will it carry, what will I receive, the sound of marbles,  the smell of chalk brushes, snapping kites against a blue sky, frustration, longing, joy.

A lot of freight for one small bird.

In Some Far Future Autumn

In Some Far Future Autumn



Standing here with my firefly mind flitting wildly, I wonder what it was I needed in this room, which

errand has slunk silently away with more of my confidence, do animals go through this, does the

squirrel or sparrow have the luxury of confused revelry or endless trips in search of keys or the

word powerbar.



Maybe only long lived animals but its hard to believe that parrots, the bright punctuation of the world

stop lost in thought, perhaps tortoises, after all who would know if they stopped to remember whether

they were seeking food, or sex or fleeing some geologically paced natural disaster measured by

decades.



Will being a poet help, since one is always sifting through one’s mind for a shining tag to end a

metaphor, maybe not, spelling and punctuation were always problematic and remembering the words

of songs or poems, but now the words themselves threaten to disappear.



Words I do not wish to lose have migrated to some farther lobe, artifice has gone taking travail with it,

iambic pentameter has scuttled centipede like into the undergrowth, its many syllables high stepping

rhythmically amid layers of colons and semi colons.



Occluded is almost hidden from sight along with any hope of spelling kaleidoscope or kleptomaniac

without a spellcheck and pronouncing quetzal, forget it and should I meet a pangolin or a

brontotherium in the park I will be reduced to saying that’s a, that’s a followed by a lengthy,

inexplicable description.



And if this is aging, along with sleepless nights and stiff hands let’s hope I reach some equilibrium

amid  loss and gain, and when I finally go, let it not be like an aged cat calling from room to room, let

me drop like a leaf in due season, sere and quiescent, rising only to dance in the wind.



Guy

 Washing Dishes

Outside the window the wind tumbles

the sparrows, seizes the leaves in its teeth

and scours the bricks with the bodies

of summer turned autumn gold.

Later tonight I will waken, anxious

in the winter dawn, and know briefly that

death is closer than birth and that my past

cradles more years than my future.

Outside now the wind has vanquished

both sparrows and leaves, still

a jay confident in cached nuts

screams defiance at the coming cold.

                                                      

 Guy

the beer truck backs up

~ beep beep, beep

at the vet's window, a happy black cat

Seeing  the school year starting again and frost on the cars

this morning, I decided to rerun one of my older poems.

 

Guy

 

Days of Construction Paper and Macaroni

Office bound how often the seasons, years go unremarked.

In the younger grades you decorated the classroom.

Iron autumn leaves between sheets of wax paper and it is fall.

Black cat cutouts, Halloween, an accordion turkey, it is Thanksgiving.

Cut out intricate snowflakes for winter, macaroni trees, it is Christmas.

February and there are Valentines for everyone for once.

Easter eggs, paper tulips, it is spring and change is in the air.

And in the summer you ran thru an endless twilight

until the street lights called you home.

                                                                                        Guy

You hated visitors but loved their shoes

For so many years you slept a

small still weight by my restless feet.

When I got up you would claim

my spot, leftover warmth, a cuddle.

In the end you who were silent

cried out waking, sleeping, lost, alone.

I would hear and nudge you gently,

not knowing if you were awake, asleep?

To let you know I was always  there

awake, and with you in the dark

Golden

Golden lay light upon the sill

after lunch, after school.

Day lingers slowly, a patch of light,

time pursues day retreats

but the moving trail is still new

and I wonder at the golden pool.

The window still speaks of sun

after night after years, decades of time

I see that golden time, still.

                                               Guy

                                                    

Paths

                                                  “Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,”

                                                        Tintern Abbey  

                                                                   William Wordsworth

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

Time was I did not walk this path alone, but words uncounted

could not tame the world to hold your shape once more.

Gone now, like so many, gone and I await some future call,

but until then I am here, remembering a questing spirit,


who pads the pathless night, the trackless starfields,

the wild aurora, thru great winding fields of light.

But remember to return by way of these tamer fields

so that one day we may take that walk together.

                                                                Guy

                                                                    

So Much Unknown

So Much Unknown

But who shall so forcast the years

and find in loss a gain to match?

Or reach a hand through time to catch

The far-off interest of tears

Alfred Lord Tennyson 1850 In Memorian

Riffling photos so much unknown;

unasked, the dog’s name, the smell of the park

the colour of a hat lost now, no eyes to see,

when so many days lay ahead; but

the tunnel ends, alone now with cast off bags

no one spoke, when there is time to hear

your friends name, the make of the car

All orphans to the world suddenly alone

Questions for empty rooms, empty mirrors

but who shall so forcast the years.

A legacy of things holds freight

a story of a first this or that

weddings, service, gifts cold things

warmed by a breath of life

Held now as your absent hand

For memory, words, stories meaning attach

to the humblest thing, the simplest occasion.

Identity itself is risked in every loss

and life itself will clutch and snatch

and find in loss a gain to match?

Or in gain a loss to hatch

For each day is not a puzzle to unravel

And some nights, peace is best

Every occasion is not greater

Then the sound of dice in your hand

Sometimes from the present we detach

new memories for old a warm touch for cold.

Like a child with a favourite book reread.

Striving with every moment to stretch

Or reach a hand through time to catch

a moment once wasted now wanted.

It seems that age can only embrace

what comes it’s way regardless.

Each loss, each parting

each cold alone awakening.

Those unanswerable fears.

change callow youth to miser

hoarding half remembered days.

Some long delayed reckoning nears

The far-off interest of tears

Guy

This version Sept4/05

Glosa