Hiram Reports from His Adventure

 In dark vegetation I couldn’t see

my body or hear thoughts.  Fevers

rotted memory.  Maggots flourished

and founded a parliament.

I hung in delirium, a sack

of neural bits and pieces.  Birds in

endless green hooted, screamed.

I was transported to a desert that

cooked off confusion, revealing 

basic elements of who allegedly

I’d been.  My body became obvious

once more, eating dry food and

drinking wet water. I worked

in a factory of noon—my job to attach

objects to their shadows.  Memories

arrived, stumbling like scattered

soldiers returning across sand,

descending from red rim-rock,

shedding uniforms, looking for

lovers and work. 

Lost

don’t go by what I say

go by how the map reads

I must have lost our way

the map is where it leads

also, I’m not your guide

in fact I don’t know why

we’re walking side by side

or who let out that cry

Paying Respects

We found he iron garden-gate

linked to white pickets

hard and wondrous

to open. Ornamentation dated it.

Up the walkway then,

into her stifling house,

where she sat in her purple

dress and parchment skin,

saying what she thought

her whole life had taught

her. Almost too old to pity,

she was too austere to embrace.

The voice seemed to come

from years ago.

Our minds assured us

we would never grow

that weird if ever we

grew that old. Our minds

were confident we could

open the gate again, get

away. It stood out there

in advanced darkness. Inside,

the seconds of her clanking clock

ate the minutes of our patience.

The Ride, the Badge

Tonight my memory is

a palomino exuberantly hooved

in an alpine meadow.

I ride the horse bareback

and fall off, replacing air

in lungs with fear,

pushing fear out then inhaling

again. I hold out

a sugar-cube on a flat palm

for my memory,

which nuzzles with a soft

gray mouth, nips

the cube, leaves lovely

equine slobber. The tail flicks out

at a fat fly, makes broom sounds.

Sunlight, the old sheriff, jumps

up on my memory,

and everything goes golden,

gathers

into a bright badge of

summer.

Evening Studies

 What I learned about evening

included flapping bats silhouetted

against last light, mosquitoes

stuck to skin, a human need for

liquor to lead one into night.

Evening reduced disappointment

into sour essences affecting flavor

of suppers, brightness of eyes,

ligaments of love.  I learned

the ambience of graveyards becomes

buoyant  at dusk:  Ghosts get

in a good mood, old oaks cool down,

words on headstones recede.  In

twilight I studied attitudes of awe

toward beautiful young women.

Gratefully, I took in breezes

of their perfumes, watched

the care with which they walked

in a shadowless hour.

© right now    twilight   

Squirrels

I’ve watched squirrels my whole life.  They

inhabit a zone just outside domesticity. Are

diplomatically wild.  They worry and stare,

behaviors of which I approve.  They horde

forgetfully, gorge daintily.  Sometimes

they just stop.  And fall asleep, mid-day,

on a limb or a fence post.  Squirrel

entropy. Sometimes frenzy

seizes them—something to do

with sex.  Or fleas? —Mad bursts of wants

a frozen pose arrests.  Squirrels

are not everything I had hoped wilderness

to be.  They are though everything

I would want squirrels to be, and

slightly more, for there’s always 

one more surprise set to leap

out of squirrel-evolution and seize

the nut, bury it, and pat fresh

soil over the nut-grave.  And run away!

Fingernail Clippers

 [new version]

A sea creature of lore owned

a gigantic, snub-nosed head

from which a body tapered

shyly. Digital blacksmiths hammer

out our steel replicas.

Lever and fulcrum and

paired toothless blades:

the spare architecture

of a specialized tool.

Owing to his mania,

the reclusive billionaire

eschewed clippers and let

his fingernails accrue

like stalactites. They clicked

like scurrying roaches

when he played cards.

Crows and monkeys groom

each other, picking bugs

from feathers and fur. A calm

comes over them as they pick

and peck. Thinking of them,

I clip a thumbnail--hiding,

like them, from hunger and

fear for a moment, attending

quietly to a bodily chore,

pressing a lever like Archimedes,

watching slivers of keratin

fall away like dreams.

thing poem © right now    fingernail • clipper

Sandwich

Sometimes you need a sandwich,

especially when it's not all you need.

Every culture calls it something

else. It's bread and something else.

Sometimes you need dry and warm.

Or you need to rationalize failure

or to read about Sufism. Sometimes

you need to be touched, seen, heard. 

But's that's all beside the point,

isn't it? when you're stomach 

and your gums ache from 

hunger. I'm making sandwiches

today. To be given to the homeless.

I see them beside the street 

where I drop off the sandwiches. 

They live in tents. Sleep on 

grass. In the wealthiest empire

ever to exist. Whatever. They

can't eat outrage. It's the sandwich

that matters, sitting there on a 

plate, a plank, or your lap. 

The distributors want bread,

bologna, cheese, and mustard.

Never mayonnaise. Someone

I'll never know lifts the sandwich,

opens their mouth, chomps,

tastes, chews, swallows. Feels

just a little bit better. I hope. 

What do I know? Nothing. I know

sometimes I've needed a sandwich.

To get from one moment

to the next. And some water. 

And a place to sleep. And sleep.

But it starts with a sandwich.

Something very particular

in the exact place you are

is what you need. What I need.

Some bread and something else.

To eat. To eat. To eat. 

From a Diary of the Plague Year (20)

Masked, we stand like sentries.

In line six feet apart at

our local post office. 

At the counter, postal

clerks query clients, shuffle

forms, tease computer

screens, and explain.

And explain. Their knowledge

and patience are gnostic.

They meet miffed 

remarks with measured

words, weighing them

like a package bound

for anywhere on the planet.

Older ones of us

in line may see 

the Post Office as sacred.

May have lived on rural

routes or in micro-towns.

The world got in touch

with us through the Post

Office. Some may have

dabbled secretly in 

philately. Or corresponded

with St. Nick. Or ordered

a baseball glove or a doll

from a catalogue as thick

as an oak stump. We 

do not know why a crowd

in power wants to wreck

this secular temple. Weary,

always mocked, the post office

is, like a library or a free

clinic, the kind of institution

that saves civilization, 

as drops of rain eventually

save crops. Which is why,

in line and masked, holding

boxes and plump 

envelopes, we accept

the wait

with everyday grace. 

Under the Horizon

 [version two]

The Old Man got body-tired of 

and mind-bored with

labor about the same time.

Built his last rock wall at 70.

 

I thought of him today 

when I was chopping at a vegetable

garden's frozen mud in January.  

My mind let my body make my mind

think, "This shit is getting old."

How he would have phrased it. 

I felt like I thought  the sun

looks when it seems to drop

below the top of shadowed hills:

ready for bed. Of course there's more

work waiting under the horizon.

from "New Year Letter," by W.H. Auden

 Reading/video of excerpt from W.H. Auden's "New Year Letter":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTQVfZr9VZE

William Tell Ravine

 [second version]

(a tributary of the North Yuba River, Sierra County, California)

Before he'd heard anything about Switzerland, Schiller,

Rossini & stuff, he'd looked across the river from the house

at the long white beard of William Tell Falls. The sheer-drop

ravine looked perpendicular.  No home for trout.  Im-

pulsively, at 17, he decided to hike up there.

Headed out, crossed the river, climbed straight up,

more laddering than walking. Ravine was path in form 

of bedrock. Manzanita brush walled the sides.

He got as far as the pool the falls slapped in jagged

pulses. Sounds of that constant collision careened

around the stone box. There was no climbing further.

In soaked jeans and wet boots, legs loaded up

with lactic acid, he slithered down like an arthritic

snake, satisfied to have spied on a geologic scene,

to have introduced himself to William Tell Ravine,

and to have witnessed water and rock in their own time.

"The Secret," by James Stephens

 Reading/video of a short poem by the Irish writer (1882-1950):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufS9uL-R0X8