[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.
[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.
A short Christmas Eve poem by the great Langston Hughes, reading and video:
(1938-2020)
Once
in Berkeley, smoke like Bay fog lay
over heads of cool-hip-jazz-club-clientele &
waitresses slivered through tables/bodies/chairs,
kept drinks coming, ice and glass and liquid held aloft &
Mr. Tyner
--he hit the mthrfckn keys
so hard one time strings
popped & whipped like snakes out
‘the belly of the grand dark
piano
& the percussionist had some
mojo stuff hanging from racks—
bones, steel tubes, feathers—
all
humid and scratchy and knock-talk
click-back bicker-bock-a-zone
sounds, & McCoy was rippin and roarin,
working the gift
out
of Keyborderland. And the horns. It was a big
marrow-filling, ear-enlightening night. Outside
after encores:
cool, misty Berkeley. Had a look around
to see which way the karma blew,
got in the ’67 Camaro, drove back up EYE-80
to plain brown-cow Davis, college town,
brain
humming like the lowest pianoforte
E-note pedaled through the measures.
A link to a fine poem by Kara B. Imle, "Winter Solstice," in the online journal medium:
(second version)
He was a traveling cat. He raced
and slunk, padded and trotted, sleek
and balanced, tendons full of
future speed. He moved soundlessly
but for a hiss or a yowl now
and then, or a crazy crash,
never his fault. Yes, a
questing cat, moving from this to
that, from at to at, detecting
motion, smooth as lotion, reading
air, decoding sounds from
everywhere. Itinerant and
cool, self-possessed and freely
feline--leonine, nined up with lives,
purring worries, cagey but uncaged,
guileless and wise. Green eyes.
2020
(second version)
"The ways of life are infinite and mysterious."- Georgio Scerbanenco, Traitors to All, translated by Howard Curtis
In spite of my playing, the piano
produced a simple minuet by Bartok,
which made me think of walking
cautiously across a frozen pond.
An empty coffee cup sat there
on the bookshelf. Cool ceramic.
Out there, and "up": night.
And stars, which we think of
as a permanent installation,
not a chaotic map of explosions
or freckles on an infinite face.
I dream recurrently about new
stars, close and bright,
flowing past in a sky-parade
as I look up from a meadow
in mountains and watch,
thrilled and terrified. I almost
forget to breathe. Someone I can't see
says, "Words are stars. I've
told you that before. Many times."
(second version)
A white, four-masted yacht slips between
dingy barges and trawlers, disappears into
a blue haze on the Sea of Marmara. The call
to prayer's an hour away. Swallows dive
and glide, pigeons prowl, the sun's
about to settle down.
Below the terrace, lush maples and oaks
sigh and sway, leaning west. Sounds of traffic,
children, and work never cease. Near a mosque's
minaret on the hill, a faded Turkish flag
flutters in slow motion. Now a seagull appears.
It glides in a wide arc, which now becomes
a large invisible circle. The glide traces
ever smaller concentric circles against
the backdrop of the sea until the gull
lands precisely at the point of a rooftop
below. The gull stands,
strong and ready, facing a low sun, and
something in the scene says all is well
this evening, even when it may not be,
especially if it may not be.
(second version)
