Idyll: Field Mice Out to Pasture

Just when you think 
You’ll never make it through 

Another down day, 
A crepuscular 

Screeching flash of a hoot 
Owl lifting you up and away! 
. 

So no more mooning round 
If you please, plenty 

Of green cheese about 
For the likes of you and me. 

Alzheimer's

Cypress trees take souls--at least 
That’s what my mother-in-law 
Claims as we sit under our tall, 
Twinned ones having breakfast 
Before my wife takes her 
To the doctor for a belated checkup--
Olives give us life, she continues; 
Besides, I don’t recall seeing any 
Olive trees in cemeteries, do you? 

Of Things Past

Draw them up as you will you cannot 
Hold on to them as they slip 

Like water through fingers 
Frozen in marble round 

The ring of a well. 

Gaza by Candlelight

“And what is the use of poets in a mean-spirited time?”
 —Friedrich Hölderlin, “Bread and Wine” 


O enlightened ones, tell me 
Before the first dawn light, 

Of what use is poetry 
To ones that are to be 

Snuffed out during the night. 

Fait Accompli

Bewitching 

Burning black heartless 
Spell of wishful thinking— 

Stake your life on it.

Oracular

—for Huuklyeand Cinquor 
  il miglior fabbro. 


Convoluted his verse and so 
Vatic the meaning mind

 
You have to divine 
Which way it’s going by

 
The manner in which 
His feet and mouth perhaps

 
Even his entrails are twisted so

Haplessly entwined. 

 

 

Tottering Suicidal State of Emergency

This unerring 

Bullet securely homed in 
On the insecure 

Heart of America, 
How much longer do we have 
To wait 

Till it strikes home.