Seizing The Day (Phoenix In Distress)

 

Disoriented by shining

 

Myriad stars, rise from

Under such dizzying array

To the occasion:

 

Do not

Wait to see some fabled

Celestial body falling

 

To make a wish you

Hope complements

This very day, burn it

 

To ashes straightaway.

 

 

 

The First And Last Time I Knew I Wanted To Be A Poet

 “At ease disease, there’s a fungus among us.” 

---childhood taunt of the 1950s in the USA

 

 

It must have been when I was still—

As they say—wet behind the ears and thought

 

It was something I could do every day

And still look at myself

 

In the mirror without turning away, how

Could I know then

 

What I sense at last is true now?

Poetry remains

 

A lingering disease

That once takes root

 

In the budding brain,

Never knows well

 

Enough to stop sprouting

Wings and dares

 

Fly away.

 

 

Grave Autumn Harbinger

After the cleansing 
Downpour, the dust- 

Free last glistening 
Raindrop left trembling 

On the leaf at the end 
Of the branch 

That will not break hesitates, 
Yet remains unwavering 

In the anticipation 
Of something clearly 

Momentous waiting 
To happen so that it can 

Let go and return—wasted?— 
To dust once more. 

Archilochos, Fragment 113, trans by Guy Davenport

 

B(l)ackwash Flash

A deus ex machina   

Out of the clear

Blue skies, a murder

 

Of Herculean proportions

Of Parnassian poison

Penned crows freed

 

Helter-skelter to rescue

A cooped up slew of most

Foully maligned ruffled brooding

 

Birds of a feather

In one darned swell poetic

Swoop together!