Poems XIII

"And A Sermon"

Do you remember when we used to do this?
I get a two-day hangover now
It's day one.
We'd drink our bellyful
Until the sun
Came up and we'd go to bed 'til noon and do it all again.
The moon was our friend,
Work the enemy.
It didn't matter the day,
We had class, sure,
and some wimmin did and some didn't
The same sisters wore their Lululemon
To 9 o' clock Wednesday Spanish
and 7 am Friday slinkings back home.
I loved those girls.
Not in the sentimental way,
But what they stood for,
Youth and ribaldry.
Revelry at the Dionysian Catalina wine mixer,
While in the pursuit of an education- they'll amount to more than us,
The ones who had to worry
About cleanup and setup
and the moral cleanup of taking back
Everything said the night before.
I don't know what they see in us.
But they're beautiful, every one.
Sluts is a bad word they say,
and it has dreadful connotations
But should not everyone
Be allowed the freedom to choose love with a side of lust?
It's the judgment inherent in the word, but it reflects on the moral police
I see jealousy and a lack of understanding.
We set a standard
We don't really know who should follow it.
So we lob darts at the board of "whores"
and know obscenity when we see it.
But I see beauty and hair flowing in the wind, the way it should be.
That's just me
A sentimental young fool,
Full of hope for the new, the next, the "us" generation
Let the girls play, they're women, not girls,
We're boys and men, not patriarchs,
I see walks of the unashamed,
Though the headaches can hang our heads.
We all have a desire to own,
To lock up our booty, or claim it from someone else,
Someone who has left it to fallow on an island
Men and women alike want the security
So they fight against gaiety.
A treasure can never be yours.
It's metal and gemstone and has no feelings.
A person can be yours
But some will never be.
Those are the grails you drink from-
I'd rather have a carpenter's cup
Than a gaudy, flashy one.
Tramps exist, so do cads, and the blurred lines inhabited between
But it is him without stones that casts the first one
While the happy stay grounded in dreams.

Poems XII

"At North Lake, Where I Did Not Mean To Go"

I took the path less traveled by,
The air cold and crisp and light,
The fall sun casting shadows,
The rocks and trees in darkened sight.

To look left at the leafless aspens,
With their amber cousin down the hill,
You could think they would squabble for life,
But they are one as the lakewater still.

A fish hops, brings a single ripple,
A southern breeze on calm North Lake.
But the aspen's stalks stand tall and clustered,
No telltale shiverous shake.

The fishermen across the water
Can be heard, what do they say?
They see me as I am quiet, on this
Lovely autumn day.


"Down In Sunset"

A pale silhouette of the burnished sky
The reflection shines brighter in its gray
My sight
Flies through the aspen ghosts
To watch a shimmer of refraction fade.
Fleeting, and gloriously so,
The ashen flow
Peeks through to me.
The mountains have their flipped counterparts,
But it is
Sky Father
seen in himself upon
Earth Mother
who stops my descent.

The sun dies
And my subject is cold and pale,
A silver farewell.


"Knives In My Room"

Three knives
On the wall
Coming in at Angle
Down & In
Down and out
A triad, trifecta, triangle,
The glided red, a royal's blade
A peasant's of hide and leather.
Nondescript and ceremonial,
The third tilted on its tether.
Knives for grandfather,
Knives for me,
Brothers of blood and those across borders
"Uzbekiston"
The cougar says
In fantasy scripts out of Mordor.

"Untitled"

I went to see the fall colors at Lake Sabrina
A friend
I don't know very well
Told me it was beautiful.

Why is it that someone always gets there first?
I was too late
Too old
To see the red-topped sprouts
The way my heart felt it should.
I went the wrong way more than once
Dead ends so full of hope
I thanked myself that I told no one
Brought no friends for my journey
But wouldn't it be wonderful

To share the sorrow,
For them to know my mind?

Rust still stood, here and there,
But I dismissed it as not my Muse,
Rocky islands, so many stones
Needing water
Needing snow, not shallows.

I see the waterline.
What could be.
The folly and fall of any romantic.

Possibilities linger and tempt.
So I'll try again.
I'll climb the mountains.
Find a new lake.
One higher up.
One that was there the whole time.

A few weeks, or months,
Time flies even when you want it to, when you wait for it.
Who is next?
I welcome winter
The harbor's closed.

An auburn gully tantalizes,
Moving on to what I cannot grasp.

But O!

The azure!

A different vantage,
Of a higher and nobler sort.

Breathtaking views from
Hard-breathing heights,
A powder sky,
Verdant shallows where I see
No fish but know he is there.
The lake, she opens a cerulean depth over there
Over. There.
There!
The word that's been missing.
What is, not what could be,
The is, the there
Bringing presence to the present moment
For this present soul.
Why harp on the nonce?
I see a second me belong
To the lady of the lake, so clear.