Her Life Is On This Table and Other Poems Read online

  Part 2

  I feel death is like my wife

  behind me, looking my way

  not caring what I am doing

  wanting to suddenly separate me

  from my task, my concerns.

  She has an agenda of her own

  and wants me to follow

  to where, I don’t know.

  Just somewhere I don’t want to go.

  Still, I ask myself, “Why not now?”

  What I will do today

  and what I will do tomorrow,

  and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

  matters only to me, not the World.

  What disturbance or cross-current

  what divergence in the World’s course

  will I ever cause?

  What single stone

  worn down with flow and time to nothing

  will ever change the river?

  Here is all of mankind’s history on this earth:

  “This person was born

  and lived for a time

  and died.

  This person’s name was Anyone.”

  Put a name from anywhere, any when

  in place of “Anyone”

  and repeat one hundred billion times.

  That is all the history known

  of most of the human race

  and even that is more

  than the World can long remember.

  The name replacing “Anyone”

  soon becomes just a word:

  “someone”.

  There are exceptions, the rare few

  Elizabeths and Lincolns,

  Bernhardts and Mozarts.

  Humanity is a mountain that yields

  some ounces of gold

  as all the rest of its masses of rock

  become mere tailings.

  There, tumbling down the slope in disregard will be:

  My design

  of a birthday card I made for my wife.

  My memory

  of December snows and the Flatirons.

  My joy

  when my children marched in the high school band.

  My singing

  while listening to Peter, Paul and Mary.

  My firm belief

  in the firm grip of the missing hand of God.

  All I am, not worth the World’s keeping.

  Tailings and overburden

  lost down the slope.

  It isn’t the dying that haunts me.

  It’s the being forgotten.

  It’s the shrug and elsewhere-focused dismissal:

  “He was born at this time

  did something for a time

  meant something for a time

  to some friends for a time

  But he might as well never have been.”

  My father, late in his life

  no longer a sinner

  confessed his old sins

  not to his priest, but to a reporter.

  He spoke of his larcenies and his attempts

  exciting and unsuccessful

  at prison escape.

  He showed old scars from the bullets of guards.

  He spoke of his gang and their burglaries.

  “We was just a bunch of thieves,”

  he told the reporter.

  Now Whitey and Lloyd were dead

  and Frisco and he grown old

  and all of it passing away, out of mind.

  “But I’ve been in the town’s best houses,”

  he added, with a smile.

  A hopeful smile.

  Why did he tell a reporter that

  which he, circumspectly, withheld from his priest

  and ever from his sons?

  The priest would leave it for God to ponder.

  The sons would ponder and talk of it little.

  The newsman would ponder, and put it in papers

  for all to read, and mention to others

  and maybe, just maybe, remember.

  Faced, as we all are, with oblivion,

  tell us of everlasting life in heaven

  and we are yours.

  To live on in glory gives us a chance

  to counter oblivion.

  And that glory is forever.

  And the World, sometimes,

  remembers its saints.

  But call us unworthy of salvation

  while pointing at the door to damnation

  and we will embrace such cruelty and vice

  as will win us our way to hell.

  Hell is eternal too.

  And Dante remembered its faces.

  Cain is ever remembered.

  Vile Caligula and de Sade.

  Lizzy Borden and the Ripper.

  The sins of a petty crook make a story

  more worth the telling and retelling

  than any good that one could report of him.

  The aging thief knew all that

  and put on once again

  like a coat from the back of the closet

  the role that would make him remembered.

  I’m thinking of Brutus

  his knife still bloody

  departing the Forum

  the crowd left to Mark Anthony.

  He should have stayed.

  Marc Anthony said of the dead

  “…the good is oft interred with their bones”.

  What a warning that would have been to Brutus,

  that all the World’s good opinion of him

  would come to that in the end—

  buried with his bones—

  after he fell on his sword

  all hope of Elysium gone.

  But Anthony first spoke a happier thought

  one to ease Brutus’ mind as he fell:

  “The evil that men do lives after them…”

  June 5, 2013

  The Chalk Artists

  Denver’s Larimer Street

  smiles in the June-bright sun

  as sunburnt artists, crouched and kneeling,

  repave the asphalt with colored gypsum.

  These are the artists most devoted

  to working en plein air

  also called peinture sur le motif

  or “painting on the ground”.

  Literally.

  Not just they, but their art

  for all its existence

  glories and glows in the light of the sun

  and breathes in the open air

  looking up as we look down

  and invites us to drink a beer

  and eat a sandwich while we watch.

  The judgmental eyes of the old

  and distracted eyes of the teens

  and darting bright eyes of the children

  are all drawn here today.

  No other art in town has such crowds,

  not even Van Gogh’s at the nearby museum.

  We gather this weekend for one quick show

  of ephemeral art

  of color and form, sublime and comedic

  more brief than the blossoms of flowers.

  What other art so carefully finished on a Sunday

  is washed from the streets for rush-to-work Monday?

  See it while you can.

  This is art most pure

  done by fine art’s nameless orphans.

  Playful, joyous bursts of creation

  done with no motive except to render

  expressions of feelings deeply buried

  and get them out on the ground to breathe

  then bless them and let them pass away

  no hope of future notice or glory.

  They live for a moment

  to celebrate the moment.

  Unlike Van Gogh

  these artists don’t fear oblivion;

  they embrace it as part of their art.

  June 13, 2013

  The Wind

  It's a trillion molecules

  Pulled and pushed around through space

  Forces marching without rules

&nbs
p; Passing on without a trace

  Perfect model of collective

  Each part acting on its own

  And yet under some directive

  Though with purposes unknown

  It will thrill the hawk's wing feathers

  Lifting them in its embrace

  As it sweeps across and weathers

  Sandstone spire and granite face

  It will stir the grass in meadow

  And will ripple every lake

  As it bends the antlered head low

  And it makes the nestlings wake

  It will spiral up the dead leaves

  Where they've gathered on the ground

  And will whistle in the shed's eaves

  And will whirl the cock-vane round

  It will start the water pumping

  As it spins the windmill's blades

  It will start the shutters thumping

  As it rattles all the shades

  It will swing the traffic lights

  And pull the petals off the flowers

  Meantime moving through the heights

  To sway the city's tallest towers

  Then it gambols and it flirts

  While whistling madcap melodies

  Pulling at the sleeves and skirts

  Of any person it may please

  Now it touches like a lover

  As I smell its sweet perfume

  Now I cry and run for cover

  As it brings on death and ruin

  But to curse it is inanity

  Give it a name and still

  It blows on without humanity

  No purpose to fulfill

  My mind can’t give it will

  June 24, 2013

  The Creator

  In the beginning there was Darkness

  And the fearful needed Light

  And their Need became Hope

  And their Hope became God

  God who has a thousand faces

  Breathes a trillion sparks of life

  To root and feather and fur

  To low born and to those borne high

  He who gives form to cobweb and leaf

  Who watches the sparrow and clothes the lily

  Timeless, raises and levels the mountains

  Who fills up then empties the seas

  Above us He is, above our existence

  We pray He will fill up our lives

  But Who, besides He, made them empty?

  Who is the God of our sorrows?

  We sing praise to God for our comfort

  And curse only Fate for our pain

  But the two are a Janus-like God of two faces

  Capriciously turning, beginning then ending

  He blesses our lives with good fortune

  While evil unfathomed He hides at our backs

  Or is goodness given by God, while evil arises in us?

  Then He who made us gave both to the world

  He brings both the breeze and the sundering storm

  Both life-giving rain and the life-stealing frost

  The balm for the wound, but infection as well

  Love’s gentle kiss and the death blow of hate

  It’s said that our minds cannot fathom God

  Inferior creatures as we all are

  Can a pebble envision the mountain?

  Can an acorn deduce the great oak?

  So God, in revealing Himself to mankind

  Was seen like a light from beyond a closed door

  A vision more guessed at than seen

  A vision of minds too small for such dreams

  For my questions just mysteries sublime

  Not answers that prove themselves to my mind

  —Get behind me, you visions begging belief

  While singing your dreams of heaven and hell!

  Janus has really but one face: Indifference

  June 24, 2013

  Girls’