It's in the Wing Span, Stupid!
Reason can take you only so far--
A stone, even a stone,
isn't certain to stay uncut.
Birds like us, with shallow breastbones,
and rapidly beating hearts,
must learn,
even if it takes forever,
and it probably will,
to just go with the flow.
Now here in the shade of the Coven Tree--
Just Bilbo, and Thorin, and Gandalf and me.
Bound for trouble--sic transit gloria--
Our quest simple--a taste of euphoria.
We welcome all bravehearts to journey along--
Just bring an old dirk, your pack, and a song.
These crooked paths--so lonely, dark, and deep--
Trolls, goblins, and dragons, shall make you weep.
We shall seize the day and worthier rise--
Bilbo, Thorin, Gandalf, and I, surmise.
Today's the 5th anniversary of my son's death from a stroke.
He was 49 years old.
His mother had just turned 50 when she died of heart failure.
I'm a survivor--
haunted by multiple lifetimes of dissolving memories.
As long as my heart beats,
Conscious or unconscious--
In dreams awake or in dreams asleep--
Aware of all that they have lost and I--
For where there's life there's
They undulate themselves as
the Corinthians remain unfazed
by all that commotion,
all that intense bantering
upon the dusty proscenium.
Behold your future--
Doctors of Bellys and Heads!?
Aren't they Ionic, though?!
Dearie,
Cheery beats bleary, dreary, weary,
and yet what if in fact we are
--in theory--
@ the .
where our good intentions have
eXXXceeded
our ^
to fulfill them?
--Amorphously,
Chet GPA
All of these 'yes-men' are as new to our national life as to our vocabulary.
Their appalling uniformity and timorousness of views threatens to sweep up whatever shards of our democracy yet remain.
At bottom, they value only the gravy-train they rode in on, and not the despoiled landscape upon which the tracks have long been spiked.
Auden hadn't had a clerihew
He'd bitten off more than he could chew
When he tried to warn off Yeats
The barbarians were inside the Gates
There is a lovely lake surrounded by a goodly wood that I have many times walked about and around. It is home I am sure to many ducks and geese, because I have seen them paddling and diving in all kinds of weather. I saw, only once, a large turtle slowly make its way up the muddy shore only to be rudely scooped up by a State Park employee and dumped unceremoniously into the back of his pickup truck. I won't forget that, not really, although it wasn't the worst thing I witnessed on that lovely lake surrounded by a goodly wood. I saw a dead swan, an arrow--yes--an arrow protruding through its body just below its long, limp neck. What a sight! Not nearly as sorrowful, however, as its mate paddling itself in ever smaller, solitary circles--a figure of true desolation in all its fine feathery, whiteness. Such other swans as there were upon this lovely lake surrounded by a goodly wood moved in pairs.
Now, years later, I perambulated about the lovely lake surrounded by a goodly wood and saw the several pairs of swans, the ducks, and the many geese, all happily paddling away. It was an uncommonly mild mid-winter day. I saw, too, the still lonely swan upon the lovely lake surrounded by a goodly wood. It was still circling in ever smaller, solitary circles.
The detritus one encounters
While walking once familiar roads.
One has to wonder--
Casually tossed there?
Thrown with intent to harm?
Dropped unwitting?
One walks on wondering--
By a walker like you?
Surely not--
Solely.
There was a not quite chill in the air,
a damp that skin wouldn't absorb.
Something not here, but on final approach.
Summer's door now slammed quite shut,
a last dog day rolled over to Fall and all.
It would be easy, as if being easy wasn't the problem.
To say, "well nothing . . . nobody's perfect."
We'll remain awhile, grow, fester, worsen.
What remains to bury will be forgotten.
Easier than we thought.
Had we.
An ancient cast this unburied corpse
like a leaf blown apart by a storm.
The Fallen cannot be seen by day.
One could drag the bloodied sea, the devil's den,
And seize no scrap of his blackened soul.
Soulless, his face shall sully forever.
His just reward his mirror reflecting
Naught but his eternally open grave.
The hawk swooped and scattered
congregated birds at their feeder.
A lone squirrel screamed.
It was lifted, clawed and bloodied.
A silent cardinal watched from his treetop perch.
Sparrows fled. Defiant jays did not. Doves took cover.
Waves of crows dived and circled above.
Caw caw caw. Caw caw caw.
The hawk flung its prey on the shingled
roof, shreiked, tore, and shredded
The lone squirrel was not yet dead, but silent,
and the vultures spread their frightful wings.
Sparrows, doves, a hungry squirrel returned.
The cardinal chirped his happy song.
The ancients had to deal with it.
There's still no getting away from it.
Some say it was started by a fractious God.
Some say He didn't cotton to diversity.
Some say He set out to prove a point--
No Goddamn Tower could game Him.
He started them babbling.
Some call this a lot of malarkey.
Some don't.
