In my next life
I want to come back
as a Great Blue Heron.
I will majestically
stand by a lake, capturing
fish, capturing the eye
of all who wander by,
pausing in awe and desire.
And I will have
the one thing I know
I now lack, that trait
that has escaped me
for far too many years,
patience, the ability
to stand and stare
until the moment
is right, then to act.
I am not in a hurry
for this reincarnation,
so perhaps I have more
patience than I realize.
Grace settles into the chair,
less an act of sitting than
of floating down onto the seat.
She has borrowed my grandmother’s
smile, kind, gentle, inviting.
She pulls a book from her bag,
its pages or most of them
dog eared, and I glimpse
some annotations in the margins.
We sit around her like children
awaiting presents on a holiday,
as acolytes seeking knowledge
from a font of poetic and prosaic
wisdom, or so we think.
She reads in a voice that is
at once soft and loud enough
to reach the back of the room,
opening the book to a random
page and diving in, then after
what seems like a minute and
an hour, she stops and asks
for questions. We sit dumbstruck
for a moment then fire at her
like machine gunners on the range.
She answers each, claims she is
a simple grandmother who writes
but we know better, know we
are in the presence of a true master.
The moon was kind enough
to linger this morning,
knowing that I wanted
a photograph, and that
I needed sufficient ambient
light to allow me
to fully capture her visage.
Sometimes she rises early
and shows her face
before the sun retreats.
I suppose it may just
be vanity on the moon’s part,
showing off for her brighter
sibling, certain I will never
pause to photograph Sol.
Tomorrow it will be cloudy
most likely, and on that day
the sun will get the last laugh.
There is a strange beauty
in the slow loss of sight,
for there is a progressive
transition, a discovery
of much that went unheard,
unfelt, missing in the glare
of the need to see, to categorize
and organize, memories
neatly arranged in an array
of curated visual files.
But without sight what once
was cast aside as noise is
an intricate tapestry of sound
and undistracted, you begin
to see the individual threads
to see deeply into the art
and craft of the unknown weaver.
Without sight, you so often
store images in two dimensions
but now requiring touch,
everything is three dimensional
of necessity and the world is
infinitely more complex
and yes beautiful than you recalled.
And the darkness of night, which
marked a border that dared not
be fully crossed grows meaningless
and hours once lost may again
now demand to be lived.
First published in Bard and Prose, June 2022
https://bardandprose.com/category/poetry/
The leaves will soon begin
their descent from the small tree,
already brown, their beauty
departing before they do so.
They are bilobular, an odd word,
but one that belongs in a poem,
even this one it seems, and it is
their shape that you first notice.
The tree will all to soon be naked,
branches sticking into the air
as if searching for a breath
that refuses to arrive.
But we know that soon after
the small buds will open
and orchid-like flowers will appear
to our all too temporary joy.
We dance between wanting
to know what is out there,
and fearing that we are not
any longer unique, just one
more in an endless stream.
And then we have to wonder
if the others, such as they are,
wonder what is out there,
and fear that they are not
any longer unique, just one
more in an endless stream.
Has it always been this way,
have some already come
and gone in the flash
of a dying star, or grown
barren from neglect and greed?
Some want to know what
is out there, as out there
could become the only place
separating us from extinction.
You are a searcher, you
look for answers, you look
for the right path
that will lead you
to enlightenment.
You see everything
as black or white, good
or bad, right or wrong.
You are a master
at division.
Stop searching, stop
seeking answers, stop
dividing, then sit
with Nansen’s cat.
That will be enough.
A reflection on case 8 of the Book of Equanimity
It is hard,
painfully hard
to realize
your guide
doesn’t know
where you
need to go.
And the one
who could guide
you isn’t
there, doesn’t
know you
at all, had
you when
she could
only place you
for adoption.
So you wander
guideless,
self-guided,
deeper into
the unknown.
They circle slowly
each in its own tier
of a near cloudless sky,
their wings still
as if frozen, riding
the breeze, dipping
and rising, going nowhere,
needing nowhere,
riding, riding, looking
down at the wetland,
and circling, until
with a shift in the breeze
the vulture vortex
shifts east, and you
watch them shrink,
thankful that they
are simply out
for a flight, and not
finding a meal
in the reeds
and trees
where all
the other
birds live.
I’ve made a practice
which feels more like a demand,
that each day I take a few
moments or more and stop
whatever else I was, or
should have been, doing
to write a poem.
There are days, perhaps this
one where it seems more
a short bit of prose to which
I have added line breaks
despite the protest
of the words, condemning them
to bear the mockery, and
others when I take a poem,
ignore its inherent rhythm
and pass it off as prose,
that insult remembered,
the words plotting revenge
but lying low, waiting
for the perfect moment
to destroy a poem I know
is worthy of publication.
an old writer and his words 