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Rod in “The Best is Yet to Come” 11/6/04
Photo by Shira Greenburg ©2004 by Broadway.com. Used by Permission
A Thought for Today
If love were as eternal as spring we
would all be better off.
TWO POEMS FROM FOLIO
ONE: SPRING from SEASONS
Seasons / One
Some silent spring
when only the piper
down the field
is heard
we’ll take the season
at its word.
I’ll bring you willows
from the wood’s edge
we’ll sit quietly
waiting for the deer
to come into the clearing.
Clattering above
will turn our faces
as wild geese pass
in close formation overhead
a dozen skybound squadrons
returning from the north
coming home
beginning again
starting over.
The first camp fires
of April
will burn long into night.
Dreams half stated
will take shape
and take on substance.
No more half closed eyes
only open smiles,
as ‘round the world
we’ve found so far
the sky wakes up.
That will be the signal
for picnic baskets to be
spread out
on the virgin grass.
Along the rivers
and the lakes
the wildest trees
and thickest weeds
will all become
chance changing rooms
for swimmers
and the float flotilla.
Thinking will impose itself
on each of us
like the dead smoke
welling in the wood
that starts
each silent,
black
and cleansing spring.
Think we will
as sprouts push through
the earth becoming buds
and hibernation ends
for what the world terms
lower animals.
Field mice
and the grey ground gopher
will tunnel and go traveling.
The squirrel will rummage
through his savings
and collect
his long due interest
on every acorn squirreled.
Every mother fowl
will guard her eggs
until the crackling.
Spring spirals
through the countryside.
No railroad now
connecting town to town
so grass grows fresh
between the ties
and wild roses wind around
the rust that nearly winds around
the long untraveled ties supporting tracks.
I have met men
who could not write
their names
but they told boxcar stories
that would have sent Saroyan
chasing after pad and pencil.
Sowers of wheat have shrugged
and said to me
It’s just a job that I do well,
it’s just a job, It benefits the country
And what helps the country
helps me.
No politician ever put it better.
April will not apologize
for children
seeking out mud puddles
to run through in their
brand new Easter shoes.
Before the month of June
last year
a black man in Chicago asked
What’s it like to be colored white?
I sure wouldn’t want to be
colored white, he said.
His question went unanswered.
I guess I never thought that I was white
If the world is black and white
grey still suits me best.
But it’s good to be alive
it’s good to be alive and here.
Right now.
I could have told him that.
Though being colored any color
and thought of as just that -
a black-colored gentleman
or a white-colored lady
or a man of a particular color
on the outside
seems to filter out
the proud, uneasy,
troubled or untroubled man
on the inside.
The boatman
or the man who works on boats
has time to squander on the spring.
Most often you can find him
planting and setting in a row
the seeds of his own summer.
-excerpted from “Seasons” in Folio #22 Spring 1979. Revised 3/19/2005
AND FINALLY
I shouldn’t have tempted the fates by bragging about sunny spring days
yesterday . . . because it’s raining again and we are told it will
extend through the weekend. The official arrival of spring happens on
Sunday or as our friends under the southern sun call it, autumn.
Sleep warm and to Christians everywhere a blessed Palm Sunday.
RM 3/19/2005 PST
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