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Rod &
Kubby. Photo by Bob Gentry, ©2002 by Stanyan Entertainment Group.
A Thought for Today
Stick with me baby and in a week it’ll be
Christmas.
FROM the¨BOOKS
Today’s poems come from Suspension Bridge and The 1976 Animal Concern
Datebook.
It is the Time of Year
The mountains come and go at liberty
inside, outside constant fog
that tugs each wave in to the shore
then slowly pushes it away.
Sea and fog in solid rhythm
with no room for lap or overlap.
When stray wave nibbles at a rock
the fog moves in to chase it
back into unbroken line.
It is the time of year
when waves rebuild
the beaches they destroyed
some seasons back,
when gulls move inland
for midweek trips -
thrift vacations near spring water.
The calligraphy of swallows
captions every sunset.
Bells ring somewhere, stealing sunlight,
hoarding sky.
I climb a higher cliff
to watch the silhouettes of swimmers,
going to the water,
coming from the water.
Now moonlight in flat waterfall
a path that widens, yellow, gold.
And certain birds at certain times
come winging through a hole of mist
and overhead toward a hill
that wasn’t there an hour ago
and will be gone an hour from now.
Some reveries are interrupted
by other serenades.
A thought of spring
will somehow bring a summer back.
A certain face dissolves to favorite cat
in perfect sleep,
and there are solitudes unbroken
as there are reveries as yet untapped.
If we could tag each something else
it wouldn’t be a something else.
Mystery is all there is to mystery
unless you count the coming on of it.
I am mapping out the scene before me,
with great care
storing it in overcrowded back head cell.
If I am ever dead to dreaming
I can one day call upon
an early summer afternoon dissolving
into a perfect summer night.
A time when swimmers,
sunlight still alight on each one’s chest,
stayed unafraid to meet the dark,
seeking out that never-never place between
the valley and the mountain.
The Voice of Independent Means
Stars,
if I could read you then I would.
Life goes on forever,
youth lasts an hour, maybe less.
As the gangplank comes in nearer
I speed away behind an engine
warming up, left running.
Could I erase the deficit
and start again
I would not.
The beast too listens in the dark
for words that will not come,
is frightened by the stars
and goes off running
like the rest of us.
All out there, stars and signposts
voices too in twos and threes,
I know you are not enemies,
but friends
not yet so labeled
and collected.
Twilight passes like the tide
all hushed and strange.
We only see time’s changes
when it is late and growing later.
Gabriel does not rejoice
at each new crowd
he only waits.
Oh lover, singing
out beyond the wood
do not bruise me with false cries.
Lullabies, lullabies,
sing me only lullabies.
Yours is the only song
that soars above the rest
and yours the only voice
of independent means.
Stars I’d reach and pick you
if I could
and ancient, newer loves
I’d do the same.
We’ll all go home when winter comes
for now the seasons will not change
they are a shawl of ribbons, paper, rags
a willow dragging branches in the water.
Those voices and that voice
still singing in the not so wilderness,
still offering a song so sweet
that all the stars now take it up
and pass it down and on to us.
-from Suspension Bridge, 1984
I’ll be back tomorrow with Pass it Along. Sleep warm.
RM 12/18/2002 5:43 PM PST
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