The Last Line

To a Friend, on Her Leaving for India

These are strange times, I said.  But when aren’t they?

The distant murmurings I hear now will be tomorrow’s shout

And I hope for something better when it’s already here.

Excellent, a most excellent day, this one.  I could spend

The afternoon wishing for lost hopes, or go take the fruit

Now.  This even the crow poking about the grass knows.

When I count the minutes out, one by one, I often lose

Track, broken train of thought.  But when I think about time,

I lose track of the desire to count the minutes, one by one.

The cypress tree will await your return, and all returns

Hereafter.  I suppose that means it awaits no returns at all,

And I should say to you, with a certain joy, “Don’t return.“

Black-Eyed Susan

Each articulated line on the hairy stalks scrapes 

The sky--from this angle, anyway.  Each time grass

Pokes and prickles my back, the romance is over.  

The sun-yellow petals imitate and float

In spite of my itching.  They insist--Actually,

They’re a wonder, and I can act like I’m cynical

Until Romanticism dies but they still photosynthesize

In the most amazing ways, everywhere I am,

Everywhere I have been, common as the day,

Yet much taller than my eyes.  If I could bloom 

With them, would I?  Rise in the soil and defy augury

Like Hamlet and the end of the world and all things?

I understand we can’t speak of this cruelty anymore.

I understand this is a poem about an ordinary flower.

But I would.  Ignore this bothersome prickling,

Rise up, always.  Shine.  Germinate meaning.

And the mind would go on seeing nothing there.

The Bust of Laurence Sterne

The conversation that caused that glance

I'd love to hear.  When the lilacs are past

Their prime and the leaves are just 

Starting to die, that's when it comes:

The joke that hurts, the truth that lies,

The verdancy of September.

Such atrocities--are they so far

From atrocious?  How long before memory

Becomes history and will make someone

Laugh?  But here's real skill:  To see

The mystery and still manage a smile.

Falling with Grace

We find our essence in the accident: to embrace

Gravity, or throw out our hands; time slows, or speeds

Away; to feel regret or fear in the instant.  No use

The silent spectator of the self--Oh no! it says, 

Stopping nothing.  The glass, the dust from the bricks,

The dying bird, (not the day) the night with its moon

Constantly striving towards the inevitable.  The boy

On the bike topples, and in that brief silence

Wails or holds, creates the course of his life.  

What now?  What to do with all this sudden awareness? 

Thing Remembered

As healing as hope can be, cast in profile

By the light--the lotus opens in the scum

And casts its color up, up to us, a pure

Sense of meaning, lessening only in time,

Bringing such things as physics and beauty

Into being, a kind of unity.  That color’s

Called “padparadscha,” after itself, sapphire-

Colored, a mystery in my eyes, seeming

To float above the flower like fine mist:

Only now, only here, and never again.