Part 2
I feel death is like my wife
behind me, looking my way
not caring what I am doing
wanting to suddenly separate me
from my task, my concerns.
She has an agenda of her own
and wants me to follow
to where, I don’t know.
Just somewhere I don’t want to go.
Still, I ask myself, “Why not now?”
What I will do today
and what I will do tomorrow,
and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
matters only to me, not the World.
What disturbance or cross-current
what divergence in the World’s course
will I ever cause?
What single stone
worn down with flow and time to nothing
will ever change the river?
Here is all of mankind’s history on this earth:
“This person was born
and lived for a time
and died.
This person’s name was Anyone.”
Put a name from anywhere, any when
in place of “Anyone”
and repeat one hundred billion times.
That is all the history known
of most of the human race
and even that is more
than the World can long remember.
The name replacing “Anyone”
soon becomes just a word:
“someone”.
There are exceptions, the rare few
Elizabeths and Lincolns,
Bernhardts and Mozarts.
Humanity is a mountain that yields
some ounces of gold
as all the rest of its masses of rock
become mere tailings.
There, tumbling down the slope in disregard will be:
My design
of a birthday card I made for my wife.
My memory
of December snows and the Flatirons.
My joy
when my children marched in the high school band.
My singing
while listening to Peter, Paul and Mary.
My firm belief
in the firm grip of the missing hand of God.
All I am, not worth the World’s keeping.
Tailings and overburden
lost down the slope.
It isn’t the dying that haunts me.
It’s the being forgotten.
It’s the shrug and elsewhere-focused dismissal:
“He was born at this time
did something for a time
meant something for a time
to some friends for a time
But he might as well never have been.”
My father, late in his life
no longer a sinner
confessed his old sins
not to his priest, but to a reporter.
He spoke of his larcenies and his attempts
exciting and unsuccessful
at prison escape.
He showed old scars from the bullets of guards.
He spoke of his gang and their burglaries.
“We was just a bunch of thieves,”
he told the reporter.
Now Whitey and Lloyd were dead
and Frisco and he grown old
and all of it passing away, out of mind.
“But I’ve been in the town’s best houses,”
he added, with a smile.
A hopeful smile.
Why did he tell a reporter that
which he, circumspectly, withheld from his priest
and ever from his sons?
The priest would leave it for God to ponder.
The sons would ponder and talk of it little.
The newsman would ponder, and put it in papers
for all to read, and mention to others
and maybe, just maybe, remember.
Faced, as we all are, with oblivion,
tell us of everlasting life in heaven
and we are yours.
To live on in glory gives us a chance
to counter oblivion.
And that glory is forever.
And the World, sometimes,
remembers its saints.
But call us unworthy of salvation
while pointing at the door to damnation
and we will embrace such cruelty and vice
as will win us our way to hell.
Hell is eternal too.
And Dante remembered its faces.
Cain is ever remembered.
Vile Caligula and de Sade.
Lizzy Borden and the Ripper.
The sins of a petty crook make a story
more worth the telling and retelling
than any good that one could report of him.
The aging thief knew all that
and put on once again
like a coat from the back of the closet
the role that would make him remembered.
I’m thinking of Brutus
his knife still bloody
departing the Forum
the crowd left to Mark Anthony.
He should have stayed.
Marc Anthony said of the dead
“…the good is oft interred with their bones”.
What a warning that would have been to Brutus,
that all the World’s good opinion of him
would come to that in the end—
buried with his bones—
after he fell on his sword
all hope of Elysium gone.
But Anthony first spoke a happier thought
one to ease Brutus’ mind as he fell:
“The evil that men do lives after them…”
June 5, 2013
The Chalk Artists
Denver’s Larimer Street
smiles in the June-bright sun
as sunburnt artists, crouched and kneeling,
repave the asphalt with colored gypsum.
These are the artists most devoted
to working en plein air
also called peinture sur le motif
or “painting on the ground”.
Literally.
Not just they, but their art
for all its existence
glories and glows in the light of the sun
and breathes in the open air
looking up as we look down
and invites us to drink a beer
and eat a sandwich while we watch.
The judgmental eyes of the old
and distracted eyes of the teens
and darting bright eyes of the children
are all drawn here today.
No other art in town has such crowds,
not even Van Gogh’s at the nearby museum.
We gather this weekend for one quick show
of ephemeral art
of color and form, sublime and comedic
more brief than the blossoms of flowers.
What other art so carefully finished on a Sunday
is washed from the streets for rush-to-work Monday?
See it while you can.
This is art most pure
done by fine art’s nameless orphans.
Playful, joyous bursts of creation
done with no motive except to render
expressions of feelings deeply buried
and get them out on the ground to breathe
then bless them and let them pass away
no hope of future notice or glory.
They live for a moment
to celebrate the moment.
Unlike Van Gogh
these artists don’t fear oblivion;
they embrace it as part of their art.
June 13, 2013
The Wind
It's a trillion molecules
Pulled and pushed around through space
Forces marching without rules
&nbs
p; Passing on without a trace
Perfect model of collective
Each part acting on its own
And yet under some directive
Though with purposes unknown
It will thrill the hawk's wing feathers
Lifting them in its embrace
As it sweeps across and weathers
Sandstone spire and granite face
It will stir the grass in meadow
And will ripple every lake
As it bends the antlered head low
And it makes the nestlings wake
It will spiral up the dead leaves
Where they've gathered on the ground
And will whistle in the shed's eaves
And will whirl the cock-vane round
It will start the water pumping
As it spins the windmill's blades
It will start the shutters thumping
As it rattles all the shades
It will swing the traffic lights
And pull the petals off the flowers
Meantime moving through the heights
To sway the city's tallest towers
Then it gambols and it flirts
While whistling madcap melodies
Pulling at the sleeves and skirts
Of any person it may please
Now it touches like a lover
As I smell its sweet perfume
Now I cry and run for cover
As it brings on death and ruin
But to curse it is inanity
Give it a name and still
It blows on without humanity
No purpose to fulfill
My mind can’t give it will
June 24, 2013
The Creator
In the beginning there was Darkness
And the fearful needed Light
And their Need became Hope
And their Hope became God
God who has a thousand faces
Breathes a trillion sparks of life
To root and feather and fur
To low born and to those borne high
He who gives form to cobweb and leaf
Who watches the sparrow and clothes the lily
Timeless, raises and levels the mountains
Who fills up then empties the seas
Above us He is, above our existence
We pray He will fill up our lives
But Who, besides He, made them empty?
Who is the God of our sorrows?
We sing praise to God for our comfort
And curse only Fate for our pain
But the two are a Janus-like God of two faces
Capriciously turning, beginning then ending
He blesses our lives with good fortune
While evil unfathomed He hides at our backs
Or is goodness given by God, while evil arises in us?
Then He who made us gave both to the world
He brings both the breeze and the sundering storm
Both life-giving rain and the life-stealing frost
The balm for the wound, but infection as well
Love’s gentle kiss and the death blow of hate
It’s said that our minds cannot fathom God
Inferior creatures as we all are
Can a pebble envision the mountain?
Can an acorn deduce the great oak?
So God, in revealing Himself to mankind
Was seen like a light from beyond a closed door
A vision more guessed at than seen
A vision of minds too small for such dreams
For my questions just mysteries sublime
Not answers that prove themselves to my mind
—Get behind me, you visions begging belief
While singing your dreams of heaven and hell!
Janus has really but one face: Indifference
June 24, 2013
Girls’
Her Life Is On This Table and Other Poems Page 5