The Romantic
On bleary mornings, Eos on my way to work, twenty years, my matins, I passed a coppice, a sloughing of limbs, tall, splendid oaks, condensed diorama forest emerging from haze. I’d envision a doleful wanderer, an abbey ruin, Casper David Friedrich’s bleak, romantic painting. The modern came crashing, suddenly a rude huffing, greasy bulldozer, a hole in the ground, a house, concrete, lumber, vinyl, bramble of wire and pipe, razing my sublime, though the trees seemed glad for the company — too much gloom. Who knows? Kids may play in bits of shade, long summer...
Read MoreMushroom
When I went to prune The limbs, groom the hairy, Disheveled springs, I discovered, High in a crook of the apple tree, A slight, soft armpit hollow, Or the tender back of a knee, A solitary mushroom growing there. What an obscene little phallus, White, erect, exquisite, its round Head a button for a king’s mantle, The stem curved precisely As a girl’s peduncular leg, The underside delicately gilled, A sea creature undulating Along the bottom of the Pacific. How did the spore find This remote place, improbable Shangri-La perched on the Himalayas, Miniature utopia for...
Read MoreI Could Be Charlemagne
I could be Charlemagne. If I examine the plat, Lines and measures survey So many feet from here to there, Staked with orange, florescent paint, My realm of house, yard, wood, This soil, the worms, wasps, rabbits, These wildflowers, my vassals, Courting deferentially each summer, These trees, all bow to me. Absurd! Actually, the wind Possess these boughs — the wind, Pillaging the scene of the Pacific, Conquering the Rockies and Sierras, Marching cyclones across Nebraska. During calm days of respite, The wind away invading Appalachia, I could be Charlemagne, My reverie of sovereignty...
Read MoreThe Blurring of Edges
Much younger, first acquainted With certainty, it tasted as crisp And tart as a green apple, But its edges became precise, Interlocking gears, a vast machine. I governed impeccable itineraries, I tallied every petty minutia, Mortgages, insurance, taxes, Attempting to grasp water, Exceedingly specific molecules. Now, I have this urge To blur all edges, Debussy rather than Mozart, Monet rather than Ingres, The haze, the ubiquitous haze: A simmering August morning, Heat steaming off the dew, When the rasping din Of cicadas muddles the head In mesmerizing rhythm; When the fog is dense, Oceans...
Read MoreOld Clyde and Mrs. Hill
When I was a young man, Dad lost everything to the bank: Jet Cleaners, a marriage, our home on Glenn Road, our predictable, idyllic, suburban routine. When we moved to town, my little sister and I were decrepit, worn out after the catastrophe. Now everyone was too close together. We staggered up the broken, treacherously icy stairs, careening like Laurel and Hardy in winter to the apartment, the sagging, exhausted house on West Gambier Street. Jo’s Chateau of Beauty was in the back, Hyle’s Typewriter Repair in the front, Kenyon and civilization five miles east, the flat, monotonous...
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