They tiptoe around back,
velvet flanks broad,
flashes of cream tails,
not raised in alarm,
but wagging in whispers,
graceful necks dipping for moss
or lifting for leaves.
I nearly missed them,
these soft, silent, beauties.
Don’t you, too.
Keep an eye out for the
nearly silent beauty,
still nibbling away
at the underside of shade.
It’ll be what keeps us going,
keeps us lifted and searching,
ears twitching, feet pattering
toward goodness and mercy.
Find and follow the tender path.
There’s still softness to be found.
Something emerges through the darkness,
something bursting,
ripe and ready,
hatching open,
breaking free.
A natural,
inexorable need
to live and thrive
that cannot be contained.
The time for
escalation is now.
Don’t stop.
Breathe through the ugliness,
the pain, the wreckage,
the fear.
Stay strong.
Be of good courage and
Believe
in this consummation of love
rippling its way,
clawing its way
beneath the strawberry moon,
so fruitful.
Watch it
multiply.
Seems about right,
this new walking fad comes to light
during the apocalyptic second term
of a cult leader ready to burn
all semblance of normalcy,
of decency, of democracy—
his policy driven by bended knee
to the almighty dollar,
his minions donning loyalty collars,
lapping up his Kool-Aid
praising every tirade,
every military parade,
banishment of any aid,
both foreign and domestic
as they bow and genuflect.
You’ll know them by their
orange passion and flair,
their unabashed disdain -
insane rage - for the sage
value of any initiative,
or presumed derivative,
involving social diversity,
inclusion and equity,
and any sort of empathy.
They silence other voices,
take away choices,
arrest and deport,
rewrite history, report
falsities, deny science,
are completely defiant
of research,
disbelieving the experts
in favor of the perverts
of justice and truth
with their sawtooth
smiles and weaponized wiles.
They blaspheme and defame,
shame and blame the women
among us, denigrate the more-melanined
among us, belittle the neuro-divergent
among us, arrest the daring outspoken
among us, fire those who dare protest
among us, infiltrate the most sensitive
information about us.
Sheep carcasses are strewn
from Wall Street to the White House lawn,
as his followers applaud
the “gets worse before it gets better” lore.
Meanwhile the rich get richer and the poor
get whiplash trying to wrap their heads around
the crumbs tossed to the ground
from the wealthiest of these pockets,
holding onto the promise -- a return to greatness
to antiquatedness, to the adulterated-ness
of a lesser democracy, when liberty wasn’t free
for all of us.
Back to the times and crimes
and political climes
of bleeding women dying in back streets
and strange fruit hanging on southern trees.
But stories like these are lambasted,
then categorically blasted
from statue placards
and archival records,
from websites and libraries
naval academies,
elementary, middle and secondary schools
for everyone must follow his rules
or lose funding or worse
in this insanely alternate universe
we find ourselves in –
as impossible to comprehend
as me finding time to bend
60 minutes of walk time
at 6 in the morning or 6 at night
in my chaotic scene
of kids and work and chasing dreams.
As impossible to believe
as a nation that would take leave
of its senses to follow its leader/redeemer,
who loves wealth and self, is a schemer
a hyperbolic screamer,
a traitor, manipulator,
a tyrant,
aberrant
idiot, and absolute,
insufferable bore.
So Resist this anti-democracy,
anti-christ-like
blaspheming orange aberration,
I challenge you.
Resist him, I beg you.
Resist him – today.
Hearts as good
as grits and gravy,
passions that run
like over-easy eggs,
my first block class
of seniors
is a heaping helping
of Heaven Help
with a whole lotta
Gotta love ‘em
thrown in too.
Scattered, smothered,
and covered up –
that’s what they keep me –
along with on my toes
and on my No’s,
but oh-so-many
Yes-es, too.
We should all be
this way, their way,
full of pushing ourselves
and our limits,
pouring our magic
into this, our magic hour
in this wild and precious world.
We should all be grabbing our minutes
by the forkfuls, the spoonfuls, the plate and bowl and platterfuls,
with hearts as good as grits and gravy, passions spilling off the edges
like
over-easy
eggs.
Before the grit
and grave
overtake us all.
Earl Grey Morning
Even the name of it soothes.
the violet soft of it,
purled, curling stir of it,
rising through cold
like a promise.
From dark there is dawn --
first fog, then a song.
And even the sense of it soothes.
The cupped balmy breath of it,
pressed against palm of it,
steeping the dark
like an oath.
From warmth will come glow –
soft first and soft-slow.
Easy, the taste of it soothes.
The deep woodsy heft of it,
rich malted zest of it,
breaking the black
like a vow.
From dark will come light,
cool bergamot bright.
So, for now, just feel
for the sunrise,
the wayfinding blessings
are always unwinding and
binding themselves
like a pact.
Find fragrance in the dark.
Seize promise.
Feel the spark.
silver tinsel sliding from angel palms
to slicken evergreens and other greens,
white oaks, red maples, hydrangea-blue poms,
my vision rapt with heaven’s garland strings --
When ribbons of rain thin as fishing line fall
from hosts of rods in the sky, casting, catching
rainbows in their threaded, shimmering haul,
my pulse entangled and splashing --
When champagne streamers spill from glistening,
sun-scented fountains, filling the tender
flower flutes with honeyed nectar, fizzing
my soul – sublime-stoked, I seize the ember.
Burning, I haggle with poetry’s muse,
drunk and in debt to ephemeral views.
The aspens at the cross-roads talk together
with their dark wet gold out,
bartering with the wind
over the pond’s reflective mirror — bruised
azure acrylic, butterscotch glass, anyone’s flesh-tone, chrome.
Listen You.
Who disappeared into those shadows?
Joined at the spine with death and life?
Unravelling like smooth threads?
Listen to the rhythmic thumping inside water,
like black birds pushing against the glass
to know the reasons why and the answers to and the
words frothing out merciless and angry:
You can’t abandon your history
and it won’t abandon you.
Down over the rocks, an explosion, a discovery
of the torched & reckless hour
in this carved gold of shifting faces:
tree limbs, tiny veins of burnt leaves and a scorched coil of greasy hemp,
scattered traces of tar, restless arrays of feathers, and the lingering smell
of gasoline,
thick glass blood cells, a throat slit pouring silk
whirled in the ochre light —
the light of truth.
His head is a rose being burned alive.
How the soul feels like a dried sheaf,
like a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song
where it falls
and the small wings
unfold from the fabric of night,
bound up at length for harvesting,
darkness after it, dark riddled through it.
Manna does not fall.
Saviors do not save.
The earth drinks men and their loves
like wine.
Souls which are planted . . . continue growing . . . until generations
will tell tales of having met someone who knew.
The trees stiffen into place like burnt nerves,
and all that was hidden burning on the oil-stained earth —
it’s breaking apart, it’s turning over, it’s pushing up.
Listen You, if no one else,
Can you feel the ground rumble under your feet?
Back through the brindled understory
etched in wood…
You can’t abandon your history
and it won’t abandon you.
SOURCES: The Brindled Understory Cento is comprised entirely of lines borrowed from the following poets (in order of appearance): Edward Thomas; Roger Reeves; Lynda Hull; Jill McDonough; Tino Villanueva; Adrienne Rich; Sonia Sanchez; Anne Sexton; Brian-Komei-Dempster; Lucille Clifton; Margaret Walker; David Bottoms; Jake Adam York; Mary Oliver; Lynda Hull; Sonia Sanchez; Richard Wright; Robin Glow; Jane Kenyon; Nikki Giovanni; Roger Reeves; Dante Gabriel Rossetti; Mary Oliver; Jake Adam York; Dante Gabriel Rossetti; Daisy Fried; Lenelle Moise; Yehuda Amichai; Nikki Giovanni; Sylvia Plath; Philip Levine; Anne Waldman; Tino Villanueva; Anne Waldman; Donovan Kuhio Colleps; Laura Da’; Jake Adam York
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