One day Michelle, and her English bulldog
Ginger, came to the courts to learn the game.
Blonde, tall—nuanced slender curves stoked fierce flames
Among the benched old men who watched her jog.
Though shy at first, she loosened up, perceived
Our admiration harbored no vile threats,
And greeted us with smiles, despite regrets
That festered, generating toxic grief.
Her beauty notwithstanding, she, divorced,
Lost custody of her three school-aged kids,
Lost self-esteem, presence, stunned by the din,
The anguish, that grim experience forced
On her. She hugged Ginger, breathed fumes that rid
Her of malignant pain beneath the skin.
(2/16/14}
What strange genetic drive, one wonders, grew
Contests, games, the triple axels, snow board
Contortion, the need for speed, grace imbued
In athletes’ fierce greed to win, be adored?
We know we need to eat and drink, survive
Our weather’s rigors, somehow reproduce.
We’ve learned (though not too well) to get along,
Form social orders, minimize abuse.
But what the devil spawned competition?
The oldest athletes raced, threw javelins,
Wrestled, shot arrows—sport reeked of mission—
Useful stuff—not ice dance, nothing feminine.
Ancient games? Strength, ability to kill.
Designed, no doubt, to hone sharp wartime skills.
(2/13/14)
Today’s my birthday.
My stepson called,
My eldest called,
And my youngest
(Not so young at fifty-one)
Is on his way
To take us out to dinner
At a nice restaurant.
The weather, unimpressed,
Has been grim gray,
Chilled and rainy
From sunrise on—
Which, of course,
Imposes the usual debit
On these old and weary bones.
Eighty-four is no joke.
Those years a tough,
Silent and unresponsive audience,
While I try,
I really do,
To rejoice
And have some fun,
Exhibit a bit of gratitude
Despite the wind,
And rain,
And the diseased world
All of us
Inhabit.
(2/6/14)
Famously, Bill Howells and Henry James
Wrote to each other about the travails
Novelists endure while pursuing fame
And fortune. Their complaint? Incessant wails
About how hard it was to end their tales—
Rich brews rendered in impeccable prose
Detailing life’s complexity—derailed
By that swift unsatisfactory close.
How can writers simply end their stories?
How can their woven textures simply stop?
Real life doesn’t lend itself to glories,
Thus novels tend to finish with a plop.
I prefer the sonnet’s formal rigor
Craft that final couplet—pull the trigger.
(2/5/14)
Why and who, I wonder, wrote that first poem?
It was hard enough to move from gesture
To grunts, howls, inventing the lyric thrums
Of myriad language—words, rich and pure!
Without words, we pointed at stones, waved hands.
Movement filled with meaning—“bring that thing here!”
Then words emerge, soon complex talk expands,
But unborn writing won’t be birthed for years.
Thus memory contrived fine mnemonic
Tools that rendered contracts, songs, sales and tales
In metered rhyming verse, formal sonics—
Dactylics, iambs, anapests—firm wails—
That lodged in memory ‘till we transcribed
Those strange sounds to writing, reading—inscribed
On parchment, hieroglyphed, chiseled on stones—
Tangible contracts and glorious poems.
(1/26/14)
How did music start? Was it the whistle
Of a flying lizard that struck an ear,
Startling that neanderthal—a missle
That evolved? Hell, they could whistle, make queer
Sounds, listen to heartbeats, invent rhythm,
Even fashion instruments from bird bones.
Those ancient flutes—aural crystal prisms—
Mimic calls of animals, insect tones.
We really can’t explain how reeds and horns
(Those bowed, plucked strings) and opera emerged—
But once invented, music grew, took forms
Enraptured all of us in its rich surge.
It grew and grew, baroque and classical,
Romantic, modern, tonal miracles,
Along with blues, and jazz, and crooned bourgeois,
And rock and roll, and rap, reggae and ska.
(1/22/14)
