For Cristie

My first
first cousin once removed,
should first be removed (at once!)
from my first first cousin proper.

In the meantime,
Cristie dreams longingly
of champagne corks
with happy childhoods.

They lead full, rich lives
and, go on, someday,
to have families of their own.

Derivations

Birds are derived from the color blue.
The expansion of it, the height of the sky,
made it inevitable that life should soar there.
At the final dot of the Q.E.D., they appeared.

Time followed naturally from there.
The flapping of wings, as well as the baking of
pies (a process recently deduced
from the combined existence of cinnamon and apples),
logically implied a distinction between nows.

Our eyes catch motion in the air, and our hearts are
drawn upwards. Our aspirations inhabit a
timeful space in spaceless time.

Hope is born here, and though we may not
know our origin, it carries us on to our
destination. Which answers the same question.

C Major

Pianos have a landscape all their own,
Dark hills and white valleys that shape and guide
The music, chords, and melodies. Each key
A nearby foreign country, distinguished
By topography. Only C is flat,
Without a sharp or flat. It gives a wrong
Impression: nothing, blank, and empty. Not
A single mark to grace the written score,
A bare white cloud without a drop of rain.
Vanilla ice cream has the same effect,
Though similarly undeserved. But what
Do you see? What's the flavor of the key
Of C? A page of possibilities,
But more than that, the white of light, and not
Of absence. Light, the source of all creation,
Forming the receptacle and also
Filling it, a fullness that surpasses
Any mere division into finite
Qualities. What you find there is not
What it brings to you, which is everything,
But rather what you bring to it, and see
Reflected back to you: a human soul.
Musician? Banker? Sinner? Saint? You know
It's all in there. So if you don't like what
You see, just keep looking until you do.

Packing

Packing — probably as unpopular a task
As anything that ails you. It’s almost a nightmare
For the ornery, the unorganized, or others of their ilk.
It’s the current canary in the coal mine of my rapidly
Decreasing and dwindling endowment of time this evening.
What will I — or won’t I — need?
How many hands do I even have to carry it all?
Interestingly, the instruments are all itching to join me.
The mandolin is a maybe, mostly for the fact that it’s
Smaller than its sisters, except for one.
Yes, the ukulele is yapping excitedly,
Like a lapdog looking for walkies.

The Poet and His Poem

Poetry’s a silly thing,
It makes a poet sigh.
Sometimes he can make it sing,
And sometimes he runs dry.

But still he tries, and yet again,
Through blood and sweat and tears,
And if it won’t come out his pen,
He’ll squeeze it from his ears.

So there it lies now, in his book,
A little worse for wear.
A grim and pouting kind of look,
Comes back to meet his stare.

Soon enough they’ll come to terms,
As providence decides.
The rhymes rebel. The meter squirms,
But presently subsides.

And someday, in a little while,
Creator and created
Will look back with a little smile
On the beauty they dictated.

Magnetism

There’s something about a smile
Any smile
That draws you in.

A child’s smile, especially,
Teetering towards you
On a tiny bike with training wheels,
His helmet nearly as big as his head.

It brightens your day
Just to see him beaming up at you,
Proud of his slow, majestic wobbling,
Eyes half-closed in bliss.
You can’t help but smile back.

There’s something about a smile
Your smile
That calls to his.

Kindred souls
Sharing a wordless joy.

The resulting collision takes you both completely by surprise.


[based on a true story]

Listening to the Rain

Wind through water,
waves through sky,
a rushing streaming flowing
surrounds each one,
microscopic tsunamis
and tiny howling hurricanes
shaped by the sheer speed
of miniature seas streaking through space.

A drop connects - tap! - with a broad leaf
slipping off the side to - slap! - past a smaller one
joining a secondary chorus of dispersed plinks and plops
reaching the earth,

Where trickles crickle and seepings creep,
joining forces to track cracks in the ground.
Separating again sub-surface,
each sop soaks a clod,
to be sipped silently by a patient root,
where only an earthworm turns his head to notice.

Elsewhere, thousands of tiny, bare feet
slap the pavement as they run,
an invisible child bangs a metal pot,
sitting in the bend of the gutter pipe,
drowning out the rest.