Signs
One fragrant afternoon,
These living words
Were posted on your door:
I’m on the back porch.
That day,
These words on my office door
Also breathed:
Will return by one.
I didn’t come back till four.
Such signs lose their sense
When kept up too long.
They point to nothing
But forgetfulness.
Past their date, they’re absurd,
Like the “Bridge Freezes Before Road” sign
I pass in July
Or the WELCOME mat at your door.
Messages sweet
Because fragile
Are wildflowers,
Fleeting, ephemeral, blown for a day.
Don’t press them to last,
For they wither, dwindle, and dry,
Inverted into an artifact,
An epitaph.
Today, I clean my shoes on your mat,
But the message is dead.
“Welcome” now means “don’t soil my carpet,”
Or, “your dirty boots unwelcome.”
When I look at you now,
Where I once saw Apollo,
Now I see Vulcan with hair tonic.
I keep my muddy thoughts hidden,
Keeping the talk to “I’m well”
And “how have you been?”–
The bland leading the bland–
So that no trace will be left of my visit,
No mark on your rug.
Tomorrow only your memory will find me,
Your memory,
That unreliable guide,
That traitor.
Perhaps you were wrong.
Perhaps I never came.
Perhaps I never loved you after all.
**
Routine
Squat waddle down to the pond,
Myrtle and Alfie and Ronald and I,
webs splat mud as we muddle
through reeds in a squat
waddle, paddle, and trundle
down to the pond,
squint-eyed Myrtle,
feathery Alfie,
fatty-grub Ronald,
and I.
All is routine for us
big silly birds,
flapping and snapping
at children,
awkward and gawking,
ungainly, gabbling
and muttering, all
the way down
to the pond,
every parade the same.
But then
it is not the same:
wide wings open, suddenly
gape, and down and up they
fall, beating, wrinkling the pond,
breaking the silence of bog and bank.
Fleeing, silvery Alfie lifts
overhead in a glitter of waterdrops;
racing after him, Myrtle glides
aloft into the element:
home is neither earth
or water; air is our alchemy.
Working his wings, Ronald fuses legs
into belly, leaving the leaden
land behind; fast I follow.
Perhaps we may return,
next spring, return to the mire,
plodding ashore
in the routine way,
back from our sojourn in heaven.
**
After Georgia O’Keefe
1.
Under a slender sky, lowering,
a lip of land, of rounded
stone abuts
another.
Continental conversation.
Lit on top, its light
shears cleanly
off the sheer black rock face.
A ribbon of light
defines a cleft
between the geologic folds,
mammoth, patient.
They shouldn’t be meeting
like this. Did they drift together,
or were they fractured from oneness
eons ago?
Deeper goes the split,
lit all the way down
in a narrow stream of light
like a firefall,
rivulet of lava.
One leans over the other’s shoulder
to whisper.
2.
Elephants back to back.
Old men’s knees.
Old lava flow
faded to ash.
Canyons on the moon.
Children huddled under
a tarp.
Pubis: folds of flesh
taper down to mammoth
legs, recumbent.
Water flows,
scouring,
then goes.
Light fades, taking
color up into its skirts,
then slips away.
Clouds move over the sun,
dappling afternoon.
Elephant seals
back to back,
snorting, blubberous,
snuggled down on a beach:
grey charcoal tan
in folds
undulating in sleep.
What fire
left such ashen
memories behind?
Or have hills
been pared down
to basalt
at last,
bare bedrock
exposed to air,
hidden mantle
vaulted into crust,
the earth turned
inside out?
3.
Broad blue sky
faintly troubled with haze.
A range of hills:
red-pink ridge
faintly troubled with snow.
A gila monster’s
gaudy stripes, carnelian,
mauve, confident
colors, slowly
blur. Snow melt
leaches surface,
softens the land
folded in humps.
An old man
lies asleep
on his stomach
under an afghan.
Old bony rump peaks;
wrinkled flap of a face
is still. Sharp
shoulder tilts
up, head lost in
a snowy pillow,
his dreams cooling
into stone.
**
Clarification
This is not about espresso machines
howling in torment,
or a thousand cars in gridlock,
or a family whose members choose
to live hundreds of miles apart.
This is about two polar bears,
mated for life, borne apart by
the lightning crack of calving ice,
floes split by sapphire sea,
by ten-thousand year old glaciers
melting in twenty years’ time.
This is not about whether
you believe it’s happening,
or whether you think coal
can be cleaned,
or whether you vote red or blue.
This is about the woolly mammoth
who died when the world
heated up, who did not shed
his winter coat fast enough.
Retreating glaciers show
old bones; white yields to ivory.
