These December poems

These five poems come, I suppose, in response to my last poem 'Tuesday' which ends with the simple question: Where are you?  This question comes from and in reference to Genesis 3:8-21 where the Bible tells us that the Lord God was walking in the garden in the cool of that day while Adam & Eve were hiding in the trees.  That singular question (3:9) zeros in on the heart of this new condition that they find themselves in, the condition I find myself in every single day: naked, in need of clothes. These lines are then some offerings that attempt to answer the question posed, a poetry from the 'naked' perspective.

As I was thinking further on why it is that I write at all, especially from such a vulnerable place, it occurred to me that in crafting verse I was indeed not unlike the wood carver, looking at the raw form and chipping away until beauty was born.  It seems artists of all ilks are compelled by this need for beauty and the beautiful. And while this parallel to the carver may be true in one sense, I think in another way that the writing of poetry, at its core, requires a uniquely complicated culmination of varying roles.  It is as if first the poet is a timber cruiser, searching an endless forest for just the right tree. Always vigilant, mind fixed with his crude ax in hand, out some fifty miles into the wilds he marches on.  He goes because, as we all know, not just any tree will suffice his purposes.  It must be quality selection of timber that stands true in a part of the forest he thinks capable of producing a crop of the right shape and design.  A soft and pliable quantity that has grown up under the correct conditions.  In reality, this journey, this seeking is the most essential piece of his work.  The poet needs that path just as much as he needs the raw material, almost more than he needs his subject. But now there she stands, the one that is bold enough to contain his potential work of art. It is then that his role evolves, as he becomes now the lumberjack fierce and strong.

I have hacked and packed out many a desirable 'tree' in my short time as a writer.  The work is both exhausting and exhilarating simultaneously.   But as any decent carver can tell you, finding good wood and bringing it home do not make art.  The details must then be etched carefully with a tried and steady hand. Each phrase's edge sanded into the right kind of shape so as to improve the new born form. Truth be told, I think I may never get there.  That impossible perfected place I can only envision opaquely in my mind's eye. That elusive space where the journey, the cutting, the packing out and all of the finish work somehow fall into a harmonious syncopation, like a song being sung.

And so it was, last Tuesday morning, that I awoke under a new fallen snow almost startled to realize the position of my heart.  So far to the north and bitter cold.  My inner thoughts sounded an ethereal alarm of sorts. My vulnerability so real to me there, beneath so thin a veil.
Where are you?  those thoughts inquired.
"I am journeying naked through the trees," I replied.
"Clothe me... in your words."

A.S.

me writer

i am a writer,
silent and free.
with ideas that crumble
and smear
like cakes
at a party.
The children dance there
with their mothers,
while i am alone
with the writer.

But fret not soul
my mind is not there now
or dancing.
Rather I scrawl
to stay propped
as one of those dancers
whose appendages
have failed him.
the legless ballerina,
a writer
silently free.

so how is it then soul,
that i am now found here?
motionless
and freely silent:
a dancer,
a writer,
a me.

urn

I try one last plea
for you most beloved,
on a bed of goodbyes
in a sea of tongues,

as a savory offering to the gods
and their deaf ears.

Where then I find this final verse
in an earthen vessel tall,
filled with elemental ash
in a desert of the nightfall,

as a bright offering to barren spaces
when eyes are only blind,
what beauty shall be found there,
will beauty there be mine?

So I invoke the never ended
of thee now gone away,
on fields of  ever after
in shroud of fired clay,

as proper name forged afresh
all sound and sight  reborn,
urn thou standing now on mantle's head,
I shall spare no more and mourn.

swollen son

minding my affairs
in an old language
like a young friend
pregnant
beneath a swollen sun

tending my reflections
with a desperate sense
like a worn phrase
lodged
between two large stones

apprehending this resolve
in a precious gem
like an ice storm
freezing
those who stayed behind

day lost night (a sparrow's song)

i will warm to old man winter
like everything i asked you to be
piling endless cords of wood
in straight and perfect rows
with a deep and dark
furrow upon my brow.

later,
i will eat dried and sugared fruits
by a windowpane
in the night watches
with an irreverent stillness
that lingers by my aging side
like the vanity of our youth
as the fervor of my childhood.

still,
i will abide a lost and golden melody
by a fire mine own hands hath made
as it delivers a warmth that i can barely feel
caught up with the spell, a sparrow's song
of parley and murder and wine
lyrics that burn intensely
that this pale orange glow belies

so,
i will cry out with the sunrise
to capture that heart of the dark
render a song of the sparrow
live the rest of my life as the sum of this part
that was here cast for me
beneath the veil of fire and rhythm
an opus of lovers,
a right of the wrongs we have done

because
we too will die with the father of winters
as all men are asked to do
in a pine box lined with scented satin
and the shadows of yesterday's faces
slowly and gently there to erase
these furrows from my brow.

penny candy

make mention
fool
of the new apostasies
the cold hard
cash,
like a beggar
and his crusted bread
like a bond trader
and his trophy wife.

make words
fool
of our pending democracies
with cold hard
calculation,
like Columbus
departing in his Santa Maria
like Custer
and the grass that now grows in his stead.

make more
fool
of the old and glorious
those time attested
truths,
like red dragon scales
and a breathless drear
like Justice
in her gown of perfect measure.

but
dare not question
fool
our weighted expectation
a new currency of
toleration,
like penny candy
on a tooth that's sweet
like a tumor
on its course of silent sabotage.