Halloween

(a cascade poem)

After dark on Halloween
She stiffly gave to all the kids
A tract about the fires of Hell
Thinking grape juice would make them Baptists.

Perhaps I’m just naïve
But it would not occur to me
To hand out day-glo propaganda
After dark on Halloween.

So when she opened up her door
And smiled at us invitingly
I just assumed that it was candy that
She stiffly gave to all the kids.

But no – more absurd than any
Costume made of scarves and silly hats
She took the chance to threaten them with
A tract about the fires of Hell.

At evening’s end, what caught my heart
Was how the children laughed about this saint:
Her Christianity was just a joke –
Thinking grape juice would make them Baptists!

Painting Beethoven

Beethoven, by Ferdinand Schimon, 1819

Bonn, Beethovenhaus

Ludwig sits,
Impatient at my
Self-conscious
Scribbling,
Trying to catch genius
In a few swift strokes.

The deafness
I had expected.
But the stare
And the stark
Intensity of purpose –
These have unnerved me.

In his head

He is already

Pounding out
The first chords
Of his B-flat sonata
The Hammerklavier.

No matter
That other mortals
Cannot hear
What he does,
For we could not comprehend
Such insanity

He fidgets,
His lithe mind slipping
To thoughts of
His nephew
So recently ripped away –
The sting of that loss.

And I know
Our session is done
With his face
Rough sketched
And no sense yet of his eyes.
They must come later.

I leave him

His back turned to me

Counting out

Exactly

Sixty coffee beans, as if

He never saw me.

Howler

The scariest dog
I ever met belonged to
Old Mr. Kittman.
Both man and dog seemed to have
Lost a few of their marbles

After the sudden
Death of house-proud Mrs. K.
So when I appeared
At the door to pay a call
I could not say I was shocked

To find the chaos
In that musty living room.
I sank, uneasy,
Into the depths of a couch,
My knees akimbo, at which

The aforementioned
Dog stepped forward with a growl
And placed his muzzle
In the absolutely last
Place I would have wanted it.

Incredibly, my
Host seemed not to care about
My future family
And so we spent the next hour
In muted conversation,

His voice low with grief
And mine restrained so as not
To excite his pet.
Having made its point, the hound
Finally stood up and stretched,

At which I bolted
Ashen-faced for the front door.
But out on the street
I swear I heard them howling
As they watched me through the blinds.

What I love about North Side Gym

In 1954, our small town
Built the largest high school gymnasium
In the whole entire world.
Week by week, eight thousand fans would
Jam the wooden bleachers to marvel
At the ice show, laugh at the circus,
Stream forward for an evangelist’s
Altar call, cheer for the Globetrotters,
And most of all, scream until
They were hoarse, when the
High School boys took the court.

Half a century later, I sit on a
Folding chair behind the baseline
As my angular thirteen-year-old
Head-fakes, then drives the lane.
It is quiet here today. The coach
Concludes the practice and a janitor
Materializes silently to tend the
Sacred parquet floor.

While the boys huddle up,
I walk up to the rafters, and breathe
The heady mix of dust and dreams.
In this place anything can happen.
That’s why they play the games.
That’s why I keep coming back.
This monumental folly of fifties optimism
Is my favorite place in the world.

Déjà vu

It was October.
My English teacher in a
Sudden reverie
Fled weeping from our classroom
Eyes glazed, only to return

Seemingly restored
Indeed philosophical.
“In measuring life”
She said, “I do not believe
That time moves in a straight line

But rather it is
A never-ending spiral
On which we all cross
And then cross again our path,
Sensing that queer resonance

We call déjà vu.”
Perhaps she said this with the
Hairs stiff on her neck
Some chance detail whispering
She had taught this class before.

This morning, with the
Scent of rain whipped in across
The urban prairie
I stand, my neck electric
And hear her voice behind me.

Dancing Queen

She dresses
In unmatched pieces
Teasing me
With her style
Dancing before the mirror
Then blowing a kiss.

Who am I
In this audience:
A suitor?
A lover?
A surrogate, for practice?
She never tells me,

Just raises
One practiced eyebrow
That says with
Affection:
“I’m becoming a woman
And you can’t stop me!”

Souvenirs

Last day of holiday
My final twenty dollars in hand
I go in search of a memento
Something to show my friends
I tell myself
To represent this magical place
When once the salt has washed away
And my tan dissolved in graying skies.
My eye is drawn
To the superstore
Right next to our hotel
Here in Vacationland
Promising “Old Time Candies”
In sickly sweet lettering on its
Unassuming sheet metal siding
And next to that
A flashing neon beacon
Scrolling siren specials of the day
Fireworks and stun guns
Throwing stars
Ninja swords
High-powered rifles
And of course
A lively line
Of tasers.
My own piece of America.
I ponder briefly which of these
Would be permitted in my
Carry-on baggage
And opt reluctantly
For lemon drops.

Coffee

I love coffee
The first bracing taste
Reflected on my lover’s lips
A dusky harbinger of day.

I love coffee
The memory of graduation
To the sharing of fresh grounds
With my smiling mother.

I love coffee
Anticipating sleepily
My favorite rest-stop on the toll road
With the strongest joe around.

I love coffee
Caffeinated communion
At the end of countless walks
Across a nectar-filled wilderness.

I love coffee
The emblem of belonging
In small communities across
The frozen northern plains.

I love coffee
For I have learned
That coffee is
Love.

First night

(Tanka)

Backstage, the cast swarms –
The queens, the workers and drones –
Their stings drawn for now.
Stirred up, they will take the lights
And tonight, this show will kill.

Sestina for Richard

Late September they brought a tree
To symbolize the birth of hope
And gathered under darkened clouds
To plant it gently in the ground
Beside a junkie’s tired needle
Saying his work would never be in vain.

Perhaps in a more symbolic vein
They should have fertilized that tree
With something from the user’s needle
So that it would have some hope
Of thriving in that barren ground
No sunlight coming through the clouds.

Sometimes enthusiasm clouds
Our judgment, makes us rashly vain
Where there is really little ground
To fix our aspirations on a simple tree.
For such a youthful hope
Is like trying to thread a needle

In the dark, where we need all
Our faith to see even our hands. What clouds
Yet more the dimmest outlines of our hope
Is when every muscle, every sinew, every vein,
Combine, striving with hard-won chemistry,
Yet are not strong enough to hold us up on shifting ground.

This was his lot as each year ground
On and unfulfilled desires would first needle
Then betray in toxic symmetry.
The winds of discontent whipped close clouds
And bent him like a once-proud weather vane
Now facing south in blasts of unmet hope.

It is perhaps best not to be the hope
Of every person breaking ground
Where better folk than we have pierced their vein
Despairing and then thrown down the needle.
For raw enthusiasm rarely beats what clouds
The harsher truths of life with lasting artistry.

He saw at last that it was vain to wear the robe of hope
For people who would plant a tree then let it languish in such troubled ground.
He left, his needle stuck on empty, dust rising from his feet in clouds.