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The Day the World Changed Twins Buon Appetito This Snow That Doesn't Stop     Ways to Describe Snow Excursion to Sorrento Noah and Dove Revisited Hunger Dolphins and Sun Star Walrus and the Saxophone The Dog Who Loved a Boy

Come to the cabaret!

The Day The World Changed        Audio                 At the dentist being drilled . . . it's 8:46 AM, when a plane crashes into the 110-story north tower of the World Trade Center. Fifteen minutes later, inside a favorite bookstore haunt, I'm reading in French from Saint-Exupéry about a lonely Prince who lives on a tiny asteroid, warns of the baobabs with roots and tendrils that begin to grow . . . That's the time (because he says they will spread to destroy an entire world unless rooted out, early) when suddenly a second plane thumps into the equally high south tower. And through fireballs of such suffering and death, it seems almost surreal because not aware of any of this, I'm moving still, 9:43 AM now, with pleasure--secure at a table in Firehook bakery -- from book, to dark coffee, to dictionary . . . as plane number three and its all-too flammable lives plows into the Pentagon! A fourth, hijacked like the others, circles back . . . Oh how the brave men, hopeless, will fight and die!  While I sit amused at baobabs.  Smiling at the baobabs! - published in The Potomac Review, Legal Studies    Forum and on-line Tarlton Law Libarary

World Trade Center click on image!

One small corner stone, a lamb carved at the top, the names beneath, Anne and Clinton Brice, the word twins and 1938-1939 -- a period Steinbeck published Grapes of Wrath, looking back at the Depression, and with its perfected shapes of pure white Trylon and Perisphere, that futuristic New York World's Fair.  Inside the rusted fence, I can hear, almost . . . beyond the chatter of sparrows, Gehrig, stricken with ALS, talk of a "bad break," but still affirm, as if ready to climb Glenn Miller's "Stairway to the Stars," he's "the luckiest man" on earth. Sparse markers of an era! Like the crosses  and granite here, few names, in part, a tiny pauper's field?-- behind a strip mall, off Little River Turnpike -- with grass, weeds, tulips, fallen trees.  I gaze at the memorial stone, weather-worn, for the two lives lost.  Maybe scarlet fever carried one off, then the other in a time, forever Gone With The Wind, The Wizard Of Oz, Wuthering Heights, Goodbye Mr. Chips, Ninotchka, when Nazi tanks tore through Poland. And what of the parents?  For an instant, I become them, loving, broken . . . Can I ever dare have children again?  Close my eyes . . . Another century's rush hour traffic, oblivious, accelerates past.           -- published in Potomac Review, The Legal Studies                  Forum, and on-line Tarlton Law Library

from that other century

Buon Appetito         Audio  Every day in Tuscany, feast day: heaping, savory duomos, convents, sculpture, espresso in tiny cups, sunshine, spaghetti, fields with grapes on the vine, olive trees, piazzas in Florence, outdoor tables, Boticelli at the Uffizi, a stroll across the Pont de Vecchio, towers at San Gimignano, winding narrow streets, cobblestoned in Lucca . . . , the houses in soft pastels and earth colors, looking good enough to eat.  And, of course, each afternoon brings its gelato moment, which is a state somewhere between pistachio and amaretto, inimitable, where spirit de- taches from body, ascends . . . -- appears in 31 Arlington Poets CD

a treat to savor

        This Snow That Doesn't Stop         Audio
 

 

What to think of the eskimos? They have so many ways to describe snow, from Labradoran Inuit to West Greenlandic: there is pukak (snow like salt), mauja (soft deep snow), massak (soft snow), mangokpok (watery snow), qaniit (snow in air, falling), quanipalaat (feathery clumps of falling snow), and on and on . . . And in some aftermath as from a blizzard's blowing, swirling . . . what to think of us, (who have but one word, over-extended, adulter- ated, for love)?   In Inuit, there are ten words for ice and snow, in West Greenlandic forty nine.  Though visions of igloos may please, add ice to love, it can die:  I want to hug you, un- freeze what we've become.   --published in The Legal Studies Forum      and on-line Tarlton Law Library

Eskimo Village

Sorrento               Audio

Shortly out of Pompeii
we're warned how we need to stay
together, that this excursion,
for only forty-five minutes, is to visit a store,
a really good one, after which--the sun is already
sinking--an immediate return to Rome.
When we're herded out of the bus,
you, who made a life of breaking
away, shake your head, knowingly tug at me--

you, the Malaysian, who married
an American, moved from being a Buddhist
to Christian, to Jew . . . "C'mon, let's get out  of here"
you say, as I hesitate to try a different path . . .
Have me walking, while the rest of the group is trapped
with assorted bric-brac, and leather ad nauseum,
almost chasing after, a few blocks, past a park, orange trees,

voices buzzing from the cafes filled, beyond which . . .
And though your world has long since erupted,
Vesuvius-like, with its lava of tumors, chemo, horrific
suffering, choices, I'd like to think if ever I go
back, I could find that other you, not lost, but waiting,
as when I'd crossed the street to catch up,
laughing "what kept you?"
mocking gently my own cautions
there before cliffs and bay, spectacular, serendipitous . . .
that we'd stumbled on,
that after so many years, I carry with me still.        

           --published in Innisfree Poetry Journal

        Noah and Dove Revisited      Audio

"And lo, in her mouth an olive-leaf   freshly plucked . . . . "  Genesis 8:11 The world had been drowning in prose. Everyone wanted in -- from aardvark to zebra.  Conditions were adverse when a lone dove flew toward the ark.   Everyone wanted in -- from aardvark to zebra.  Noah waved away that bird, bedraggled, near his ark.   It was filling fast, in disarray.   She drew closer . . . He shooed her away.   On the upper deck already the aviaries had filled; and oy vay, the downpour now was steady, his whole menangerie already afloat, drifting, when there fell a tear of blood.  And suddenly, voice steady, he called the dove in, let matter, as against the Flood, that one tear!   Later, she'd leave the ark that had become home.  And with will enough to matter.   Because out of flight, this poem -- or rather how to leave what's become home through conditions adverse . . . Circle hard,wings beathing.  Find a poem for the world drowning in prose!   --published in King's Estate anthology,   To Life; the Legal Studies Forum;    and the Online Tarlton Law Library

Noah's Ark

                  Hunger                Audio  

On a mountain hillside, two battalions move
into the open,
training tanks and howitzers on rebels 
that cross the border . . . It's all presented
matter-of factly in the front page
of a paper I read on a park-bench
in early June . . .  shelling, slaughtering

to stop their incursion,
even as a third force of B-52s overhead
begin to drop 500 pound Mark-82 gravity
and cluster bombs pulverizing
the attackers, who nonsensically continue
to press forward, to engage . . .
Beside me, a wasp buzzes --
maybe it's after my cranberry muffin,
or the aroma of the coffee . . . I can brush it off,

but not the image, like a dance,
an horrific pas de trois
out of J. Henri Fabre:  how such a wasp,
Philanthus, with a honey bee mortally
trapped in its mouth,
is seized by a preying mantis
who, with naked triangular head,
begins devouring
the attacker's belly. Even in the final throes

of extinction, a terrible
hunger: Philanthus squeezes
the crop of the bee,
which then extends full-length its tongue,
disgorges onto it such delicious
syrup.  The wasp licks there to the last.


--published in Gival Press anthology,
   Poetic Voices without Borders, 2005

Dolphins and Sun Star            Audio  

Moving in tandem, south to north,
between Grotto Pizza
and the gazebo
at Rehoboth, but out there a bit,
dorsal fins high (they're close
enough to see with a naked eye),
while at 6AM on the upper level
of the hotel deck a man with binoculars
and a woman chat
about Big Sur on the other
side of the country and a jazz singer
who was splendid last night,
put heart and soul into his songs
totally.  And the woman says
she's been coming here for twenty years,
and her words, how "the dolphins
always pass at just this time,
maybe the feeding is better now,"
find an echo with me
when abruptly,
a gauzy ribbon of cloud ignites to flame
in that borderland
where sky and ocean meet.  I look out
at what transforms to . . . (even as I, too, trans-
form, become one with, if only
for an instant) that fireball, huge, consuming . . .
And then (almost, it seems, against
myself) I pull
back, eyes glazed,
still wondering, scan the waves
for those dolphins.  They are all gone . . .
   


--published in King's Estate Anthology,
   Unexpected Harvest, 2005

Walrus and the Saxophone            Audio  

A walrus on the bridge with a saxophone
weaves his cinnamon-brown body,
heaves the instrument forward
and back, improvising.  
"How did you learn to play like that?" I ask.  
"I didn't," he snorts.  "I just do it."
The notes, like his whiskers,
tickle, and I laugh.  My feet take me . . .
And suddenly a woman with a gold
nose ring avers this is her dream, starts to clap . . .
A crowd of ten or fifteen have gathered
and are clapping also.  The woman warns
she loves me, though she's crying.  I'm out there now,
to clap and beat, awhirl, spinning, ask them, ask
her -- I'm feeling so dizzy -- to stop, please!  
She says she can't because
the dream always "happens the same way."  
The musician grunts:
"Thank God for what she can do:  
how else does a walrus get to play
like Charlie Parker?" -- only she disappears!  
Such awkwardness from flipper
to key then -- oh bebop, cacophonous --
out of which . . . There's a place
that's empty and hard, like that sheet of ice
on the river below.  I get up from it,
head reeling, but exhilarated also, offer myself --
no mean exchange -- nothing must be held
back.  A good show: thank you, but here
I am.  My nickel!  My dream now!  


--published in Confrontation 2005   

        The Dog Who Loved a Boy                Audio

Tsunami roared toward Chinnakalapet,
and Satya's husband screamed from a nearby rooftop,
"run for your life, run . . ." as he saw the colossal waves. 

She grabbed the hands of her two youngest,
pulled them up the hill, frantically calling her eldest,
seven years old, to follow. Only, he raced off,

toward what appeared to him the safest place,
their hut near the shore.  If only she'd had an extra hand!
Her cry, "No," sharp, piercing.  She beseeched 

Lord Vishnu, and his consort, Lakshmi--
said to hold the vase of fortune.
And then, like a sitar unstrung, her soundless wail,

enough to make earth and sky weep,   
when the family dog, scruffy, yellow, went with a bound
after the boy, and into the hut, nipping, tugging,

drove him out, bewildered, and up the hill to mother,
brothers, barely in time.  She hugged
her child hard, above waters swollen with debris

and dead, almost to breaking, then bent
over, thought of her dear brother-in-law--mourned for,
gone--who'd always been there for her and her family!

Kissed the dog as if his--Ram's--spirit had settled thus,
even as canine-proud, panting,
yelping, he eyed them now, fiercely, protectively.

-- Published in anthology, only the sea keeps,
    Rupa & Co. (India), and Bayeux Arts, Inc. (Calgary Canada)
    20005