Upon a Winter Flight

* Inspired by the book A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Vanauken

The grey goose softly gliding o'er a warm September day
The pair below whose eyes will glow as on its flight they stay
Its flight, now grown, they make their own
And while worlds away
The grey goose goes on gliding past the dimming of bright day.

And night will come, cicadas hum, and lilacs bear their bloom
The pair laughs heedless, dancing, in a room of china-blue
I will follow you into the dark and through the gloom
I'll stand courageous at your side despite the silent doom.

We'll altars make and daily wake to build the barrier high
But Love o'ercomes and kingdoms won might crumble - with a sigh -
Wheree'er we sleep, though dark, though deep, I'm yours - until - we die.

I Cannot Deal with Life Today

I cannot deal with life today
I think I'll go to bed
I think I'll do a nimble dance
or scale the roof instead.
I'll caper lightly like a clown
And laugh at those who'd tear me down
Or lose my self in books once-read...

Behold my open awning of a cave now filled with sun
Behold the oh! the glory of a race I'll gladly run
By sea and stone, by maples grown,
By glimpse of cloudlit gold amidst the cold steel buildings - dead -

I cannot deal with life today
For all I've yet to write
For marvelous mystic musings that
my soul will, grand, excite

For winds that whisper songs of spring
For a kiss to promise everything
For all the wide world wandering -
I cannot deal with life.

After that Summer

New York City doesn't have to mean you.
And Oxford's not it's best with only you.
Paris I can make my own
and all the cities life has shown
Can re-created be with memories new.

New York City doesn't have to mean you.
I'll rest again beneath its hazy sky
That afternoon spent in the rain
In Central Park will come again
But this time you will not be on my mind
I'll defy my hurting heart and re-make time.

And when the city lights I see
With this good man who cares for me
I'll toss my head and laugh loud, drinking Life
Forgetting days like jewels (and our last strife)

New York City's mine, you see, and always.
No end of shooting lights above the sea
Those moments frozen now in time
Live just in us and in my rhyme
And they can swift obliterated be.
(Then I'll fall in love again in this, my own, my city.)

The Telemarketer's Song

Carry this moment
a fluid raindrop of memory
ebbing, growing, then fading again
Intrepid.

Head in hands, hands on desk, desk in
utter boredom.
Mind in head in hands, sinking fast
How long will endless calls last?
Oh blow of faceless voices who don't register or care -
Why should they when I'm hardly even there?

Carry sick-stomach ceasing and
wishing for air
Longing for laughter and for time spent in prayer,
in feasting, in dancing,
in telling tall tales

I might fade to a ghost, out of sight, before they're
even aware that I've paused, and I've cried
Out just a little on my deepest inside

What good was my learning?
I am losing my mind -
And I'm not made for nothing and I'm not made to die,
But to live, fiercely live, while I've scraps left of pride
So carry
this memory -
stand up -
say good-bye.

Another Friend Has Gone

You can't keep them, after all.
Hearts are not to be collected,
or dissected,
hung unchanging on a pretty chain.
You've but yourself to blame.
The tin-type, through-glass, museum love will not, my dear suffice.
It's not honest to act fatalistically nice.

The shriveled dry preserved unchanging hearts you'd wear
could never fruit of truedeepalways bear.
For that just two will be required,
as you know you play with fire,
but better flames contained in homely hearth
Than burnburnburning, scorching fertile earth.

Their hearts aren't to be worn.
No trophy, no reward,
to she who's hurt the most with cruel desire.
(Recall, you play with fire.)

And no amount of "fond" and "dear"
approximates the real true crux
Of hearts grown only-near.

You cannot keep them, they will go,
with swift less hurt or long, cruel, slow
But in the end there's nothing left but (perhaps) yourself
And no, no, no one else.

They'll to their wives, let that suffice,
and you will to your bed.
But better that,
than hearts collected,
dead.

Dans le Bureau

I teeter on the edge of an abyss
My world, my words, are telling and are true
Quick-painted, light, and tinged with bitter bliss
Wrapped coils circle round my self and you -

You strangely stir, and file for disaster
Beyond the brink of bright bespattered blue
Beyond the known, approach the throne, my Master
Creating ken from what we thought was through.

Within my box I write, in sudden snatches -
They'll catch me not; excelling as I hide
The buried flame I'll tame,
And tame it faster,
for all the hurts that chink away my pride
(What's that, inside?)

Bestride the subtle edge, I barely balance
Slight shift could send me swift into the brink
This tight, taut line is all that's mine
But I was made to dance, and not to sink.
(What then, you think?)

My other blog

PLS blog, and my first poem thereon.

In Just

On days like today, everyone should read E.E. Cummings' lovely poem, "in Just":

in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little lame baloonman


whistles far and wee


and eddyandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring


when the world is puddle-wonderful


the queer
old baloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing


from hop-scotch and jump-rope and


it's
spring
and
the
goat-footed


baloonMan whistles
far
and
wee





I am sitting on my tiny, pretty balcony with Maggie besides me. I just spent an action-packed and fun few days with Mum and Cathy before seeing them off this morning. More on that later. The weather here has been sunshiney all week and spring is enticingly close... And Maggie and I are about to go eat lunch.

Today is a day as Cummings described.