Cold air slipped in the window
Left open overnight.
It’s 100 below zero
And all is either black or white.
Ice leans against our home
As if meaning to fight.
The wind chants a lifeless Om.
“This is our new Ice Age
Under a sun silver as chrome,”
Says the nodding sage.
There’s no bitterness or woe
I could scratch on this page —
The ink has ceased to flow.
I have searched the homely grail
At work, on the summit of Pike’s Peak,
And in the bills and ads in the mail.
I can only guess at what I seek,
Except that it is lovely and wild.
(Oh, if only I could steal a peek.)
I’ve searched since I was a child,
Less curious than hungry, grasping,
Nothing inside me calm or mild.
The wanting is the asp’s sting,
A surrender to the jailor’s flail.
I cling to the preying roc’s wing,
Without knowing how to fail.
I slept as the doorbell rang.
When I rose they were gone.
A sweet earworm sang and sang.
Was it really no one?
The day raced by as days will,
A bullet from a rubber gun
With only duration to kill.
If I can’t remember dreams,
What I forget of life are dreams until
Remembered (when they seem
Like hammers and bangs).
But most often they gleam
Afar — frozen gilded boomerangs.
There were a thousand crows
Asleep in their rookery
Before the winter sun rose.
I rise with them, insomniac weary,
And pour into the hollow
Of my brain the blustery
Anticipations to follow,
What I must and cannot do,
And what time will allow.
One crow caws. I answer “You!
Think you!” as though he knows
The universe might offer a clue.
As he staggers away, it snows.
I left the slip in a small boat
With no oar or rudder to steer
On the knight’s castle moat.
The sail drooped, empty and sere.
I was drawn on, always slower —
A current from a series of weirs
Dropping me lower and lower.
I was passed by a fast ship.
Its captain made faces: grins, glowers.
I shot down another weir’s lip.
It took all I had to stay afloat.
Near sunset, I glided into the slip
Where I began this anecdote.
The peregrine’s flight, obscure
From speed the eye can’t clearly see,
Takes life in the air, fast and pure.
The wings of the bumble bee
Carry its rotund yellow and black
With aimless invisibility.
Fish beneath frozen ice lack
Form and color and disappear
When seen and don’t come back.
Words are noise and letters blear —
Their insensatenesses inure
Us to understanding. What’s clear
Is unseen, or if seen, a blur.
Forgetting is memory erosion,
As though sand is being drawn
From a beach by high ocean
Waves. It returns like fall dawn,
Each day a bit dimmer,
But never completely gone.
I am not a strong swimmer
And fear the undertow
More than the shark’s shimmer
Coming at me from below.
I think him an old emotion
I still, but vaguely, know —
Toothless, a dying pet’s devotion.
