One Word

There is one word that stands

Alone from all if’s and and’s,

Which has no face or hands,

Which, like a glistening bubble,

Floats above the verbal rubble,

Floats too high to be obscene,

Moving moveless and serene.

The word has never been spoken

Past teeth perfect or broken.

No tongue has been known to shape it,

Or fools’ babble to leak it or ape it.

Desperation, fear, or hatred’s keening

Can summon the word’s meaning,

But not the name of the word.

“There's no such thing! That’s absurd!”

Men cry — not quite saying the word.

Eliot

Damn you, Thomas Eliot!

Why did you have to be a bigot?

Someday they’ll say, “Who? I forgot!”

At first it seemed a forgivable blot,

A line here and there, not a lot,

A silver string with a nasty knot.

Now it reads like an aneurism, a clot,

A stroke, or babble of a bibulous sot,

Unredeemable, no innocent mot,

But the crisis of your poetry’s plot.

Then you wrote the Four Quartets.

Your hate may be forgiven yet.

Walking

There is little left of his hip —

Afflicted since he was a pip

In a leg brace, he would trip

On the curb, crossing the street.

He’d never been strong or fleet.

The clouds followed him

Above oceans he could swim

With a few strokes of his arms,

Setting off foreign alarms.

The highest mountains bent

Upside down for his ascent.

Only he knew where he went.

Mushroom

It appeared beneath our yew,

A large puffball that grew 

Unseen. Then there were two.

Soft, bleached skulls without holes,

Less like the dead than souls.

I picked them up — their spongy skin

As alarmingly soft as sin.

I was frightened of what grew within.

Magpie

A man shot a magpie on the wing.

It fell with a broken wing.

The nock snapped the bow’s string.

The man gave the bird to a priest,

Who nursed it to be released,

Then decided to keep it in a cage.

To release its gale force outrage,

The priest split the magpie’s tongue,

Expecting to hear a terrible song.

Instead he heard nothing but words,

The speech of Man, not birds:

His own prayers and curses,

And profaned Biblical verses.

The altar boys taught the magpie

To ask of everyone, “Why

Weren’t you shot from the sky?”

There is Only One Gray

The passing of years

As we enter the gray —

The shedding of tears

(Allowed only a day),

The mending of love —

Is below and above

The light and the dark,

A singing meadowlark

Whose eye can’t be seen

Through eyelid screens,

As the daylight retreats

And tomorrow repeats.

Close/Soon

The derecho downed

Thousands of trees,

Two in my back yard.

Both fell on our house,

Toppling chimney,

Ripping down gutters,

Driving heavy branches 

Through shingled roof.

One spearlike stem

Missed me as I slept,

By the width of my bed.

Water on me woke me,

Not the cracking sound.

It was close, but not soon

Enough to take me asleep.