Nature knows few right angles.
Man tends to abjure the curved.
Last night the moon swerved
To miss a cloud. The sun dangles.
The old white oak blown down,
Scattered its broken branches.
The wind passed on without a sound
In invisible avalanches.
Some windows are an open cage
Door with nothing inside to show.
Some walls mimic an empty page —
One’s painted with a golden elbow.
We know nothing we don’t realize
With or without our golden eyes.
The boar hound killed the hart;
The elk fooled him — ran free.
Our traps were empty.
The snow buried our cart.
We hauled the meat, left the skins.
While we risk death to survive,
The wealthy go skating!
Yea, they pray for their sins,
As we do just to stay alive.
It is very hard, not hating.
Our women, spiritually dead,
Will pay off all we owe
To those princely anointed,
While we hunt again tomorrow.
The gull leads us down the beach
In false starts, runs, hesitant hops,
Picking dinner from the sand.
With an exaggerated screech
When we get too close, it stops —
Swoops ten feet ahead and stands.
Though we missed our daughters up in Michigan, it was lovely to spend eleven days alone with my wife Ruth Diamond-Guerin. This is by way of love and appreciation.
For Ruth
Is there just one universe?
There the stars and here the cafe.
Hidden lights illuminate the tables.
The various darknesses immerse
Men and stars in dissolving clay.
Are both god and science fables?
The universes are infinite,
They say, and time does not exist.
But here we are and there the stars.
The air is full of perfume and wit,
And a wine too ancient to resist.
All else is beyond, late and far.
Let's nibble galaxies and swallow suns.
I'll count my hours with you by ones.
We shouldn’t ever pluck them —
They endure so few days.
Their rows bow each stem
Just how much love weighs.
My wife’s come from a garden
Her mother tended for years.
She would beg your pardon
To say: “Not like blood, but tears.”
I watched my daughter draw
This picture for Mother’s Day,
Obeying her own inner law
To paint what only she can say:
Three mothers’ hearts in one
Sweet flowering of passion.
The man walks along the lake,
His hair and clothes wild, unkempt.
He’s lost all that he could take
From life and love, and the attempt
To understand the meaning of I.
The waves wash up to his naked feet,
As if to urge him once more to try.
Where the horizon and the skies meet,
He sees himself, a constellation,
So far away, fleet and improbable,
Drunkenly spinning concatenations
Of entropy and incessant babble.
