6 Poems by Gloria Avner

End of the Sixties

this sea this sky
not the winding
bumpy road past Ararat,
down Khyber pass
by folding bicycle
fear survived
Swat valley snowstorm
rescue on the way
to India to Himalayan
hermit foothills
flapping tattered flag
whipped prayers
gone flying free
from cliffs edge
 
before Lama Govinda
welcomes all to tea
talk cookies company
before the fevered german
jumps disappointed from the ferry
splashes Bombay waters
drops his wallet
in alleged rescue pull out
via fishing pole
important papers
turn to new wet bedding
for starfish
 
men in uniforms want him
to stop
not walk wet away
resist arrest
for misinterpreted
attempt at suicide
men with uniforms
without an ear
for languages
shoot holes into your tires

Can We

can we take a break from war
breathe easy for a while
let dads raise sons who can remember
uncrippled lives and longer tempers

let England, France, and sporadic Spain
keep their Guinness Book world record
(for a 116 year long fight the size of New York
beating up on Pennsylvania)

the world now
still small villages on one side
futuristic smart bombs tanks
too big to roll down
target streets on the other

imbalanced
crazy ratios of win to loss
when what is won is mostly
military contracts

we can not speak of what is lost
but wonder where the women are
who will revive the perfect low-tech
strategy of Lysistrata:
no sex ‘til wars end

Numbers

it’s hard to believe 
we said don’t trust 
anyone over 30
brave and bucking
tradition 
we danced barefoot 
wild free whirling
with immortality 
at the cusp of change
alive to inner landscape 
ancient cultures
high on principles

but for goddess grace
we’d all be jailed
impaled or cold flash frozen   
in stiff old fields like finance 
yuppie Jerry’s leap from faith

hail survivors who stay the course 
Leonard Cohen’s lyrics from within
integrity maintained like Dylan 
weaving strands
Americana made his own
both Joans Jerry Brown Keith Jarrett 
Scorsese Spielberg Shepard artists all 
unique beyond their generation
Jean Houston Normandi Ellis Ram Das
protean figures keep the flame
alive

when the word for my favorite decade
became my age
I grew to love the label 
sexagenarian 
tasty word   
inside my mouth and imagination 
where are good words
 
for higher numbers
coming soon closing toward the curb
if ‘septo’ smells of downward spiral
‘octo’ will require help
to fold sweet smelling fitted sheets
if we don’t come up 
with communes 
like Marigold Hotel or the house in Jane
Fonda’s French movie where five old friends 
come to live together
while a young man documents 
their lives alive with sex preoccupation
for his degree in anthropology
 
I still don’t trust the 30-somethings
the ones who are not poets 
who aspire to life
on Wall Street

I trust Pauline
98 year old matriarch
hospital volunteer 
arrived at New York shores
from Hungary
at three years old
who could not find her birth 
certificate and had to wait 
five years 
to get a passport 
so she could take a cruise
 
centenarian will be a good word
if I can be like Pauline 
when I grow up

On the Way (9/11)

gone through security
boarding pass in hand
I hear an announcement:
our plane to Boston will be late
now how to understand the next 
announcement:
pick up your bags at the luggage carousel
and leave the airport
immediately

a gorgeous day in Maine the road
from Bangor back to Mount Desert Island
lined with autumn flavored birch and maple
mountainsides of patchwork reds and 
yellow not a mourning color anywhere

Logan will be closed for weeks. The people
you are meeting in Miami won’t be flying either   
to make the flight to Macchu Picchu
you must get south another way

step by step van shuttle to Bangor 
Concord Trailways to South Station
in line to buy the Amtrak ticket to Miami 
in New York City I am one ant 
among a panicked swarm 
our nest kicked over along with all the pathways 
to and from our homes and schools and playgrounds
while we wait in lines confused 
we see our faces on the people passing 
puzzled asking questions 
even the woman in her cage 
from whom I want to buy my ticket 
pauses from efficiency to hear me mutter 
how bizarre that I had been about to board a plane and now
  
like a butterfly in last stage of pupa 
she breaks cracks sheds 
her ticket seller skin 
mirrors and meets my red rimmed eyes 
with her own 
sister daughter mother niece
she won’t take money for a ticket
takes instead my boarding passes
and dumb gratitude
that lasts through tears and food
and story sharing with people in shock
rumbling over rails through seven states  
 
Peruvian shaman with feather wand
at the hitching post of the sun
calls on spirit eagle to take blessings
healing to the people of Turtle Island 

 

A Photograph of Snow

sharp 
as the frigid air inside my nostrils
the heatless overused VW late 60’s Beetle
dirty grey
purchased from mentally deficient brothers working 
at the dairy up the hill
whose idea of fun was throwing
each other  
into the milk tank 
the little bug as new to me as I was new
to stick shift driving

Rte. 50 was my way to work
a narrow local road curving back and forth
around the mountains between
Athens Paris Rome
and Mexico 
tiny towns in rural Central Maine
slow slow 
on the ice slick 
my bug begins to spin
in quick then ever slower motion
’til she slipped sideways off the road
backwards 
down someone’s yard
headed square for where the house
attached to shed 

the old couple offer tea and empathy
while their shed teeters on the backside of my bumper
more concerned about the trembling 
girl driving backwards
than what’s hanging by a thread from their shack

Wanted in a Poem

sensuality
and stomp

slurpy words
all tongue
hot wet
thirsty

leaping from
a waterfall
unafraid of
pointy rocks

buoyed
by frothing pools

deep