In a Time Under Morning’s Spell: Poems

NATURE

Darkness
or a flickering computer light within
are usually a good shield
from mental marauders
when the fruit is peeled
to the fruit’s cold core.

And the world is molten ash
with a warm thin crust
hurtling through a huge cold vacuum
and a little stellar dust

which the artists choose to kiss.
And a song makes sense
to the serious aesthete
in terms of such a thing as this

whose snake curls at the feet
of its perfect queen
and whore
in a marvel much like bliss.

IN A TIME UNDER MORNING’S SPELL

When the feel of the day
first seeps in light
from night’s dark paw
with a red dressed sun
at the bottom

…on the first day of global Autumn
things are unusually cool and wet
…a drizzle in the sixties
in this wonder of a Sand hills yard gone wild
with pine straw
and oak leaves
sliding under slippered feet

…I must be careful
not to forget
the grip to the rail
on kitchen steps
and keep a slow and
flat footed pace

…caution under wet leaves!
…the will of a believing race
in love with the Celtic fact of trees
and mushroomed logs
which spume their rot.

I go inside, go upstairs
and lie on a cot
while Debussy bathes the world in music
and I love to drink this spirit as well

in a time under morning’s spell.

THE WATER AND STORM IN MY LIFE

That skyward music of summer
played all day
on a thousand horns and violins
and into evening’s glimmer

…the gosh of my song!
and the source of my sins
and those other things
for which sinners pray
and have secretly prayed all along

till the old man vanishes windward
into the rain…
…come Winter and Fall
these things are a wet baptism
of joy
much more
than of pain!

SIXTY YEARS AND CLIMBING

To bleed
amid fatigue
sweet expressionistic sounds
in musical tissue
as real as jazz
and as burnt
and surreal as tragic clowns
in a Bergman movie

…so as Autumn inches here
in the first few brownings
from green and awkward leaves

…a cinematic dusk appears
in which none of us believes.

And the cherry of the heart
has been sullied by a million Springs

to lift the self! the cross! as art
…sunset’s dryer tears and harvest sun
with thoughts of awful winter just begun
like a multitude of tired dusty things…

THE SEED WE SOW TOGETHER

I cared so much about the poor!
…that hungry naked mass
desperate for the bread and beer of life
and celebration
in the distant south
…in a magic land my by soul was cast
to ring up numbers
in their prophecy
of fire
…the old I Ching for men born old like me
squinting and angry
at the moneyed table
and its freely traded liberty.

It was a worn out passion which simply could not last!
My passion for you is a richer younger thing
loving someone born forever young
and that better judgement made of a better justice
with which your own
art and voice
forever sing….

And I look at all you’ve done
…your paintings on the wall
lifting up the poor in spirit
who are likewise unattached to money

this is the finer spirit
whose gods of paradise would come
with justice in their hearts…would come
…to call.

A SONG I KINDA REMEMBER

Cool jazz spits the sax,
drools rivers on the Moon
or washes atonality
in wafting ways
a million days
in summer afternoon.

Where we have gone thus far
or where we trip to soon
some California bar
in air conditioned memory
blows out an evening star,
blows toward sunshine
like a river of wine
in red red midnight
…bleeding
with its tune.