Where did the time go?

Reading a friend's blog has inspired me to update my own. Why did I stop posting? After searching through old boxes, I've finally found my poems and other writing from highschool and into my early twenties. I might post some of it in the coming weeks, and perhaps other things that I've been working on recently.

Here is a metered poem that I wrote in 1992 for a college poetry class. I think that we had to use the title phrase (that the class had arbitrarily brainstormed earlier) somewhere in the poem.

"Pining Cow, Herring Smitten"

Pining Cow, a lonesome cat,
eccentric and a little fat,
loved a swinging,
country-singing,
feline fishmonger named Nat.

She would watch him from afar,
selling cod, playing guitar.
He love her too
and wished she knew
she was foremost in his heart.

Ol' Nat thought that he'd propose,
stuffed a message and a rose
in a herring,
flung it, bearing
straight for Pining Cow's pink nose.

Pining Cow, herring smitten,
found the question he had written.
She screamed, "Yes!"
put on a dress,
and in due course had many kittens.

Hood Canal at the Bridge

It wasn’t a secret that you could go beneath it.
We descended stairs and found
men with green buckets, poles jutting
over the railings,
lines hanging all the way down
to the North chop,
or the South calm.
My friend asked what they had caught,
or expected to catch.

In our concrete and metal shelter,
salt wind grazed our cheeks
only to smooth over the canal side.
Expansive glad shades of gray
prepared for military subs.
The bridge center could
slide back anytime
to frustrate a highwayfull
of drivers
itching for peninsular retreats.

Does stillness ever seep backwards
to quiet its source?

Turning around towards the open Sound,
we found a tumult of tiny bursts,
small, frantic, painted strips
(magenta, purple, blue)
reaching upwards out of the depths.
Water ladies called us,
dive in.
We stood close, desiring their lush hues,
bewildered.

We waited there as the oblivious sun
prepared to finish
its glacier-bound course.
We easily forgot
how both sides held the same water.

revised 12/28/08

My mantra has no words that stay

Seeing Mother Meera today was refreshing... I have a hard time writing a description without feeling cliched. Let's just say she has a joyful, playful, delightful look in her eyes... she is purity, goodness. I came home and wrote this poem.

My mantra has no words that stay,
they float away.
Knock on letters, grammar, vowels,
you’ll hear a sound - wispy hollow -
through which spry meaning runs.

Beyond rough language launch the thread,
gather it down fine instead
from the Divine,
yours or mine,
several visages or one.

Holy messengers inspire
as long as we desire
many names and none.

Encounter at Daybreak

Amid early morning dreams
your form comes before me
unknowably thin beneath the hooded
black robe.

You have a face that is lined and pure.

Absent of expected fierce expression
or sickle, you have tired eyes
faded down to watery grey
oceans deep.

You hesitate to take my arm.

Dawn appears warm and vague
with its white complacent cotton sheets
and cocooning husband, angel daughter
still asleep.

You wander back to the Unseen.
And I resolve to buy a juicer.

Caterpillars

Caterpillars crawling,
crossing pavement,
some already smashed,
inconsequential;

I think
I'm not that fragile.

Peace is just a word

What is it, in us,
that needs an enemy?

Why do we crave the feeling
"Us and Them"?

Until we answer these questions,
peace is just a word.

Mourning

In my heart, a high throne of cedar,
you had perched for a reverent moment,
before flying, fierce beak and feathers,
to the somber white field above the sea.

You disappeared, dot-like,
eventually exhausted,
you were taken by the swallowing
measured waves.

My deep roots seek the water table
and find there is too much earth;
My ripe branches will hover in saline air,
waiting only to meet the ocean.

Sidewalk

Suffering will be eliminated,
as long as you stop thinking
the thoughts no one wants to hear.

Blow really hard towards the sky
so that the clouds will move away.

Your shadows will evaporate
like ice cream on the hot sidewalk,
and the man comes with a hose
to spray the residue away.

Your sidewalk will be so perfectly happy.

Dogma's Adventure in Target

In May 2008, most likely under the influence of vodka tonics, “yes,” she said, “I do know the difference between cosmology and cosmetology.”

My dogma was barking
and so I opened the screen door.

She went out to play
in the cosmology section of Target.

She bought nail polish remover
that smelled like perfume
and cotton balls shaped like the moon.

After eating these,
(they will eat anything, you know),
my dogma disappeared.

The red bullseye
is still there
but I can’t bring myself
to look at it
without a feeling of arrows.