The Last Word on the Election

 

A Halloween Poem

 

 

 

What Skeletons Think

 

Who knows what skeletons think

when disburdened of the dull meat

we pack on them all our lives?

The painted Halloween figure

we’ve hung on a tree to honor

the pagan point of view says

nothing of the real thing clacking

and clattering in our cruelest dreams.

 

I often feel my bones suffer

the bulk that strains the ligaments

that knit the construction together.

The bones themselves remain aloof

from the usual daily sufferings.

Although they’re not immortal

they must know that they’ll linger

well after the beef and fat decay.

 

They‘ll weather like pure ivory,

attaining a dainty shade of gray

that illuminates the darkest nights

for those who know how to look.

When I learn what they think I’ll sigh

with self-recognition based

in the most primal of matter,

all spiritual rumors effaced.

 

 

Still Tragic After All These Years

 

The river behind the library

looks bottomless. Black current

smooths along, The bodies

of naked drowned teenagers

 

rarely surface to look around

and regret the world they left.

More often, a big limb torn

from a dying oak upstream

 

tumbles over the weir and prods

the brush as it slips toward Antrim.

a dozen miles north. No one

can name those washed away

 

in the hurricane before the war.

No one remembers the railroad

that trestled across at an angle,

but the footers remain in place.

 

I lean on a stone wall and watch

for the limber and lanky children

who exposed their gleaming puberty

only for the river to mock them.

 

All this happened so long ago

that the river has cleansed itself

by abrading on its stony bed,

leaving only me to blame.

 

Elegy on Ice

 

 

Parked beside the frozen lake

we munch blueberry muffins

and slurp our dark roast coffee.

The plain sheet of lake regards

the sky with something like worship

but lacking that subservience.

Such broad dimensions regret

nothing, rooted in creation

that continues to self-create.

No ice fishing, no snowmobiles,

nothing but an unwritten text.

Maybe the ice isn’t thick enough

to brace the wooden bobhouses

that used to pepper the scene

on the boldest winter mornings.

I wish we could fold up the lake

and an equal expanse of sky

and bring them home to install

in our back yard. Then we’d enjoy

this expanse until it thawed

and wept into the water table

where our deepest thoughts deploy.

 

 

New England Aster

Almost an Ode

 

Radiance of New England Aster

flatters my agrarian instincts.

Am I thinking potatoes, wheat,

cabbage? This ripe shade of blue

nourishes more than orange or green

vegetables by filling cavities

 

eroded in my aesthetic sense.

You also admire these flowers,

which brace a phalanx in the park

by the river. We never see

anyone pause to examine them.

Dogwalkers sport admirable pets

 

but focus on their cell phones,

tourist hustle toward the café,

the rare courting couple lose

themselves in each other. Trained

by peering into Monet’s landscapes,

we mingle structure and color

 

in a soup of vague affection

taught by the arts but invoked

only by fauna and flora.

The river considers itself

a life-form, and we must agree.

It coughs and sputters and slops

 

right up to our feet and smiles.

Looking upstream from the park,

we note broken trees toppled

down the steep bank near the highway.

Such entropy also nourishes

by recycling carbon-based matter

 

that composes all our thoughts.

Although autumn suggests we’re old,

it allows a glimpse of aster

to ease the tension otherwise

affixed to distant horizons—

the myth of the vanishing point.