Self-Portrait

 

The Daily Political Moment

 

 

Scolding the world in public

eases the dark congealing

in your shapely, old-fashioned skull.

 

The coffee shop hums. Urns deplete

as snow whirls in the doorway.

Baked goods hunker on display.

 

 You speak loudly to allow

the woolen opposition to hide

behind phrases heard on TV.

 

Yet no one shouts or even speaks.

You’ve engendered a silence

too dense for the digital world

 

to violate. Your mouth turns down

like a crescent moon warning

of far worse weather to come.

 

(first published in Breathe)

 

Spillway at the End of January

 

 

Stones in the bed of the spillway,

each one crowned with a snow-cap,

suggest how tidy winter can be

when mood permits. I lean

over the rail to count the stones.

 

A hundred and thirty-seven,

plus those hidden under the bridge.

Frozen for a month now, the lake

is a lens through which a grave

intelligence ponders the world.

 

Sadly, it’s a cataract of ice,

rendering the vision so grainy

it can’t possibly tell the truth.

I should step back and take a photo,

but the subject’s so amorphous

 

in its endless shades of white

that I can hardly distinguish it

from myself. An historic spot,

claims a sign posted nearby.

Another sign warns boaters

 

to clean their hulls and avoid

spreading a pernicious alga.

I think I’ve been spreading

a mental alga all my life.

I wield my camera to frame

 

the spillway without revealing

the lake lying sullen behind it.

That half-blind lens follows me

step by step, compelling me to think

in larger terms than I like.

 

 

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.