February’s Fickleness

 Rains seek snow,

or is it the other way around

when the drops from trees

punctuate my roof with ellipses

of waiting for real weather,

not this half-way stuff

of indecisive February,

that in fickleness

can’t make up its mind

and throws everybody off—

opening questions of clothes

to fit the weather.

I can’t wear my whole closet

the day is demanding.

I’ll put on the wrong outfit

like the fearful adolescent

who under dresses, or worse,

wears the tux to the football game.

I wish both of us

could finally make up our minds.

27 February 2013

A Lenten Poem

The Cleansing Lententide

Lent brings catharsis, but not the kind expected,

not the purging from the bowels of sin

and plunging out the cloaca of hell,

a quick evacuation into the secret heavenlies

of Jesus. Lent is slow—a scrubbing of layers

that cling with claws. You’ve worn them so long

they’ve become a second, a third, a fourth skin—

protection against the flesh living beneath them;

flesh of freedom from the shielding shame,

living and vital, flesh and bone like Jesus

took from the womb of Mary, called “good” by God

from the beginning of goodness that still remains,

if only you could crack the skins and let it out;

despite the pain each fault line gives.

Lent bring catharsis—the groaning of mourning

the death of your shameful skins.

For Pa

I never realized how much I’d miss my dad

until the message careened into the phone—

cryptic, like a code from his war,

the one he capitalized and we

always knew what he meant.

It’s hard to read between the lines on the cell phone—

a vowel-free zone of confusion

that drops worry and panic in its passing.

Only the word “stroke” held its ground,

that when applied to a ninety-six year

old man, I was strangely comforted

by his foresight in planning his funeral.

Maybe he knew what we didn’t want to know,

that not even he, bailed together by farmer’s

strength to wear the years as lightly

as he wore me on shoulders

would have to return to the ground.

I pray he takes death like he took

all the other problems he met—

as one more puzzle to solve,

one more chance to flex his imagination,

inventing some useful contraption

the Reaper hadn’t conceived

and offer it as a final gift

for us to wonder at.

Feb. 15, 2013

Feb. 15, 2013

I heard yesterday that my 96 year-old father suffered a mild stroke and heart attack. As for as I can remember, this is the first time he has been taken to the emergency room for anything. This poem was written this morning.

Aching Words

I don't expect much from my poem,
no great rescue, no salvation, no scree--
footed redemption that stumbles down,
knocking me on my ass, leaving me
staring dumb-headed into the empty sky
and looking into clouds for God's
winking eye.

I don't expect much more than words
that link together a catena of aches--
arthritis of my old man's bones
and angst inherited from my mother
that wanders even past the grave,
ever still-born dreams that lay dead
upon the chicken house floor, buried
by manure of the thousand-fold chicken herd.

I don't expect much more than to say
what I've tried to say before my tongue
was swollen by a guilt-tied throat,
shamed into silence that evaded the bandage
and pussed out around the boundaries
of polite gauze strips that shocked me
into writing a poem.

Feb. 8, 2013

(This poem is taken from an on-going exercise of writing one poem per morning.)

Cheshire Cloud

The cloud bats the Cheshire eye at the sheltering moon

before the shadow overcomes its gaze and steals away

into your bedroom window. It slides along the cornice,

kissing the ceiling with mincing moans, wondering where

you have gone. The empty shell of the room greets

the shadow with winsome exhaustion, tired 

from waiting, from waiting, from waiting

until all the loveliness of the sun-dried sheets

faded into stale dust mites. The shadow gathers

itself into a well-wrung cloud and seeps

out the window into the Cheshire smile

that blinds it with the darkening moon.

Sightless, it stretches thin until the finality

of the transparency of the rising sun.