Yellow Elephant

My father never had much
give for government
God knows if he paid his taxes but
he never completed the count and he
burnt his draft card and he
danced on its remains in a

robust salute to our dear Uncle Victor

most ironically lost in the war.

My father a digger At Woodlawn,
a white man with roses in his cheeks
until he turned Yellow.
Weeks on end he’d filled jugs
with jaundiced water
and on it went…
Uncle Sam stepped in and
shut the place down.
Social service stepped in with
endless questions
answers paid for with
surplus cheese and
oily peanut butter and
powdered milk that mixed
into the consistency of a gluey gruel.
My father a digger At Woodlawn until
Yellow reared its ugly head and
nearly broke the man
with no give for government
who was given no choice now
but to take.

(Illustration: Julie Paschkis, Yellow Elephant, A Bright Bestiary)

Frozen

Sitting on the

front porch swing
between the men I loved
I'd hold their gnarled
workman’s hands and
listen to tales of

hardscrabble lives spent
laying railroad ties
logging on the River
interring last remains.



I’d hold their
watches to my ears
attuned to the passing of time
one tick followed another

hard upon
I held my breath
baited for synchronicity but
somehow Time never seemed to mesh
any tighter than the colors

of their

heterochromial eyes.

Epiphany

My father dug graves
six days a week
Sun up/sun down
minimum wage money
housed and fed
seven children two grandmas
wife self
Once when a plane crashed
he was called to work on the Lord's Day.
Looking into the eyes
of the families of the dead
with expectations of
guilt or dread
instead---
Double Overtime---
a man digs graves
to feed his family
and sooner or later
Solomon comes to see
that the empty belly
surpasses the empty eye---
even on the Sabbath.

Soul Hunger

My mother never fed us the song and dance
about starving children in China.
She’d serve up supper
and we’d have at it...
If not she took comfort
in knowing there would be
food for table tomorrow.

But one summer night
friends and cousins came
And the August air
Was heavy with the smell of roast pork
We sat ate laughed
and while the grown-ups
recalled and reminisced
we loaded our plates
with ribs redolent
of smoke and sauce
Outdoors we ran
while we feasted
children’s games

tag mother-may-I
pushing jostling
our grubby fingers clutching
the ribs as we savored them back to the bone
Just one more
and one small bite
was one bite too much
Pure satisfaction to fling
the meat laden bone
under the mulberry tree
to be found by my

mother next morning when
she walked the dogs.

(Photo: Al Clayton)

Moved by Love

Love lies at rest in cool marble,
she sleeps in the silence of stone.
The artist moulds sculpts

her curves form under his fingers and

each caress becomes a prayer

a hymn to his longing for love.
At last she wakes moves speaks
in murmurs and whispers

words that have the power
to make strong men weep.
The artist takes her hand
as she Descends the pedestal
and in some dusty corner
Aphrodite laughs.

(Image: Jean-Leon Gerome, Pygmalion and Galatea.)

Red Priest Among Gods
(Vivaldi's Autumn Sonnet)

Plentiful harvest and
the ploughmen
make merry,
carousing in song and dance.
The wine god smiles,
pours out his blessing
with a liberality that
speeds away all care.

At length
Bacchus and the autumn air
beckon conspire
the mirth of the grape dissolves
into peaceful languor.
Song and dance are cast aside
as the ploughmen surrender
to sleep.

---------------------

Early morning and
hunters burst forth

greet the November dawn with
guns dogs the call of a horn such

noise a lone stag

flies in terror furious chase

beast run to ground--
He attempts a
half-hearted escape.
At last overcome,
the oppressed embraces death.

(Image: Valazquez: The Feast of Bacchus [The Drunkards] )

I am beginning to understand why these sonnets are not translated with much aesthetic sense in concert and liner notes. This one provided quite the wrestling match.

Il prete rosso

nell'estate

(Vivaldi's Summer Sonnet)

Under the merciless sun
shepherds languish
and so too, their flocks;
the pine tree burns.

A cuckoo raises her voice in song,
turtledove and finch form trio,
their warbling accompanied by the whisper
of an affable west wind.
But sweet-tempered Zephyr
is soon overtaken;

Boreas sweeps in
armed for battle.
A small shepherd weeps,
frightened by the winds
and by what lies ahead.
His limbs tremble
in fear of the oncoming storm
and of a furious swarm
of gnats and flies.

Ah, but his trembling is just,
a summer squall,
fearsome and fulminate,
cuts across the sky.
Spears of wheat fall
as hailstones reap
the proud fruit of

a poor farmer's labor.

(Image: Van Gogh, Wheatfield with a lark)