Transition

We should have had an inkling
when the geese refused to fly.
Saturdays we’d trudge through newfell snow,
we'd skate across the frozen lake
listening in the distance for the sound of
plaintive cries and the sense of

shadow overheard.

October November
on into December
they cried until the solstice
and an early morning call,
they cried until a cold voice.
We spent the day in bed
hiding under quilts and covers.
We spent the day in silence
because if you don’t say,
it isn’t so.

Next day we struggled into
worn flannels boots and down.
We trudged through a field
of untouched snow
stepped out onto the lake,
ears accosted by an empty wind
accompanied only by the sound
of silence.

(Image: Picasso, Blue Nude)

Fearless

One of these days
I'll walk across the wire--
I'll dance across the wire

in misfitted toeshoes while

singing at the top of my

voice no care

for whether it cracks

no thought for whether

it's sharp or flat.

I'll dance across the wire

juggling balls and balloons

and when I fall
I'll jump back up
dust the dirt off my butt
and bow to the crowd
with a flourish.







(Image: Joan Miro, Singing Fish)

Deus ex machina

It’s about coherence
take away coherence and
it all falls apart
Falls apart flies apart
flies into fragments bits pieces
as it flew in the bang before
God gave us gravity
Take away gravity
Subtract us to the sum
of our molecules but some
of our molecules
will hold to the glue
will hold to gravity
and gravity
is the glue that

holds our bodies to the earth holds
our feet into the dirt holds
our minds until the mind
makes its own rules meanders
Meanders flies
Flies into tangents
Tangents rants
Rants rages until
coherence pullsitbacktogether
and it keeps.


It’s about
coherence
take away
coherence and

it

ALL

F
A
L
L
S


A P A R T





(Image: Francisco Toledo, Self Portrait, Masks)

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)