The Trickster of Seville

Quand Don Juan descendit vers l'onde souterraine

Et lorsqu'il eut donné son obole à Charon,

Un sombre mendiant, l'oeil fier comme Antisthène,

D'un bras vengeur et fort saisit chaque aviron....

(Baudelaire)

At his passing
Don Juan proffered
a subway token--
fare for the boatman
on the River Archeron.
The boatman accepted
with an enigmatic smile
and served the Don
no more than he had bought--
a bottle of cheap red
instead

of the glass

of Forgetting.
Don Juan offered thanks
and closed his eyes ---
willing the
the embrace of the fog.

Don Juan's hell
was a fine old wine
made bitter by the
reminiscence of
past loves discarded

the rue and regret
of too many roads taken

the realization that his life
held less substance than
the alchemic cloy
of a funerary rose.

Eternity to pay
for the passionate sadness
in Doña Ines' eyes
and a token given in jest
to the boatman
on the River Archeron.

(image: La Barca de Caronte, Eric Martin Contreras)

The Red Wheelbarrow--
William Carlos Williams

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens







Gone










nothing much depends
on a red wheelbarrow
fallen to rust in
the dust blown field

one thousand acres
of unsown wheat

abandoned barn
home to none but
the dry rattle of barn swallows
and the ghosts of American Gothic.


(Image: Steve Fitch, Gone: Photographs of Abandonment on the High Plains, University of New Mexico Press, 2003)

Solitaire











Cell phone rings
nobody there
everyone's talking
I talk to dead air--
an urgent to-do list
loud quarrel with a friend--
better than standing alone.
Society sees matched pairs
makes invisible
losers and loners
who clutter public squares
chatting up the birds,
who dare to occupy park benches
that would be put to better use
by lovers.


(Image: Therese Flanagan on Flickr)

Tempting Fate

Always there were stones--

the wrath of the gods

unheeded--

the crowds thought we were golden,

the crowds thought we could fly.

Tossing aside the lessons of Icarus

we leapt--invitation accepted,

destiny opened

her great grinding maw

and took us down,

an easy task--

heavy as we were

with the weight of stones.

(Image: Georgio di Chirico, Ariadne, 1913)

The Kindness of Strangers

There it is again

the white spot

on the window glass.

I turn quickly--

nothing--

a flash of sunlight,

a falling leaf

descent slowed

by a cushioning breeze,

the glimpsed underbelly of a sparrow--

or She

who walked here before,

pausing in her travels

to greet overgrown dahlias

or perhaps to clear the weeds

from the base of an old rose

given by her daughter

on a distant mother's day.

(Image: Jules Joseph Lefebvre, Ophelia; 1890)

Medusa














I saw you this morning in the corner of my mirror--
I've learned not to turn too quickly.

Long ago we set the rules--
play the game in peripheral--

friendship maintained

through the custody of the eyes--

First visit I was a child of two

no buried memories or pots to stir--

perhaps faint echoes of a time before

when orphaned in the aether of souls.

Side by side we sat on my cot

four eyes focused on dimity curtained windows--
or was our focus the light shining through?
Later years we flew kites in mud-sogged fields---

eyes always up

as if the sky held the answer

to the question formed

in the crushed heads

of the snake grass underfoot.

Was it fear sent your
focus to heaven?
deferral of death?
This morning I saw you in the corner of my mirror
and I wanted nothing so much as to peer
into your ash grey eyes---
to know you as I have been known.
This morning I saw you and I wondered---
but as ever I've learned
not to look.

(Image: Fiery Medusa, Mimi Yoon)

Identity

It seems I've spent another day
dreaming of the middle distance
distracted by images
of souls end-stopped in stone.
Yesterday in the grocer's
some Galatea lost it over a bag of frozen peas,
her white aura lay shattered
on the floor about her feet. Marble shards
promptly Swept up and
Hidden in her Handbag,
Marble shards presumably ceded
to the sculptor
who sat comfortably at home
like some ancient god
enthroned in an easy chair.


(Philip Scott Johnson;500 Years of Female Portraits in Western Art. Music: Bach's Sarabande from Suite for Solo Cello No. 1 in G Major, BWV 1007 performed by Yo-Yo Ma)