Poem: Hitting the Mark

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Hitting the Mark

"My barn having

burned to the ground, I can see the moon."

      ~ old Chinese proverb

In the whole big

field of blue

the sun hits

the bull’s-eye moon.

Down here

my face’s albedo

mimics something

like it in return.

Night by night

turn after turn

the arrow light

finds its mark

and like a climbing,

stumbling goat

I aim my horn

this way and that

to snag that light

in flight. Maybe

one long and

maundering day

from here, when

they open the gate

for home, the sun

will put up his

arrows, the moon

her shield, I my bow-

shaped horn, and we'll

dissolve in sleep.

Until then I'll jump

the fence and like that old

cow make a scene

over the moon.

March 2012

Painting: "Not far from the sun, moon and the stars" by Jean Arp

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Poem: Cactus bloom . . .

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Cactus bloom picks up where the moon leaves off

Pink spark rising
after the sleepless Night
upheld the moon
(her shield d’amour).
Now, hold the field of day.

Then, at day's end,
dive like Joan with sword,
immanently mortal,
perpetually young,
softly arcing to earth
like the moon along her
battle for the night sky.



January 2012

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S.O.S.

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Through the window this morning, flickering behind poplar leaves, the sun rose. Was it S.O.S. he coded? I was on the phone, but I wanted to end it, someone else was calling. What if I, and only I, were the last hope of the sun, losing his way? Now tonight, three flaming candle wicks in glass duck and bob in the corner of this dimly lit bathtub like ladies urgently gossiping around a red tablecloth. I can almost hear them lisping. Yellow heads beat toward each other, but not toward me, and too rapidly and quietly to be comprehended while I am submerged, steamed and exhausted into stillness—eyes fixed on them and nearly hypnotized into sleep. I am an outsider, the last to know, and then, slow to respond. Is it urgency when poplar leaves twist and flutter like drowning hands? Or are they not drowning, but waving? Earthy sheaves of leaf and flesh lace over what burns and glows. Even just atmosphere alone flips the flame into frenzy. Glimpsing, we see some truth of it. But the light is still, in itself, and does not need rescuing.

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