Eclogue

 

Out my window,

a thousand windows look back,

everywhere mirrors mirroring

mirrors in a mockery of eternity.

Yes, there is grass delineated

by planners whose concepts

are concrete, whose hearts

are dynamos, whose blood

is storm water flowing through

culverts, whose ten-year plans

are proverbs.

 

A crabapple tree unfolds, reaching

the second story and believes

it is god or at least an angel.

It defies right angles and blooms

a thousand pink stars to shower

the workers walking their geometries.

 

But I have known the glorious

anarchy of the wild

and smelled its adrenaline,

felt the five-hundred-year-old bark

of the Krummholz pine, heard

the persistent wants of life,

where night, if lit at all, was by a moon

yellowing full.  It cleanses

and envelopes me.

 

Yet, I will not discredit community,

where ideation sprouts like

milkweed in the fields of opportunity,

nor deny that it is the wellspring

of our heritage. We are social animals.

So, I admit to torn gratitudes,

and this poor eclogue, forever split

between the here and the there of it.

Commanding the Craft

 

I will not seek to out-oblique

old T.S. Elliot

or speak too long of Ostriker’s

dogs and tulips.

Equally lost on me are the end

rhymes of Frost or X.J. Kennedy.

Even if I knew what Rae Armantrout

was talking about,

I could not duplicate it.

Nor am I schooled enough in vulgarity

to compete with Dr. Ginsberg

and, though I once did, Ms. Millay,

(may I call you Saint?), I’m too old

now to feel what you did then.

I would gladly sail to Byzantium

with W.B., but could not command

his craft, which leaves me

all alone with my notebook,

a pen, my empty raft.