Sometimes nothing new for months
Because life straight up is more than enough.
Being instead of becoming is what I ask.
Let all be simple, all be still except of course
Our neighbor's cock when the first gray smudge
Of dawn appears at the end of night's black tunnel.
Then the awe and splendor of a sunrise so spectacular
It makes me feel like this old world
Has been rehearsing my life for millions of years
And finally got it right.
Always on the verge of a supreme insight
Into why the plain as everyday seems extraordinary
I'll get carried away watching hummingbirds
Hovering above their feeders turn themselves into
Crystal pendants dangling from a chandelier,
Or eavesdrop on the conversations of forgotten gods
Each time the wind blows their voices in my direction,
Phenomena so odd I'll try to forget them
Because no one will believe me,
But it won't work and will continue on and on
I suppose
Until the white-coats come and get me.
Oh divine lassitude! A nap in a hammock under a cloud
Of shady leaves on an afternoon when none of the mosquitoes
Are vicious–instead of the annoying havoc
Of doing something practical like mowing our lawn
Beneath a blazing sun which takes sadistic pleasure
In baking my body until it turns into a burnt offering.
Promptly at five o’clock I'll listen to my thoughts
Sing a happy-little-come-what-may-song
While I sip a glass of wine-until the evening news
Blunders its tragedies against my ears,
A reminder that eternity is as ancient as the stars
And every dead man's keeper,
A certainty which provokes in me
An overwhelming desire to grip my ballpoint pen
The way a child holds onto his favorite toy
And then splice a thunderstorm's terrible roar
Into the soundtrack of my next poem.
Listen! Here comes another one now
Ticking like a tiny mechanism inside my brain.
Will it detonate exclamation marks
Like rockets on the Fourth of July
And twist my senses round
Or turn out to be another dud
Absorbed by the sponge of silence?
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