April 1 Pomodoro (Tomato)
Pomodoro, tomato, sweet tang of summer,
Winter's crust is watery filth, sand left on the pavement.
Old frozen, canned, tomatoes limp into soups and sauces,
And summer's harvest, ages away, mere stringy sprouts on the window sill.
Pomodoro, I hold the word as the tight red skin
round the thick pink meat,
knife pops the bursting bologna rind
seeds in their gel
and the salt sweet ooze,
I from fingers lick.
as I ingest
on my tongue,
savor the future
in my mind.
Small white two-leaved slip
late summer spreads, up poles entwined,
grand, hairy, green, leafy vines
and at each end . . .
Oh, Pomodoro,
My tomato,
Only the word can feed me now.
April 2 To Marc Chagall--Good Friday, 2021
Today is the profoundest day.
It goes beyond words I can say,
and so I think inside the walls,
the room where painted Marc Chagall.
He in his garret, I in mine,
Painting a picture, writing a line,
I see it now: chair, desk, and bed,
and a window picture to feed his head.
I picture green, blue, olive hues
and donkey heads and cobbler shoes.
I see a church across the street,
an onion turret, not to eat.
And bleary-eyed at desk so late,
what in your inner walls create?
Remember birth you soar overhead
Your wife and baby in the bed.
And also sailing on the cross,
a Jewish rabbi heals all loss,
and flowers come from deep inside,
the healing savior and the bride.
I write of him; he paints for me--
the killing knee's new Calvary,
whose cry must save us from our sin,
as darkening storms let sunshine in.
APRIL 3 Untitled
Returning to the quiet of my house
from the pizza party hosting,
sitting on the back porch,
screen filters chirps and songs.
A lone cycle interrupts the normal hubbub
for his moment of bird fame and is gone.
But deep beyond the bird's chirp
the skill of the insect world
covers the soundscape
or is it tinnitus?
Can this constancy be bugs,
just as sunlight is the backdrop
for all visibility?
Insects are the sky of song.
II.
Walking in the woods today
I heard a cardinal and saw none.
I heard two owls but saw none.
Other birds invisibly sing and call.
I see dead trees and distant silos.
I whistle a chickadee song--
no response.
Nature, even in your mildest form,
you are untameable and do what you want.
III.
And now the birds are back again,
chattering to and fro.
A goose honks over at the lake,
a nearly panicked whistle of some songbird,
and the bugs' invisible background choir.
April 4 Easter
After the kids are all gone
and the dishes done
I consoled myself
with Haldór Laxness
Iceland's Nobel laureate
transferring the sorrow of missing
to the sorrows of losing
two sons and a daughter
and their father
who blindly consoles himself
by caring for sheep.
Eventually, I give in
to the duties of the day:
folding the blankets
of the grandchildren's pallets:
a sheepskin, three afghans, and a quilt.
I realize it is not the expected stuff
that makes the heartstrings murmur.
It's the odd detail that catches at the chest,
on the corner of heart and lungs and abdomen.
The stray cartoon sock under the bed,
the quarter cup of milk in the fridge,
the coffeecup on the windowsill,
without a coaster.
April 5 Tinnitus Variations
I left the Navy with ringing in my ears
Tinnitus ringing ears
for years now
one steady pitch
that I can't pin down.
It's like trying to make an eyeball floaty
stay still for observation.
But today it changed--
an aural forest,
Chirps and buzzing;
quiver, twitter, chatter
one times four, one times one
a guttural chirp,
a pulsing beat.
But deep inside,
I find the fine line,
the original whine,
and there's a tiny sound
It shifts up and works its way
around my face like a Swiss motion hand,
or elevator going up.
Oh, my tinnitus,
at times you are a swingset
April 6 On Being Salt by the Sea
I picture me-- a pile of salt
on the beach of a blue-green sea
that came so close, there'd be no fault
if it consumed salt me.
The sea is salt, and after all
We're bound to go someday
Doggone Adam and the Fall,
otherwise, we could stay.
The sea seems getting closer now,
I want to run and hide.
It licks the angle of repose;
It's reaching higher tide.
I want to run and hide because
I'm frightened to the dregs.
My crystals feel dissolving buzz,
besides, I've got no legs.
And as the sea has had its way,
it's not that I won't be.
As sun leaves salt on hot, dry days,
I'm now part of the sea.
April 7 Wolf Spider Island
There's a place where people sleep in shacks that rock on GitcheeGoomie's flow,
And the race that lives above the deep are cosmic cracked eggs, don't ya know.
They're high on scent of duckweed scum,
then sigh and repent they'd been so dumb,
but the lazy summer only makes them dumber
as the boathouse rocks
when they let out locks,
and the evening falls,
and the spider crawls,
and the lamps are lit,
and the flitters flit
round the chimney glass
and up on the wall
the spiders crawl--
black and hairy beasts.
They don't bite at least.
Well, they don't bite me,
so I let them be,
as they slowly roam
round my boathouse home.
But most every night
there's a fearful fright
when the spiders lack
of grip
means down my back
he'll slip.
Automatic hand
reach to where he'd land
and with practiced fling
the wolf spider king
who'd fallen from his heights
now flies cross the night
hits the wall
with a sound like "Tak!"
Shakes it off to crawl
up the wall and back
to his prior place
where he'd fall'n from grace
and will fall again.
Will he never win?
Well, then, what's to win?
He's just crawling heights,
falling, getting flung
cross many lamplit nights.