Old Poems.........

Reading old poetry, like old love letters, seems to me to be a form of time travel.......I think it is good to remember those passing Magnitudes............

 MAGNITUDES

Does everyone,
at least once, feel magnitudes
while stopped at a red light?

Even you, Joe, with your
extinguished cigar
beneath the seat of your bus.

What possibility
did you see in the shape of your hand,
the space between thumb and index finger
extending into spaciousness
this pulse
rolling down 47th Street

from a wave
that just broke
on the shoreline of Cape Cod
and now ripples off to Africa.

At such moments,
I want to tell someone
that if I lift this foot
a spiral galaxy
will spill like cream
across the fine pavement of eternity. 

GOD AS ART CRITIC

This life,
call it mine tentatively,
at its end will be
my dubious masterpiece
on display in some dusty, star-strewn  gallery.

Maybe one in a series.  I'll call them
"Studies in Blue and Red"
blue for capillaries and the sky
too vast to know:
red for the tangible heart.

I leave it to the Critic
to analyze technique,
style, and historical relevance.

If I don't receive a glowing review,
I pray, at least,
they will find my work original.


 



ELF

Your mark glowed on your forehead
a signature left by some unknown god.

You were one of the half-born
suspended along some unseen line,
stretched taut -
you shone with the pale light
of another landscape,
a castaway forever leaving home.

There were times
I wanted to seize you.
To hold you tight, keep you here.

Instead, I gave you
my tokens and amulets
the stories I wrote you into
and watched them quietly dissolve
in whatever stream
bore you off

    your small boat
    sailing into the brave distance
    yellow sails
    spread glad and wide
    on the horizon.