The snow blows east to west
toward the big water, swirls

through the top branches of
the oaks now leafless; a

cardinal, bright red against
the gold dune grass and

brown bark, nestles in the
green bush waiting the arrival

of its mate. He balances
on the swaying branches.

He has done this before.

In explaining one of her poems,
the poet said that one of her goals
was to dispel the idea that poetry
is hard to understand and therefore
mainly for the intellectual elite
and highly educated. Perhaps one of
the reasons she explained her poem
was that it was hard to understand
and presumably took a highly educated
person to understand it without
said explanation.

Someone said that in heaven
we are all thirty-five and gorgeous.
Well, short of heaven, aren’t we
all thirty-five and gorgeous
in our dreams?
That is as it seems
in my dreams.
Until the next morning,
when I look in the mirror
and experience abject fear.
Yikes!
I’ll look forward to heaven
when I’m about ninety-seven
and then thirty-five and
gorgeous again.

The flip of the hair,
the gait,
a glance,
a chance
to see
again that
which went away —
yesterdays away —
but is here
fleetingly, momentarily
in anamnesis today.
And so we commune
with the saints
mysteriously,
eternally
and with us —
they.

His broken down body had enough
power left to leave the line of cars
in late January, enter the cold while
others sat in warmth listening to
WLS and waiting for the train to
pass. He didn’t; he met the train
at the bend and said, “Take me.”
It spit him into a thousand pieces;
rolled over what was left and came
to a screeching halt in much the
same way as those back at what
used to be called home did, too.

A small, news item, a blip
in the local newspaper: man
killed in car crash on way
to birth of son; mother-in-
law killed in crash. Speed
was a contributing factor.
Won’t make national news
to be repeated over and over
and over for days and weeks
and months and years like
TERROR. Thirty to forty-
thousand dead on the high-
ways each year, a hundred-sixty
thousand grief-stricken for
life; the forty-thousand
only get a blip. There was
a bomb threat today and we
will be hearing about it ad
infinitum. There were twenty-
some injured and killed in
what has been termed a terror
attack and we will hear about
it ad nauseam. Xenophobic
politicians spout jingoism, native-
ism and garbage talk fascism
and the news media gnaws on
the carcass for ratings and
money and the terrorists
hold our gonads in their hands
while big, ballsy BMW’s, et. al.,
chase HORROR down on the
highway. We have our priorities:
“Help! TERROR! The sky is falling.”

A thousand Indian farmers
from India committed
suicide because there
is no more water
in the aquifers.

Thousands of Indians died
because there was no
more water in the
wishing well
of good will.

The cowboys all died
because there were
no more Indians
to kill and there
was no more
water in
the aquifers.

The cowboys just jumped
into the dry well
without saying
farewell.

Nobody said farewell
as they all jumped
into the dry well
following

the Indians from India,
the Native Americans
and the
cowboys.

A huge pile of guns was
found around the dry
well. They didn’t
do any good.

They didn’t save
a soul.
There was only one
place to go —
the deep, dark, dry hole.

We drove cross state through rainy, cloudy skies
and traveled through the run down neighborhoods
of the city raised up and then cast down
by crony capitalists in big board rooms
who left at the end of the day for waterfront homes
and ultimately abandoned the city to destitution —
bombed out houses and garbage in the yards
and victims left without the resources
to turn things around for them and their kids.
We traveled ‘cross the state to care for our dog
who is destined to get a more compassionate deal
than all those humans left with only prayers to heal.

A leading anthropologist/theologian
stated fatalistically, given human

nature, that guns win. And liberal,
Hollywood actors, directors and

producers cheered all the way to the
bank after their last “shoot ‘em up,”

and just before they, with tongue-in-
cheek and all the sincerity of the

meek and mild and righteous, joined
in the next call for gun control.

It’s fun to live for a while
in the immediate,
childlike wonder
of magic — Houdini
and certainly Carson, too,
but it’s all slight of
hand and control through
and through.
Then there is mystery,
the bowing before the
Compassionate Heart
at the center
of life, the wonder that
lasts as eternity,
past, present and future,
then and now and then,
too.