THIS BEAT POET
(Thomas Merton in memory)

The seabirds hear an odyssey
from my green guitar
sent to me from Venice Beach
to get me off the hook
from parental storms back east
putting on rosin for my strings
over the crosswise weft
in a warm red cloth
recounting those raft days
of the Sixties
facing the surfing waves
searching for star fish
by the clefts of solid rocks
now like my overcast memory
melting away
in the sea's blue shade
by leafs of olive and redwood
fading as back to back sand dunes
blacked out near red bird-trees
bending over the last light
of an August dog day
playing chess, checkers
and solitaire
while eating jam crackers
feeding the fish, salamander, birds
while reading Rimbaud
and "Fleurs du mal" by Baudelaire
this Beat poet with his guitar
playing smooth riffs
not knowing who we really are
standing by windmills
feeling like a young Daniel
by the terror
of untamed beasts and lions
with so much adolescent pain
by a furnace in the airless heat
wishing for an after holiday shower
or at least a gentle rain
returning from camping it up
in the dark rehearsing my plays
under tents with my fellow actors
in Utah's Zion national park
preparing to go on
with a fistful of first acts
to off-off Broadway
with red sun burnt eyes
while searching in my temperament
for peace at the church door
taking a holy week to be a lector
by reading in Latin and Greek
of mighty angels helping Gedeon
in the Book of Hebrews,
going as a visitor to Gethsemani
at Kentucky's abbey
where Tom Merton also prays
in corridors and on remnant pews
amid a pungent pine tree silence
next to a juniper odor
within a body's firmament
needing solitude at the monastery
away from war and violence.