GEORGE HERBERT'S HEART
Birth April 3, 1593


When life became
too much of a concern
in a metaphysical way
on this your birthday
you picked up a beautiful bouquet
filled with a metamorphosis
of power for a changed season
arranged on a thin bed of red roses
which you water in a cup
for no strange reason
in the shade of a lily jardiniere
by a curled garden of flowers
with its own mirrored poses
supplanted in the corridor's shade
where the poet asks
the Lord to pardon him
with His suture's cutting blade
of his personal struggle with sin
as he prayed each day
reaching out at every church visit
asking for miracle victory to win
yearning for His glory crown
as the story of a wounded prodigal
returns to his loving Father
touches his hurting spirit up and down
and masks a heavenly iron defense
against those forces aggrieved by Him
not just to forget this moment
of torment he asks for His peace
yet George feels too unworthy
to be critically believed
for a miracle of bliss
even at a future repose of his soul
yet he discloses to us in his verse
which is to make heaven
his worthy poetic goal
composed from foreshadowed time
he learns that his tearful proposal
will increase the goal of patience
sitting for hours in the church pew
at a portal of an English cathedral
of penitence and repentance
to review an Easter search
in his communal subject
of his mortal sins
by composing a theme
as a scribe gazes
on His hurting wounded sides
from his ultimate hymn to Him
as if he were in Christ's bridal nest
not wishing to delay
the inscribed object by words of love
yet he had learned the divine power
of being tested on His rest day
by listening to the choir
hearing the organist play
he had been inspired
though Herbert had not seen
doves or birds
at Tuesday Shrovetide
having pancakes or sherbet
in the alcove of his cathedral
yet he knew God desires
to reward every hour
in those secret times and places
not to be forgetful to learn
of the wondrous Holy ghost
with the most love of his graces
where blue fair heaven decides
to greet, describe and dream
upon a canopy of earth
for a poet's bridal of words
amid his hidden mood swings
after he visits the lake
at an early portal across the Bay
during a new early spring
coming to celebrate Pentecost
by gentle saplings of vines
in a call of awakened birds.

DREAMING IN CUBISM

Tips of fingers in history
from narratives of twisted
moves on the dance floor
as the suspended mirror slips
in a backdrop of a landscape
mesmerized in a looking glass
discovered by the old masters
where reality shapes the commands
of a charming Moorish poet
to be recognized in a film noir
by car racing in a navy beret
he bootstraps a combed marathon
with a spectrum of encircled colors
wanting a canvas exposure
disarming us
bathing in pale abstractions
of a culture in blue prints
from painted verticals
and vocals of echoes
posted in the daylight
from curtained drapes vanishing
in a museum's surreal tremor
dusted by a full throat of memory
as a sudden defensive paintbrush
shapes us in geometric revelations
as deeper resonant new forms
now scrawled out in graffiti
of a bulldozed provocation
shading us in from a creative map
of another loft on gas lit walls
among the peaks, cliffs, mounds
of commanding escapes on the Alps
in a boulder sky of floating chips
of a rocky finishing displacement
in a series of visits
from a pale Swiss somnambulist
and visionary Alberto Giacometti
wrapped around concentric verse
shaped by abstract drawings
of invented scattered intensity
from an expressive focus
outside underhanded ice blocks
in a proclaimed artistic pantheon
at chalky perspectives in a revealed
threshold from a sound proof
progenitor of an aging solitude.

AT FIRST ENCOUNTER BEACH

Off Cape Cod
near Wellfleet Bay
on a bitterly windy cold day
with high tide seen
at First Encounter Beach
where native Americans
first met the Pilgrims
who reached out to them
offering food
as they sang their hymns
today hundreds of turtles
have lost their way
from the Gulf of Mexico
moving north to New England
over the Gulf stream
and close to a death trap
by the cold waters
have washed along the shore
as a couple of good souls
local sons and daughters
are on a mercy mission
to spare them in a triage
from frozen extinction
and dehydration
who travel to the Boston
Aquarium facility
in a miraculous airlift
in helicopters
in giant banana boxes
of emergency care
as a poet dreams this night
of young endangered creatures
not in despair on the beach
but within our hands
with difficulty to reach
the many turtles who survive
being buried in the sea
riding the blue waves
to rise among the reeds.

ELEMENTS

An international poet
takes his niece
on school vacation
up to the Metropolitan museum
to view Gauguin,Rothko and Matisse,
outside are March winds
as flakes of white have fallen
with a fringed snow resting
upon trees to be unveiled for us
but this twilight we are fugitives
walking by long aisles
of fine landscapes and statues
along walls of contained art
with a wise style and structure
certain as we ourselves brush by
a Michelangelo drawing or a fresco
curtained for us as an accomplice
in the sculptured intelligence
and depth at each intriguing station
situated in our minds
reaching upon pedestals of civilization
created and incarnated forever
from outlined thresholds of culture
we find explanations of the painters
and their elements of recognition
communicating our enlightened past
granted to us this exploration's night
as formidable color development rises
to shape a parting explanation
through our honorable watch list
in a universe through others' eyes.

CRY ALOUD

Watching "David and Lisa"
in an all night movie theater
from an ice glittering evening
outside Manhattan
when teaching a late spring
course which surprised me
in a cry aloud in the balcony
reaching to hear out
to a patron so effected  by the film
after a semester of human voices
from those ephemeral days
meeting live-in poetic souls
who still clench my hand
in a pastoral setting
of the late Sixties
thinking of those readers
whose images of mortal clay
in spent time of selected anguish
like John Clare
or Sylvia Plath or Bill Styron
wishing for a time
to be isolated from their public
in an asylum of the suffering
with an endless tongue
rolling on their mouths
of unfinished brilliance
from wise trembling lips
of assorted medications
seeking to express
from the class stupor
of bloodshot eyes
meeting those students
with the retention of genius
as regents to reign over words
and constituents for us,
they taught me.

FRANK O'HARA'S TIME

Never to open your eyes
and not remember
the Cedar Tavern
when daring laughter
gets lighter to flare up
our vetting after midnight
with a wrestler from Madrid
burning into a torch song
outside the Big Apple stars
walking as if in an erased dream
consented by our transparencies
continues its music of regrets
in shadowy poetic emergencies
from a bachelor button pad
where all mirrors die
in the critical back corridors
where politics resides
behind closed doors
surprised to shine
by morning glory
in his light headed lunch poem
Frank,avoiding all obstacles
out of the words written
on napkin table cloths
in an unseen direction
we sing on an unarmed guitar
a tune of the Spanish Civil War
with chiming in glasses of wine's
attrition into a miracle cup
of reflective readings
up to the dark watery rain
outside an awakening the full waves
in my intermittent reign of words
writing them in my diary
at wandering by traffic stops
with Larry Rivers
getting on a brother's motorcycle
left on the Whitman threshold
in sunshine warmed Manhattan
where the same shadows
return to my memory
never fading at the colors
of the trees from Central Park.

SLEEPLESS

Sleepless sitting in a studio
with my mind racing
toward all the news
in a resignation of life
watching Akira Kurosawa's
"No Regrets For our Youth"
it is the night stillness
for insomniacs in the city
through a dim bedroom
with a shuddering light bulb
that won't turn off
or a fire of evening words
driving my diary narrative
which compels me
to put my embers of thoughts
taking my leave on the riverbed
by a voyage along the Hudson
near hot spotted painted easels
by a metamorphosed expressionist
left on Thursday at Central Park
as an easy bottled water burns
from a lemony light flame
in a kettle for green tea
needing a hand for a bath
away from idle conversation
from the swelling coldness
in my mortal open blanket
on the outer blackness
except for the quarter moon
hearing another half dreamed
nocturnal voice in person
on the spot of my memory
of Beat phrases from my hand
upon a daisy chain of the parting
soul of the concert pianist
wounded by life next door
for whom we left flowers
in a shroud of youthful appearance
of embracing respect in long lines,
I'm hushed in respite of mystery
glimpsing slightly on my telescope
the sweeping shadowy stars,
the transparent sky will bare
her own fervid witness
that a poet lived here alone
in a hot host of student housing
at a Manhattan brownstone attic
in an age of hope and comity
we furtively rush to figure out
with a skeptical penmanship
what's with this adolescent time
of weary metamorphosis
wanting a mathematical proof
that we are living to fight
against headlines to war
to challenge my pacifist horizon
in my undisclosed diary
near my stationed sunglasses,
communal phone,
and soprano sax
at my sound proof room.

FRANZ KLINE'S WORLD

With drawings of a Bohemian
Franz Kline's world
enters into his studio paintings
aspiring in a last candle flame
crashing the studio gates
from a discreet insight
of engulfed lamplight mystery
exposing art's insomniac
vision to dusty morning life
in confronted exposition
nonconforming under painting
engaged in unknown pastiches
of abstract inventiveness
unconcerned in daybreak
at unfinished silence of dawns
emerging in post war Manhattan
at a creative apprehensive time
as if you in constant flow of thought
from an abstracted disappearance
with the assured continuity
in black and white patterns
from outnumbered watches
of accented signatures
shuddering in a sheltered night
circling his animated savor
of furtive photo of imprecations
resonating along a safe linked space
of connected vulnerabilities
leading you in momentary silences
opening up a leaking window
of rain from shaping your life's
many canvas patterns
on mapped schema's at a portico
to shoot your attached art sorties
upon a punitive aesthetic expression
with unformed colorful inclinations
along your moving wrist and fingers
from a modern consented journey
of new disposable techniques
coagulated in your still lives.

THURSDAY IN MARCH

Sunshine threads
us as dandelions appear
intoxicated by the new season
on the high fields
over the grassland golf course
at my daily walk
down blue hills
carrying my notebook
and archive diary
with a Rouault clown cover
in a border of remembrance
observing the clouds departure
as morning birds bend down
over branches of birches
wishing my patch of earth
heeding a new embroidered spring
to console and absorb us
hearing the waves off the Cape
splashed by new rain at waterfalls
in the distance to be destined
to stay alive as a wordsmith
as flower petals may be awaking
erasing our light lost insomnia
on edge at our loneliness
waiting for nature to disguised itself
with quivering ripened oranges
curled and tangled on a tree
bordered by tiny squirrels
near a reunion of leaves,twigs
and witnessing woodland ferns
taking my oars in my hands
on my anchored kayak
by the house iron fence
to my germinating singular voice
guided by blushing rose bushes
under the first wounding light.

THE ELIXIR OF LOVE

Listening to the opera
of Donizetti
not to part
with the Elixir of Love
which I was acquainted with
since taken to the Met
as a child relives his joy there
thrilled with the combination
of a staged play,
music from an orchestra
with voices from a libretto
the elixir has not aged
drinking in every melody
of my young day dreams
linked by time, eye gaze
tongue and trembling notes
knowing there is someone
young in the audience
taken by the hands today
to the balcony of the house
who will experience
a glimmer of artistic vision
for her or his memory
which will last in silence
every time they drink
from a resonant glass
of ethereal depths of fun.

ON THE MARCH WIND

On the March wind
bonded on a memory train
full of recollected words
to hear ringing chapel bells
above all roofs
and people's barricades
to make a faint way
near the rainy branches
with a kinfolk of love birds
who wish like me to soar
whistling for us in a chorus
above a chirping mundane earth
in space of a motorcade
to be welcomed by angels
in tents as combatants at war
have spoken on Blakean wings
in an Apocalypse of revelations
upon islands of outer space
from his telescopic observations
as an observer in his Southern sky
scatters about chattering
as Orion's constellations race
from its huge monster brightness
we are sensing the eternity
of his water color paintings
as thousands are enlightened
are waking to watch at atendance
his crayoned red dragon pictures
from his "Song of Innocence
and Experience" archive plates
in this sorely dissonant time
over his muted melancholic lips
as rouge faints and fades
on a transparent creative face
in coverage of a bard's forgetfulness
along tumbling towers of the sun
existing on a showering metamorphosis
of a token cultural blessedness
as attendant spirits and pundits
breathing out from of Blake's
cowering and captured gorgons
dramatic demons and epic dragons
in a narrative of courageous poets
from our Jacob's ladders' surveillance
of dark blue pigeon clouds
over a stars air traffic third heaven
as poets miraculously sing out
on white tufts of clouds
replacing all those who run
across the bells of sky and shade
to swing at all shrouded nights
of many sainted hours
under a famous eternal light
of a king whom you have heard
from the presence of a flamed sun
flowering from citadels and pits
in the absence of day and night
not ashamed of these few hours
having lost your repentant name
to chant for a wonderful new one.

RUBLEV'S ICONS

Fifteen centuries
go by Andrei Rublev's paint
the lashes of art watering
in yellow, blue and red
to scrub your Russian icons
with wounds of exhaustion
on back breaking long ago
in the Fifteenth century
with the suffering God
buried in prison camps
with angels alighting
on their windy
wings on riverbeds
of the people's penury
awakened blood of snows
with an artist heaving echoes
to answer the breathless
river at the monastery's dust
in the nights of panic
and pain at the steeples
of the church's sun's glow
saints still on gold ceilings
wander by forever
counting tears in a bottle.

HANS HOFFMAN IN EXILE

You breathe salty lines
of portraits of your era
rubbing paints
in a visionary chamber
exposing photographic colors
from a terrifying fate
out of an astonished painter
of the modern era
as an improvising revolutionary
of a poetic expatriate
in later sanity of expressionism
changing the stolen years
among the immortality
of banishment and sorrow
squeezing out in exile
behind the iron doors
with tomorrow's pure flashing
in red fingers and footprints
of disconnected times
covering interconnected images
surprising a deranged flame
of light dilated in his studio
staring on a pale canvas
which lingers to our time
into the night's signature
when storms are raging
in a destined discovery
from resentment of madness
transfiguring our flesh
into disobliging disguises
from memory's adventure.

GOING BEYOND TIME

Embracing tomorrow

after reading parts

of Julius Caesar

on the Ides of March

remembering in Italy

the newly baptized red sky

turning blue

going beyond time

as several birds in columns

arriving like Pasolini's

opening words to greet us
who after all is our brother too

as laughing tourists by the gates
and student princes
now starry eyed
read you out loud
at a Roman bookstall

remembering my first Latin lessons

in recognizing the roots

of these ancestral pockets

in a thin paper mache collection

from your knotted
own post-war faces

those poetry pictures 

from a rejected childhood

as tiny snow flakes

appear on the beach

rippling into a diary

of writing Thursday on a page

my hand stretched out

to touch the branches

now white with much joy

that the long winter

may be over my palm
in a third month finger of fate

from the stormy Bay rain

which drenches the Coast

walking on the sand

the sun flickers 

its first light of sailing

and intoxicates the day

which shapes our tongue

of verse's vulnerability

asking for wisdom

to make it through.

ANSELM KIEFER'S WORLD

Orange dancing chaos
of fingerprints from a painter
in the tuft of a visionary
from a sunlit studio
trampling colors
with wounds of hands
in images of spotted language
from angles sleeping
in his fiery eyes
about an abandoned history
besmirched with wounds
of war dirtied faces weeping
in a sponged cauldron
from a mortuary of the voices
in an iconic shadow
recognizing the spells
of elemental rootless journeys.

HEARING

Hearing, like me
seagulls off the sea
by window gardens
opening in springtime
from secret signs
that only nature disguises
from sparrows over branches
once filled with ice
from March's muffled breeze
flooded by scintillated light
when our early clouds
of shrill loudspeakers
from bird feeders rise
in sky bright reports rejoicing
when anticipation
of the time moving
forward with a lost line
of an unnoticed seasonal change.

IN THE LAND OF NOD

No one expects Cain
here in the land of Nod
for Abel is slain
but all realize now
it is more than a fable
to be in exile from God
not even honorable Abel
expects a good sacrifice
as far as one can tell
who speaks to angel Michael
in this chapel and neighborhood
as religion passes to Nimrod
now in a tower of Babel
each telling their story
in their suspected private Hell
full of purgatory and trial
waiting for His glory
and the rising of the dead.

MARCH AT FALL RIVER

Taking a story book
created into song for flute
and chorus
composed at school
for my aunt and niece
along with an eclair
ripened fruit, cheese
a honeyed croissant and java
we had deliver along the banks
of Fall River
with a please and thanks
for a blue ink cloudless sky
in the cool air
as the wind rises off the water
at my once anchored kayak
is now ready to float
searing by the sunny ocean docks
we paddle away at an early hour
by the silent warm dew and rocks
cradled at the shore's back
by tiny crocus, wild flowers
and muddy roots of phlox
praying to get out to help
the invading embraces
of a Siamese cat
now caught by the branches
at a dawn's mirage after a storm
in this obstacle course at sea
drinking in a boiling brew
from being thirsty
in our phantom banquet
as we put the cat on our knee
I'm asking for a napkin
when my eyes are with allergy
in a nature's whirlwind abyss
while asking my laughing company
to take a camera's snapshot
needing a miracle's graces
with no curfew at supernatural powers
to wake me up new
in a half baked sun and view a series
of red painted leaves
sinking under the Bay
on the open boat sea
thinking of lotus blossoms
in a still-cloud painting of Monet,
now with the clocks pulled ahead
by one feverish hour to share
our bread along the bent river bed
on this wonderful reunion
preparing our clear padded shades
over the sludge by weighty docks
of once carnivorous blue fish
gathered by rusk rations of bread
unloaded from Portuguese sailors
we wish for nothing less
than a reflection of Poseidon
dressed in street clothes
for our protection over the seas
which only a fortnight ago
had ice-cold deaf leaves here
among the Evergreen trees,
and ask the masked god of deities
to be with a chorus of nymphs
among the garden snakeskin
while a blackbird flies by our hair
as if I'm in the brightened Himalaya
with radiant Phoebus riding on air
shines as an only a next of kin
I'm offering my family a vibrating line
in a text enlightened from Baudelaire
among these entrails and flying birds
yet trying to answer all mysteries
as butterflies obliviously float
over the occasional sludge
and yet we see a right whale
on our right side by chance
knowing only poetry has an answer
to the daughter and son of Melville
who wishes to decide a cadence
and summon up the visionary Muse
who is clever enough
not to lose a grudge
yet fulfills our questionable words.

ANTHONY CARO
birth March 8, 1924

Encountering your marble
in various cities
at a resemblance
of mirrored stone
shaping our world
recalling insight from impressions
from you named in sculpture
as a visionary shade of my memory
always surprising at your tall pillar
as a moving dividing limb
into a phantom body appearance
in a museum's echo's entourage
along a dissonant corridor
becoming a silent walled composure
into a precision from his courage
of glimpsing a space of frame
in a future silhouette's eternity.

MONDRIAN IN MANHATTAN

In his studio in Manhattan
Mondrian unfrozen by jazz
in orange and bright red
art soothed the wildflowers
in the canvas space
lined with new drawing
of an overheard perspective
in phantom dreams
turning on silence in patterns
from the  pale tree's shading
three birds on the window
remembering your Dutch landscapes
of paintings consolation
in childhood memory
from a lassitude of the earth
to color from your soul
when the fingers of time return
alone to touch others
in shadow of a cornice
of well being.

THE SHRINK OF THE SUN

Not for any landscape reason
except of blessing
do we think of our reservoir
being filled with showers
as birds lean on our roof
from our picture shadows
of a wintry shortfall
yet through the words
of my daily memoir
the shrink of the sun
has ordered two full days
of rain to quench our thirst
and allow us a first drink
in the spring garden
with a spouting water fountain
on the Coastal cities
on geyser seas of the plain
from Triteia, daughter of Triton
and companion of Ares
we are sometimes sinking
deluged within acres of flood
we ask the ancient mariner
for knowledge
as only Coleridge could give
of our loss
when the fishing is greater
in finding his albatross
searching for red salmon or cod
followed by a hook
of sound barriers catching us
by the rocks off shore
praying for a bountiful catch
from the fisheries of God
as a large tuna strikes the hull
by an ocean's secluded nook
suddenly a hump backed whale
slides by Florida manatees
and dolphins to be rescued
in the noontide of the Keys
or from our islands of Encantadas
in a memory of expedition
with imagination's whale
from a troubled venture
in a youthful cry to sail
taken out of Melville's logs
as an exile in a lotus position
runs out of breath and monologues
to save a true nature's quest
by native sandy sea creatures
in the lung of language
not knowing our map's direction
we are not yet prey to showing off
for the tongue's offspring
asking only to have a request
by swimming along
the motioning high tide
with a wellspring masking guest
stretched out as a labyrinth ride
over aimless wires of useful oars
to save so many mammals
from environmental enemies
on both sides of the foggy shores.

MARCH CROCUS

Now that the spring air
has a signal to us
on the Manhattan lawn
by the calyx of my imagination
turning on brownstone to green
now that we listen intently
to arias of Bach cantata
of a local chorus on the radio,
always in the same dream
to press in on the friendship
of a twenty year distance
with the window open
to smell the sky blue sea
along the Atlantic's divide
when kindred hummingbirds
will answer on the trees
and we wrap our initials
on them as a love bracelet,
now as an allergy of pine
opens our nostrils wide
to swim by Whitman's children
by the orange vineyards
exchanging our sleepless eyes
like an old love in the orchard
hides our minds
to give us another chance
traveling toward the statue
of a risen poet Emma Lazarus
on the island of our horizon
and we ask for the first dance
of the yellow crocus
sparkling bright as gold leaf
prior to our listening in
we know a recital is to begin
on Elizabeth's grande piano,
here on a boat reading a letter
or whispering a prayer
to the winds breathless shadow
entangled by the neon butterfly
would appear by paper airplanes
shimmering from the sandy knees
of a dancing body on board
still aching with an Achilles heel
sprained from soccer
thrown by a boy and future bard
reciting Homeric odes
in the courtyard up to the clouds
of our buried pastimes
he with the voice of prophets
in the chilled abyss
of a consummate morning
soon my niece and nephew
at our breakfast nook
when rain has prevailed
is it still time of admittance
that every passing voice
has always failed
its listener's echo
that as we yearn today visiting
at the Metropolitan museum
waiting only for the paintings
of El Greco
thinking of my ancestors
who left Toledo behind
hurrying by the cold iron doors
now exiled to the four corners
of grandmother's shawl,
could it all have been worth it
the exiled peevish hours
all my years back bent
with words to bring out beauty
that only an artist recalls
gathering wild flowers
on the pastel holy walls
in a poet's painful early light
knowing even words
can be magnified
as we recall being abandoned
in our childhood's tangle of verses
yet we return to a melody
in our first reader's response
from our wintry slumber
telling my wanting relatives
who often visit Vermont
there may even be a bear
hiding at home trying to loosen
the bird feeder on the Elm
yet we are here in the Big Apple
when there is time
to be dazzled in a whirlwind
over the grey tongue of city smog
from high alighted buildings
we will still hear the metamorphosis
of this journey's dialogue
and with endurance, sing.

CHIA PETS

Those terracotta figurines
like the alligator
lizard, bear or kitten
we cannot help
liking you
bent to gather our thoughts
in our slippery animals
of memorable garden faces
making believe
that intoxicate an adolescent
monologue of conversation
on days of loneliness
seeking companionship
with a brief monomania
in our mother tongue
trading with a friend
in Pennsylvania
to initiate a private zoo
of an experimental
model imitation of mammals
from the morning nonchalance
viewed to different polygons
from our imaginations
in passing a geometry
of fur and hairy prodigality
opening up a new world
in the popularity of enthusiasm
you freely transpose our mood
from chimerical geography
to transplant us by sprouting myth
from another seed of kingdom
dislocating our own reality.

ALBERT GIACOMETTI'S GIFT

Standing next to stone
knowing your fingers
carried off memory
in hands circling
from blocks of the edges
of the raucous past designs
subject to padded form
moves on the edges
drawing our breath away
overwhelmed with metallic
tools of safe kept secrets
only artists surmise
in shadows thinking itself
of ashen shadows
in a thought in millennium
tones in a body's space
reduced to bare  the nerves
and webs to scintillate reality
to his fans surprise
from straddling spinal columns
of a surgically pressed pitch
destined to be immortal.

CARTOGRAPHY

The map is of a surrealist
you may not yet know him
from Adam by the closeness
of his walk returning to his roots
like a nameless plant of manna
the poet has returned to visit
a favorite painter Miquel Barcelo
born on his birthday Jan. 8,1957
yet he wanders in a nature preserve
with the turning of bed foliage
searching for a place to stay here
more quiet in a head- rest
than a Sunday morning bluer
than this island's Majorca's sky
you enter the museum
at the doors holding
a nature meeting
with la palma birds
of serra de tamuntana
in a daytime of escape
at a sleepless mountain peak
of an itinerant dream vision
by this well traveled soul known
only to a perpetual rumor
of his bite on the apple
with an itinerary as he tells
of his ancestors exile
finding a snake in the field
who will answer to the holy light
even with a smattering
of the Spanish Juan de la Cruz
knowing that this March earth
survived every winter storm
until now by the hallways
of the climbers moving through
the joyful warming
at city gate fountains
with water colors of Barcelo
illustrating Dante's poetry
of his "Divine Comedy"
will soon witness buds in the trees
for my words are from wellsprings
of an original heart and tongue
along the sunshine at noon
and rise to speak of love
into shadows of flickering stars
covering all the mysteries
by celebrating with a guitar solo
and sung with a bird chorus
dispersing tunes to the earth
filled with star dust of geography
that is always over us.

ATWOOD'S FUGITIVE SPRING

Margaret Atwood
lost herself
in new lilacs
by the woody banks
of the Charles River
on a faceless day
telling us again
of her new projects in words
that as your fingerprints open
from solitude
for ideas in this company
of wellspring poets
arriving like portraits
of metallic hosts
in a metamorphosis of time
to take our shares
into an abolished kingdom
embracing petals
to open us up anything
even nature's thorns
through nature's bird circling
by snow paths of coming back
a taxi rides by the Harvard club
after an award ceremony
with customary worth
bartering for warmth
to enclose your parting glances
by the Evergreen trees in the yard
with an understanding camera
matching up a photograph
of a nameless March at noonday.

PROUSTIAN SPRING

Paris let me laugh after
again watching the plays
of Racine as in my youth
along the riverbanks,
recover me from exile
when the world
wears a sardonic smile
of Jean-Paul Belmondo,
in "Breathless"
wanting to embrace
to say yes to the darkness
in the last seat
at the orphaned metro
the Seine implants my heart
with the new wave of thanks
holding up red roses and wine
for a double feature
waiting for Renoir's
"Diary of a Chambermaid"
to begin its showing
knowing I have a chance
to play out with friends
in my emptiness of a game
by the backgammon tables
along with the good company
of students with their backpacks
who ride by in yellow motor cars
one of whom knew me
offering this poet a day out
of connected nostalgia
that still stays with me
with my evidence of memory.

WHAT WOULD WHITMAN SAY

Walt sleeps on a train
making sure the snow is over
and Mayakovsky wants
his glass of tea,
there are a bunch of informers
inspecting his green card
whom the Devil tunes up
like nervous cats
with two round  sleepless eyes
in the hysterical round-up
from my borderline heaven dream
hearing the last whistle go off
as two children run away
to search for blue fish
in the icy waters off the Cape.

NOT YET SPRING

Not yet spring
by the Frog Pond
frozen by ice
the secretive wind blurring
me from the mountain air
by my bird fed sparrows
watching at a distance
when the sun in equal shape
bows near the sky cloud
stopping over the country store
for a blueberry muffin
by the Vermont lake
and later near my telescope
at my evening watch
hearing noise
in a barn full of kittens
the breeze on the porch
from my old poetry house
whirls up the yellow kites
in an open questioning ease
to rotate in a frosty breath stupor
when the cold snatches
my knotted red scarf
and the words of my mouth
cries out among Elm leaves
wishing for crickets to sound
dreaming of a peaceful hearth
mending all of us by the fireplace
in this cross country season
of my reliving youth now
in the identity of a guest visitor
from the quiet of a ski resort
as dogwood will soon emerge
with its leafage of my musing.