SOLSTICE,
(DECEMBER 21 2016)

On the lucky hole
in the solstice of 2016
at winter's equinox
a poet is ice fishing
up in Vermont
with an awesome scare
of a continual sorry dream
before first light
is lifting from the fog
near the homecoming lorry
doing exercises
and a basin wash of my gear
in the Bay
by my anchored kayak
after a nightmare
amid a week's rain
in liquid silence
at the sky's softened amnesty
waking out
of a rudely continual dream
turning  out in my blankets
in the hall
after sleepwalking
and sight reading
from a Mozart score
all night
in my overalls
at this open cloudy hour
now listening to the radio
of Horowitz piano playing
in a nocturne of Chopin
my memory carries
that music inside shadows
of Warsaw
when this poet visited
the ghetto to lay flowers
and pay my respects
without much language
at the memorial
and then back in Boston
wrote a newspaper editorial
to dovetail my grief
in my brief life span
then sharing
an Andrez Wajda film
"Ashes and Diamonds"
by hosting a class
of Asian students
with their abandoned unbelief
at the Second World War
wishing to emulate a hero
from the encore and echo
of history's worst nightmare
in a cursed time
of mass murder and crime
yet we are plaintively
here in the cold air
watching a  lively flight
of a rookery
delightful cormorants
diving into the cold waters
swim toward us
along infinite streams
of enfolding dunes
of greensward tall grass
and sand dunes
soon it will be spring
with some brothers
or sisters boasting
others rejoicing of surviving
in a French, Danish, Dutch
as a New England winter
passes by
now watching at my art bench
from my one open eyelid
the radiant sunflowers
to blossom
with June crickets
and moths,
or playing catch,
or again reading
Nabokov's "Lolita"
while like St. Francis
feeding the tiny birds
embracing a dry day
when we can
and catching butterflies
from a chrysalis all around
with no more snow flakes
to be found
drawing down
another dawn time
of a speechless absence
in my art's perspective
find my barely touched
yet chosen sculpture
of skill for over a year
still covered over
with a silk cloth
hidden and now revealed
in the frozen attic
of my retrospective culture
from one concealed eyelid
as I'm listening to Massenet's
opera "Thais"
at an open window sill
then playing my own riffs
on my alto sax
when famished
and almost murdering
an almond croissant
assigned and finishing
this semester's term paper
of reading Hegel and Marx
feeding and devouring
a bagel and salmon lox
having a vision of Paris
reciting Baudelaire out loud
with an imaginary albatross
nearby watching larks
and Sylvester the Persian cat
wanting his milk
or a sand piper bird
hovering to sing by the shore
with embarrassed regrets
like a ghost of Hamlet
and at a loss for words.