FRIENDS WHO HAVE PASSED

This January third
taking poetic inventory
in taking up my word
interrupting my history
on this reading bench
in my sound proof studio
not forsaking a cup
of Russian kvass
up to my chin
feeling at loss
of poetry's friends
who have passed away
this year
trying to say cheers
in spite of their cross,
maybe you have not heard
of our loss,
let me fill you in
as we're feeding the sparrows
some French bread
by my snowy shadows
outside my studio doors
of my reading room
hidden by a shade
on snow flake windows
as we awake
to remember the dead
in this library
whose poetry and portraits
will always
be on my hallway walls
as love calls me above
by mirrors of my skin
away from chaos
as this year begins,
like Alexander - Volpin
son of Sergei Yesenin
of blessed memory
the famous son
Russian poet and dissident
who was at Boston University;
it is also a semi -centenary
of the French surrealist
and my mentor Andre Breton
as a critic wrote of me;
and already missing
the Beat poet David Meltzer
who loved books on loan
and from his own library
of the San Francisco
Sixties Renaissance
we also bemoan;
Ida Fasel,
born with a pencil
opening in her wise hand
rises from her first breath
and unwilling to let go
at the time of her death
who loved Faulkner
and Milton
of "Paradise Lost"
who wrote as a Puritan
so beautifully to atone
as a breather of phrases
about either Heaven and Hell
as Ida Fasel's pencil
at last crossed her paper
at the death knell;
John Berger
a well known
and well bred English
art critic also has departed
who was advanced
our understanding
Picasso's surreal art
as part of his dialect
and Marxist dialectics
to persist and resist,
but we go on like a swan
chartered on my map
from my kayak
I'm soon be back on the lake
under the red sun
near the Charles river bed
to celebrate with bacchanals
at the birthday
of Edgar Allen Poe
who like me born in Boston
also in January
B.Z. the eighth, Poe the 19th
when we awake at dawn
out -of -doors
even out among a labyrinth
of meteors and stars
or trudging through the snow
by composing lyrics,
panegyrics, elegies or epitaphs
near my studio windows
over my piano's music bars;
and all I ask as a poet
is not to be selfish,
separated or complicated
in this late metamorphosis,
but to be relevant
not tied up in knots
or to be outdated
by my dressing room
of past gloom and doom
or guessing at lasting
mournful shadows
but to realize what is up
not wishing to be confessing
as a scornful Hamlet
whom I played
and directed on the stage
but to live and love
above my circumstances
to summarize and share
at my age and deposit
from a task of language
and not to be a stiff
but out of my closet
playing solo jazz riffs
on my soprano sax
as I'm in a still life
trying to relax
watching "The Prisoner
of Zenda"
by my self-portrait
on loan
in my own artistic agenda
as an avant-garde poet
play writer,essayist
novelist and surrealist
as a bard at Cambridge
here by Harvard college
being supportive to create
at the strongest tree of life
to walk in forgiveness
in all branches of knowledge
supporting all who are free
by listening to birdsong
on my call of vetting words
and following
my rapid glances
on my computer
quoting Neruda,
"Love is so short,
forgetting is so long."

IT'S NOT EASY

It's not easy
in a legacy
to combine history
with the literary elan
of a novel's plan
but Umberto Eco
and Doctorow
succeeded
in their celebrity span
like Osip Mandelstam
whose birthday
is this January
all in a shadow slipping
by the Neva
from their hour
are now gone
but not fallen
like pollen in the breeze
from a spring flower
near the birch and Elm trees
but alive in their words
discovering the red-winged
blackbird by river beds
or at the search and urging
of a swan who survives
by my cello playing
a dirge from memory
or this melody
of Saint-Saens.

JEAN GARRIGUE'S MEMORY
(1929-2005)

A punctuation mark
of tribute to Jean Garrigue's
memory still intrigues me,
in a clearly articulated
and matriculated originality
opening a dramatic invitation
in its literary high bar
by a poet's by-laws
of cultural high gravity
cannot darken any natural spark
as a free agent for poetry
in her revolutionary shadows
going beyond all boundaries
attendant to auditory miracles
we cannot ignore
her beautiful an a-historical
less mechanical way
of performance
from an ethical resonance
in an upheaval of renewal
no one was better than Jean
in our age of
"Partisan Review"
with a mature dramatic ability
from her mirrors of elegance
at her out of doors
natural mind
in mid century span,
I'm also another poet boasting
of her almost Elizabethan elan
depositing grammar
in verbal language
onto the dictionary scales
from fictional forms
like an emerging Persephone
of a mature language
into a mosiac of musicality
to sing and storm in a chorus
for us backed
by a contrary
human power and elegance
in memoirs of observation
from the flowering essence
of Jean's Garrigue's
gorgeous lyrical echo
not any other twentieth
century celebrity quite lik
her  song and solo,
as I'm opening
her arbitrary nature poetry
from a liberality
conceding her long suffering
from a domestic policy
reaching out in my library
of arts and letters
that I read her annually
every first day of January
each year opening up
her poetry iconoclastic way
to mirror her better sensibilities
who, like me
adored Chopin, Proust
and Keats
in a mature way favoring
the far country
over the tops on mountains,
and the city stops of Boston
and going out on the sea
until she ultimately
finds and fulfills
her own unlikely identity
and timely legacy.

JOHN MONTAGUE PASSES
(1929- 2016)

The mature Irish
nature and nationalist poet
who composed
extended lines of sequences
as John Montague
passes away
this December
born in Brooklyn
we remember
his poetry pieces
and solo harmonies
hearing verbal echoes
and liberal assonance
met Robert Penn Warren
John Berryman
and Saul Bellow
by an academic chance
lived and died
in Nice, France.

THE DAY OHUVA DIED
(1948-1916)

We all cried
feeling helpless
to wail the night throug
when Ohuva Ozeri died
this December
but blessed to remember
and hear her as she sang
"The Flowers of the Valley"
in Hebrew
this former Yemenite woman
introduced by the Indian
drummer of Ravi Shankar
of the Bulbul Tarang,
Ohuva Ozeri
a pioneer of Israeli music
and a composer on the banjo
combining African,
Indian and Yemeni
Arab and Asian melody.

OPENING DAY

Hearing "Sweet Caroline"
on my bleacher's seat
opening my luggage
switching on my razor
reaching to shave
at the Red Sox game
facing off with the Athletics
a soccer manager
and poetry fan of bz
whose sickly daughter
now recovered
once majored in my class
of Chaucer's Middle English
and later Shakespeare
we knew young Bella
and her medic fella
from Cape Cod
who gives me a shout out
and Hank offers me a toast
and handshake
for God sake,
with Vermont maple syrup
griddle cakes,
a spinach croissant
and a saucer glass of wine
with my thankful satisfaction
offering me a better ticket
in a great space
to view the action
at the dug out on third base
unfortunately was my reaction
to sit near her kid,
named Stanley
with a hockey letter
on his name tag
who simply won't behave
snugly hiding in the crowd
nagging and screaming
loud words in the corridors
proudly with bad language
as he makes his way
out of the doors.

IN THE ADIRONDACKS

After December hunting
for grouse,woodcock
in a meal of venison

and remembering to take

his medicine
at five O'clock

the clever Boston poet
puts on a Prussian blue blouse
he received at Christmas
jacking up the car
takes his racing wheels

for a ride to the Adirondacks
and Ossining
in a New Year's meltdown
of nostalgia's memory

anonymously checks back

to anchor his orange kayak
by the huge Evergreen
when he shields
a cat from a field mouse
near the public park

and reading Basil Bunting

while feeding the birds
in the darkness

yet he wide awake

crawls into his parking space

and kills a crawling venomous
timber rattle snake
trying to lunge at his face
puts on a radio tape
of a late Bach cantata
through the shadows
of the first light sun
scraping off the snowflakes
on my windowpane
it seems
someone has been
cyber hacking anonymously
the music of a Brahms
violin sonata "The Rain"
he's memorizing
to be playing at a chamber
musical recital
next Wednesday night
at Carnegie Hall
now he's realizing
it's already first light
and time for bed
taking a camera
selfie to picture
himself instead
in the car mirror
seen ordering
a morning take out
and murdering
a Spanish omelette
the poet vanishes
in the shadows
and escapes a bullet
of Russian roulette again.