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DAWN STORM
Before-dawn rumblings foretell
macabre visitations.
Eerie flashes break sleep’s velvet black.
I re-lapse nod doze sink
Again the gods clear their throats.
I snap to attention.
But soft early rain melts
flows down the window.
First light vaguely permeates moist fog.
Too gentle to make a moment
when one says, "Now it is day.
Now the night is done."
Instead, ancient Chinese philosophers
bob and nod on yonder balcony.
Plant fronds doing obeisance to rain.
Politely rain pauses, recognizes oriental offerings.
Rosily clean bricks catch first easterly sun.
A proud moment.
Hard rain next begins in earnest
soon swept away by day’s firm light.
Emphatic efficient flashes
as if to point to superior effects.
Grumbling thunder rolls on by,
leaving new-washed city world.
Time’s Fool
How profligate, how ragged, is Time,
spending the days of my
life
no
longer my youth
all
spent and gone, lurking unseen
in the ghostly forests
of time past, site
distant.
Day after reckless day she hurls
into the void
mists.
I watch
my only, helpless
treasure
dwindling
gold, silver, jewels,
frantic to stem the flow
that hastily
swells to flood
heedless
of cost, avid to waste.
To halt, or slow, those ruinous
depredations,
however hateful
would be a crime
contrary to
nature.
Fervently I yearn to sin,
to warp
fierce
haggard Time as she curves in on her
precocious,
indifferent, changeless
changeling self,
greasy
strings of unkempt hair
soiling every new finery
until it
blends, merges reeking
with the ancient rags of Eternity.
I would change her if I could,
retard her
haste
subvert her
flow
conserve
her waste
-
but is that, after all, waste?-
hold her
panting to my breast
give suckle
as if she were my child
Not I her minion, her fool.
What Message
Trees flaunting their girlish spring finery.
A little overdressed,
say tongue-waggling skyscrapers
high above the park,
no sense of proportion and decency,
no reserve, no elegance.
And truly the gala frippery of cherry bloom,
the white gaiety of apple ill hide
the coarse black bark or skin
of crooked ancient debased limbs and trunks.
Each year out of winter’s dank cold womb
erupt these curious blooms
as if to taunt their squared-off neighbors,
and no sooner budded than overblown.
Maidenly decorum in shades of green
takes over, soon eclipsed by full-blown
pregnant, heavy summer leaf work.
Autumn’s fiery mid-life crisis
quickly blows over. Once again the
stripped branches bare themselves
shameless against winter’s ice blue stare.
All so puzzling. What are they trying
so hard to tell us? What message
is so urgent to repeat every year? |