USA

sforacle@hooked.net

LI PO IN THE BURBS 

Yes, I am Li Po 
wandering in exile 
yearning for a lost 
and forgotten past.

I turn to books 
of the spirit but
I hear only whispers
from the deep.

I wait for the leaves
to fall from the branches
of sidewalk trees.
It is already late October

but they are only beginning 
to turn into flames, flutter 
to the asphalt and disappear before
the thunderous winds of leaf blowers.

The Blackbirds with their shining
black feathers and needle beaks 
wait for a cookie crumb 
to fall from the sidewalk table.

In the parking lot in front 
of the Golf & Tennis shop
I find a penny glittering, beaten 
and bent by the tires of SUVS.

Last night I watched a Polar Bear 
dying of starvation as the melting
of the Arctic glaciers breaks up 
the ice bridges to its hunting fields.

I heard this morning 
that Arafat and Barak
stared at each other across
the table without speaking.

At least they could have begun
by cursing each other’s mother,
then hugged and said I’m sorry
as we teach our preschoolers 
when they push, whack
or bite each other.
But they come from schools
of righteous indignation.

Insider’s are making fortunes 
as stocks drop, betting
on the future spread of its losses 
between today’s high and a future low.

Chevron and Texaco are merging
into a vast black pool of profits
and I can’t even find a hut to rent
as greed slithers into every room.

My friend have deserted me 
behind their fastidious walled lives.
Neither love nor friendship can withstand 
the barrage of economics and dogma.

I have taken all the elixirs 
and though I have been immersed 
in the unity of it all, I am swimming
in the icy waters with the Polar Bear 

Yes, I am Li Po 
wandering in exile 
yearning for a lost 
and forgotten past.

An Email From Terra

She reminds me in an email,
silent as she was, that I brought 
a red rose to her 35 years ago 
when she gave birth 
to her daughter, Araby.

That rose rings through my mind 
but I can’t bring it back.
I remember her wondrous 
wide eyes, and her quietude.

Harry Monroe, her husband,
telling his stories of Africa 
and the distant seas of WWII
deep into the night, 
like emeralds mined 
from an inexhaustible cave,
they flamed from his mouth.

Terra became pregnant 
growing from a slight woman 
to the vastness of a goddess.
I never knew what lay behind
those eyes, what thoughts,
what fears or judgments.

The rose and its petals gone
until she mentioned it.
I search the molecules of memory,
the libraries of my past.

My hand cradles my forehead
as the young man in the Café Trieste 
cradles his infant baby in his arms.
Could she be wrong? 
Was it someone else 
who brought the rose?
Did I ever see Araby?
Did Harry hold her in his arms?

The Rose Hole out of which
everything comes, 
a tunnel through time,
bringing back a world
I have forgotten.

The intensity of her eyes 
creating thunderbolts.
She seemed so lonely: 
first adored by Harry
and then scorned.
He would speak of her
in the third person 
nervously, as if 
the great warrior feared her.
She would stand silently 
watching through exploding eyes
until she went mad 
or was over-drugged.
The submission to his poetry
too much for a sensitive soul to endure.

The rose she remembers,
the rose I have forgotten,
only one red rose
that no longer exists, 
that I try to recreate 
from the broken neurons 
and dispersed chemicals,
from its soft petals, its leaves
and thorns, its stem
and its enduring perfume.

She lives on a five mile long sandbar
jutting out onto Lake Superior
outside Duluth, Minnesota.
Harry died in bed,
listening to Rush Limbaugh
abhoring his life as a poet
leaving those who his words touched 
alone with the memory. 

© All Copyright, 2000, Allen Cohen.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.