USA

meuel@batnet.com

LAKE CLARK PASS, ALASKA

Gathering speed, 
our tiny plane grazed 
the milky green 
glass of the lake.
Then, with the mountains, 
we rose.
High enough 
to look straight 
into the breaking waves 
of glaciers --
frozen oceans --
pouring forth
from one mountain pass
after another. 
Close enough 
to spot 
two Arctic swans
as they drifted
in a lazy
glacial melt.

AFTER A FOREST FIRE

Thick clouds envelop
hollow blackened trees: 
white silk
over cold remains.

HARRY TRUMAN
(Mount St. Helens, Washington)

"You couldn't pull me out with a mule team," 
he calmly told the world.
"That mountain is a part of Harry,
and Harry's a part of that mountain."

I read his words in the weeks and days 
before the mountain blew.
And later, when I saw the ruined land,
I thought about him first --
the robust, rum-drinking 83-year old. 
Who shared a name with a President.
Who loved a place even more than life.

OBJECTS OF DESIRE

He liked his women 
digitized. Svelte 
and silent nymphs 
who smiled back 
at him from the hotly 
colored links. Perfect 
women. Woman who 
never'd think of saying 
no.

DANTE'S VIEW
(A Scenic Overlook above Death Valley, California)

I.
He ended his short life quietly, 
just breathing fumes from the fast car 
that no longer gave him thrills. 
They found the car in a redwood grove,
a place where sunlight barely touched. 
And, at the cemetery, 
his mother cried his name
until her throat 
wouldn't let her speak it anymore.

These far-away thoughts return, 
strangely near, 
as I stand between this wrinkled rock 
and that dusty, smirking crow, 
as I peer down upon a stillborn sea of salt 
and up into an endless stale haze,
as I consider the absence of life
on a scale I can barely comprehend.
Is this the kind of world he saw
in those last two desolate years?


II.
We grew up together, two boys 
on the same blue-collar block. With others,
we played football in the street. And together,
his certain arm and my hungry hands 
connected over and over and over again: 
our eyes crammed full with afternoon sun;
our cheers as sharp as rifle fire.

These games were gone forever
when he came back from the distant war
with a wheelchair that took the place of legs
and eyes that darkened summer days.
His arms were just as certain, though,
and sometimes he'd use them
to jolt his chair up on its back wheels,
a cowboy on his outstretched horse.
And, as I clapped, I could sometimes see 
the sunlight sneaking back into his eyes.


III.
With a parting "caw" from the smirking crow, 
the view that never went away 
calmly reasserts itself,
the haze before me clarifying,
the salt below me nibbling at my tongue,
the silence all about strumming in my ears.
Then, as I turn away, 
the sun taps lightly on my cheeks
and I walk down this hill
and back to a life 
already twice as long as his.

In the huddle, he often told me 
to go to the right 
then break for the middle. 
I seldom looked back until I was there, 
eyes up, watching his pass soar 
then sink 
like destiny 
into my hands.

THE CHISOS BASIN
(Big Bend, Texas)

And here it is, 
a vast earthenware bowl 
stained green with high-mountain pines
and rimmed with stout red-golden spires
that frame the desert 
all about.

And here they are, 
petulant black bears 
whose ancestors swam the Rio Grande
then walked for miles in gnawing dust
before they climbed into this bowl
and found in it 
a home.

And here I am,
tonight a neighbor to these bears 
and witness to a sorcerer sun 
that turns the pines into hovering ghouls
and spires into bleeding thumbs
as deftly 
as it fills the sky with stars.

© All Copyright, David Meuel.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.