Why A Free Bird So Often Sits Silent

The free bird has made skyfuls of mistakes. 
From the nest it once flew 
straight into a glass window  /   pane, 
knocked by a semblance 
of light love advancing to join love in flight:

Thump! 

Fall down.

Pause for reflection. 

Give it time to pass, this 
wordless reality as of trees 
crisscrossed with experience. . .

Air coming back into body, lightness 
withdrawing with stars, something remains. 
Value. Discernments newly earned. 

Learned. 
By pinfeathers. While it sits 
with its quills. Reconnecting its brains. 

Sing, you cities, for the wild geese!
You cannot match their flying terraces 
of raining flowers, the rhythm sections 
feathering unamplified; you honk
but with less music, you soar
but with less harmony of fellowship. 
Breathe the order of these delicious clouds 
and let our songs blend with this autumn 
chorus that is fading with sunset. 

Sing for the geese!? They waste not a wing 
flapped for poetry, nor for one stroke 
which does not fly. Being born 
their own books, they traverse stairways 
and arches of pages tilting horizons 
and letting your earth pass beneath them.

 
Of communal singing by the girls of glorious Delos 
and of how they sounded to their hearers, 
Hesiod wrote: 
      “. . .each would say that he himself were
singing,
      so close to truth is their sweet song.” 

How we yearn for the clear, concordant voice 
of unified democracy once more in our halls. 

It would be good to hear the truth again 
spoken in one language for all sides and levels. 
But when, as now, so many half-truths form 
to blatant lies and fine words masquerade foul 
weaponry and deceit, we need to try the balance 
not of one man’s shameful deed and human 
frailty against our high ideals, but set the scale 
between him and his enemies’ full detail, 
though fine and honorable persons are they all, 
all to be humbly venerated and effusively praised. 

Yes, enemies in truth, for friends like these to our 
republic have taken truth and split our tongues,
splayed out our great words, each in two directions, 
one a silent echo, another of noises loudly public. 
At issue here is Justice. Shall it be just ice 
to powder snow in the eyes of a populace? Or 
shall one insist forms full of malice must be false? 
For, Justice, being blind, is warm and wise in more 
true understandings than of mere, empty robes 
in which words, bent to ill use, reverse meaning.

    Simonides, who could sing 
    in writing better than he could strum 
    has died of old age. We think you should come, 
    we bury a king. 

People assume so much 
about humanity and natural feeling. 
They insist on standing 
to be counted with their arms and legs, 
to stand or fall on an opinion 
of who and what they are. 

It is not bad to be nothing; 
it is active and wholesome. 
Since nothing does not exist 
it does not stick out 
to be cut off from truth 
by something else. 

What but a mind of nothing 
could discover Epimetheus 
stealing water from the Springs Of Lethe 
to carry the gifts of drink and cleanliness 
to man?  In the realm of nothing 
all Islam and Israel are one. 

                *    *    *

To view the sunrise on snowfields 
or watch a fieldmouse work; 
to walk the ebbtide strand barefoot 
in arm with friends; such things 
add blessings to remembering; yet 
I am grateful if the sum be tallied 
in what I will forget. 

  A spray of red plum
    Extends pink bloom from white fog 
        Hiding the gnarled branch

 
Down from their craggy slopes the bighorn sheep 
descend sheer valleys from the blizzards’ deep 
icedrift and chill hardshift of unstopped winds. 
The magpies greet them as long absent friends, 
tonsorial murmurs in their raucous throats, 
pecking for vermin through their woolen coats. 

More like mule deer than other sheep or goats 
the bighorns move in snowsoft ways of sleep 
among blue evergreens each cliff defends. 
May there be hope such drifting never ends. 
May they find mountain grass and foothill oats 
and cougars light as shadow when they leap.

 
He was a lawyer in the larger world 
who had rescinded worldly time to dwell 
on small town universals near the land 
poor farms and village grange from which he pearled. 
He had the vision for contrasting well 
with worse and better in folk’s tensely planned 
but mostly tragic effort just to stand. 

He was our Dante in that rural hell 
where freedom was the heaven most desired, 
yet whose dead denizens could only tell 
those views of history the elm unfurled 
where cows lowed in old meadows newly wired 
beside a graveyard of those helped and hired 
who left the town past which Spoon River swirled. 

 
Serenely the swan floats on that mirror 
Where under its images move dark minnows. 
Quietness makes the images clearer 
Until wind rustles the reeds, Antinous. 

Where under its images move dark minnows 
Only the lightest vibration shows. 
Until wind rustles the reeds, Antinous, 
The white swan under the dark cloud glows. 

Only the lightest vibration shows 
The lie of water beneath one swan, 
The white swan under. The dark cloud glows 
In rings around reeds the wind has drawn. 

The lie of water beneath one swan 
Concedes old snags in lake-bed mud. 
In rings around reeds, the wind has drawn 
A ripple of lenses into the flood. 

Concedes old snags? In lake-bed mud 
Dead roots of vanished trees reach rocks. 
A ripple of lenses into the flood 
Turns a flashed vision of paradox. 

Dead roots of vanished trees reach rocks? 
How do you know it, Antinous? Why 
Turns a flashed vision of paradox 
On a surface made wholly opaque by the sky? 

How do you know it, Antinous? Why 
Quietness makes the images clearer 
On a surface made wholly opaque by the sky? 
Serenely the swan floats on that mirror. . .

 
These are the turkeys of Moctezuma, 
roosting in moonlight, silver of edge, 
clucking above the turquoise puma, 
in dark oak trees beyond the sedge 
of the Lake of Moctezuma. 

Of purple and bronze, these brazen birds 
ignore the fearful likeness in blue rock 
and louden silence in the park by night. 

These are the fan birds which delight 
Emperor Moctezuma. No flower, therefore 
from near them take; and pole 
        your barges softly from the shore. 

 
Let us slip off together 
when the feet are lifted 

Vanishing into our larger nature 
we return 
when the feet descend 

Often, one after the other 
we form and reform 
yet never are we apart, 

never are we separated 
from that which perfects us, 
from things that recreate us 
and give us recreation, all those 

who joying in our touch, our being, 
take comfort 
from our letting go

Slender as sickle blades the outspread wings 
swoop sunbeams where a busy gnat-cloud sings 
the rank-edged pasture by long-shadowed trees. 
Grasshoppers, butterflies, humble bees 
attract the swifts whose suddenly darting flights 
drop, buzz the field, and zoom again to heights. 

The “common” swift of Europe rarely alights 
except to nest; all other needful things 
are done airborne. Mounting a twilight breeze 
to roost on wings they rise in twos and threes. 
Then, through their wide-horizoned, updraft nights 
they ghost, half-sleep, the watchful rest of kings. 

 
She was a windlass of collected calm, 
a spinning 
line on a reel of fine tensions 
wound to a single strand evenly turning 
to a drum of steel. 

She smoothly cranked. 
She clicked. She hummed. 

You felt her 
thumbing the line as she let it out, 
she could take you in a little 
or all at once 
let you out. 

If you felt a tug in her motion 
you knew you were hooked, gone 
from the old stream forever 
if she put you in her creel one time 
and took you home to dinner. 

If she so much as panned you 
you were cooked. 

And if she threw you back 
you probably died. 
 

Yawl In A Gale With My Best Girl 
 

Calm seas lulled us ex-cursionists all day to sleep, 
now rising waves talk all night with the boatmen. 

The battlements of cities in the clouds at evening 
threw lighning from Siam to Yucatan, flash, 

a riverfall of drums abounded over the water 
of a holy day sail, O, sheet, I’m homesick 

for the purseful suffice of a blasted moonscape, 
going to lose my wealth and keep your distance.

So still is the lake this evening 
the city line and salmon sky 
double and down on the water lie 
one half deceiving. 

Visual music composes 
a score of waterfowl that fly 
counterpoint across an eye 
lake air reposes. 

Each minnow and tiny insect
opens a ring that smooths away 
impact from any point where they
intersect. 

Traffic around the lake 
revolves a coronet of glitter 
making reflections reel, the litter 
and city quake.

So clear a source of peace 
as this may never long endure. 
Twilight blacks out with a pure 
and dark release. 

I hail the uninhabited dimension 
    that inhabits all we see. 
Hail to the uninhabited dimension 
    whose invention is you and me. 
Hail! To the uninhabited dimension. 
    That clean infinity. 

 
What strong and faun-hoped youth, interrupting a
breath 
where deeply drawn your breasted physique retires, 
now courts you where your roses widen 
reeling beneath an impulsive thrusting? 

Thrown overboard where most inexplicably 
you would reserve your dignity more in bed 
than dust under stones in the river bottom, 
does penetration improve at each thought?

        How dares the cave mouth frame an enchanting
view! 
        Let none enforce rude tedium. Properly 
        they woo upon rose petals well strewn, 
        dewily wed in a power most fair.

Miner, Take Your Pick

Struck to the core in one eye? 
Divine punishment!  Obviously, he saw 
too much, too deeply, insufficiently 
guarded himself and others from the brute 
force of perception. Or--he saw too little, 
too often looked askance of truth 
and shunned the depth of wisdom 
for shallow sensation. O comedy! 
Laughter quivers in silent 
balance: the insolent alliance 
of equally tragic halftruths!

 
Past need for conquest, my unquenched desire
draws me to such rare signs of thought in speech
as yours, in which true beauty bares its fire.
If I declare my heart, it does not reach 
to wreck your long most-cherished settlement. 
Now, there’s the matter! If I end my case 
before this sonnet finds a sentiment 
more worthy of your face’s lovely lace, 
then Campion is right. Its need for rhymes 
extends my wing beyond its worthiest wind, 
and if our values are the same, our times 
waste in excessive saying, friend to friend. 
But, here’s the couplet! We, uncoupled, are 
as one star to another, from afar. 

Claude played his music and then wrote the chords
serenely on a moonlit shaft of keys.
Stars glimmered through those thoughtful ivories
resounding in ten thousand fine keyboards.

How silent was the night that formed around
the delicate crescendo from his heart
as audiences harkened to his art
before applauding with such heartening sound
as said, I love you, darling Debussy,
angelic I, of filmy gown and glove,

who slips them whitely off and like a dove
stands into flight with clapping hands.  You see?
You see by what strange strategems we love
and yet avoid the simple melody?

You know the power of disordered things. 
You know how Things are powerless, out of order. 
You know how power, in disorder, rings 
As too much breath will, blown in a recorder; 
How each reminds of turning up the gain 
Of a loud, bad speaker by a microphone 
Where no one has a choice but to remain 
Yet every person present feels alone. 

Scream and a whole room screams! But merely moan 
And the world gives voice. Nothing however insane
Can absent itself by choice. Nature has grown 
Dependent on your pleasure and your pain, 
But, you? You’d shatter it to blare your voice 
And court destruction just to hear your name.

My life’d been narrow, sordid, tedious, tawdry,
poor and banal; not to be repeated;
by small turns noble, vulgar, thoughtless, bawdy. 
Yet, I’d met “The Muse.”  I had been--greeted.

That made the difference.  I felt part of greatness
in old forms, yes, and lasting.  So I stood
the crazy-quilts of life, half-loves and lateness, 
bore gaff and guff as if I wore the hood, 
cloaked and berobed in clerkly, bookish care 
for more than seems to move the average Dan 
to sense what works of life in truth may bear. 

So many years acquiring--beans.  Each can 
I had to climb out of to reach the place 
where I see what it means--to own a face.

Since looking at the cloud I could not see
my eyes died, optically, and I
was false, in my impression of the rolling sea
which grew depressed in mimicry
and flew as I turned bric-brac on the shore
evading all dull issue evermore.

Outraced, I hurricaned;
the column rose a moon above typhoon
and, capping, turned and rained
in furious volume on the burned lagoon.
Then I knew what it was to be disdained.

Ah, my old flame, how you could frown!
The sea rolled in on my vacuity
and thundered up a dense gratuity
of ships thrown upside down
seen there no more. Then some newsboy
brought you half-toned official joy,
though I was fishes left to drown
and, opened out to sun above,
burdened at last with nothing but your love. 

 
   Chinese warhorse, lightly prancing 
to the beat of silent drums, 
your shining mane upwaved by vanished wind, 
neck archly curbed and nostrils flaring 
as if nerved for the nick of battle 
            through the lines of time 
    beyond the great frontier, 

past Ordos, Altai, Balkhash. . . Samarkand, 
as far as 
near to the sublime 
you march, persistently as shade, the skylight 
glancing on either side 
with lively equanimity 
from those blank eyes of jade
which greenly view eternity: 

For one, unfettered moment, banners flew; 
strange pipes of perception played;
the iron gates of identity clanged wide 
and we strode on our way! 

Yet, here we fade, 
bewrayed and woed, 
                                 fastened 
              to these pedestals, 
each in his respective case, yours 
made of glass, and mine reflected, 
retrospective, passing 

                               face.

 
Waves of the tide foal shoreward 
smoothly green gilded silver by the rising 
full moon that falls back in the ebb of our prizing 
as we stroll forward. 

People perceive what their soles 
appoint as appropriate for them to see. 
Wide lens or narrow, the shutters will be 
flicking past holes. 

Troop clouds of grey and steel 
    silver the rain which leaves us blue; 
a stroke of lightning before dawn 
    repeals even the lost fawn 
huddled woodenly in the wildrose-tangled 
    stone-tumbled pandemonium at wood’s edge 
in the first ray of our fielded blood. 

        Oh, hail: to stand here rooted 
    in the ground. To grow however lowly 
        slowly forward as the thunder 
    rises in us, on us rising, till the sun 
        explodes the dazzle of our colors 
    fully  shown across the green; fully seen 
        across the groaning ground, our 
    scarlet spattered under storm-bared trees. 

To hold our ground against that wind 
    and spread by seed, a generation taken 
to advance two miles. To learn our arms 
    as leaves in falling, from experience; 
to draw our drink and sustenance from soil beneath
    our feet, our mouths!--- 
To take our deaths out of the scythe that rips the
wheat 
    and yet arise, to bring 
life to the air, again, again! 
    To raise our heads with a dark center 
and grow light as petals flying to--no cover 
    from the sun at noon--every one a purple heart,
a Croix-de-Guerre! To 
    lose our petals, yet no more than lean 
until our hard capped heads go dry that were 
    as milky pods a while ago---then reaffirm
that we have small round seed to spare 
    and share it widely with a burst, a falling 
thrust that plants us----in your unborn tears 
    with honor and distinction, for all years.

Here, on this ground, where war turned in the balance 
      we who rose and fell paid that war's cost as just 
although our cause, "the war to end all wars," was lost.

 
You have two grown daughters and three 
handsome sons, professionals, all.

Long hair neatly coiled, still kept jet black
at sixty, you look thirty, porcelain smooth 
your face, delicately touched 
with light makeup, your body 
silken and slender, curved as a noble 
pair of tall vases. 
                                 You speak five
living languages and read in three more, 
you know the classics of East and West, 
you have good degrees in anthropology, 
literature, history and art. You understand
children’s deep needs and always respond. 

          You smile and the sun seems to rise.
Poetry spills from your every allusion, 
each gesture rich with thought,
a voice like cool water. 
You are gracious 
to everyone, 
you give 
dignity to the place where you are. 

When I breathe your presence I hear music. 
Your look smashes my eyes with wisdom 
and softness, your being. . . breaks me down 
to my knees. Or it would, but you keep me 
balancing little dishes on them, your fine 
china sweetly filled with exquisite divergence! 

In two dimensions, facing on the air,
my back against the wall, condemned to bear
attention only monthly, twelve times a year, 
confined within a corner of my square
I am a number on a calendar. 

Unfocused at the windowpane 
first thought there were gnats whizzing through my
room 
instead of birds flitting out there in the gloom 
through the chill rain. . .

Can we say we truly revere 
the whole circuit of truth if day and night 
we must show the whole world only the light 
that we hold dear? 

As we view from this high prospect 
the breakers, why do we not discern 
the morality of the way they return 
to make whole what they wrecked? 

Each comber shatters and quails;
yet what remains subsides to inform 
the next calumny-prizing, implacable storm 
which indifferently rails. 

O tragedy, not to learn 
more than enables one to repeat 
what in previous searches his heart beat 
to come over and spurn. 

O comedy! That the wind 
forsaking waves it inspired across shelves 
robs them of being such highflown selves 
as must condescend. 

On and on, past bearing, the day’s abuse wore
swiftly bright, dark quickly to death for times passed

loving men now absent forever; Sisters, 
holding together, 

Suffer less past joying in partial sensing, 
ravished friends, lest toying become impartial. 
Let our least tried longings impart a tensely 
tender resurgence. . . 

Having shared high vows to continue forward,
blending new found wills to a hopeful future, 
gather strength, Fair Family, leaving old dreams
flowing in ripples. . .