Adirondack Chairs

They remind me of cottage country
Of Andrew Wyeth the group of seven
Of the Allman Brothers and barbecues
Of being sun high and sleeping late
They are sovereigns of the garden
They are old lovers and friends
When Adirondacks face water
They’re engulfed by the scene
But can catch a sail and even dream
Relaxed by nature they invite
Contemplation to be at ease
On a beach they sink into sand
And seem to settle all demands
They can grow old together
And keep company in any weather
Sometimes you’ll see a solitary chair
Where the moon comes to rest
On the dock of its own tears

Photo by Brigitte Ala

Qualia

Thankful for autumnal insights,
They open nature’s windows and doors
And like leaves, invite themselves in,
And even blow across our floors.

Thankful even for the fruit that falls
And for the absence in the distance.
I know springtime by its perfect recall
And fear no evil now or in nonexistence.

Photo by Brigitte Ala

The Cyrillic Wars

False friends fight to the alphabet’s end
Brothers muffled on roadsides
Soon to be cognate in ice
Parsed by the grammar of days
Fate covers them in common ash
They’re familial only as information
They listen for the drones and moan
They’re muted by a shared gun
And then washed away by time
They’ve broken the bread of flesh
Into language and starve
Laying waste to the present tense
A battlefield of Cyrillic characters
Mangled like twisted smoldering alloys
Wars begun in shared languages
End in babel and begin again

In Memory of a Friend

RIP to my old friend,
Too many stories to attend,
Late night discussions,
Love life repercussions,
Readings and road trips
And memorable quips,
Surviving a fire bombing,
Living for poeticizing,
Other wild and surreal times,
A few misdemeanor crimes,
Hilarity and sadness,
A touch of divine madness
That defies death,
Friendship its frozen breath.

Two More Athletes

Jan Železný

The world needs Jan Železný,
His javelin to travel far,
Launching us beyond belief,
Exhausting the possible limits.
We need his Olympic records
To remind us that, if not greater
Than our ancestors, we can be
Superior to our own average.

Toni Turek

A football God, Toni Turek.
He caught the winds of fate,
Pushed ball lightening over his bar
And smothered fires on his line.
The miracle of the miracle at Bern
Was that a human being
Intercepted information,
Replacing an instant for an instant,
Editing headlines and history,
And like a time traveler
Waking far from where he slept.

Marsh Madness

More alive than a landslide
More brimming than prairie potholes
More eventful than a carnival
It is all the wings that keep it afloat
All the dragonflies that drive it
It’s a sea bound by old poetries
The single vine of multiple waters
And mother of all nurseries
It’s the face of migrating flocks
With reeds rioting for the sun
The hive of every insect alive
Like a water lotus and pod
It’s the blazing before brumation
The hunger before the torpor
The carp that swallows the moon
Before its resting state in hypnotic cold

Apple Orchard Art Class

Paint the cider you taste
With a tint you create.

The golden delicious
Should ripen on the palette.

The brushstrokes
Ought to flower into fruit.

The composition
Must bare transition.

The rot at the core
Nature itself will restore.

Lastly, give the picture
A reason for being,

A return for all the beauty
And for all abundance.

A bushel, ladders,
A human shadow, an answer.

Old Men

The world’s come to an end.
Old men killed my last friend.
Old men hide what they hoard
Like goblins encrypting gold.
It’s a myth that old men are wise
That’s more or less a fool’s guise.
Truth is grandfathers go insane
As though panic shares a mutual brain,
And even with incontinence
They seek control of continents.
They brag about their health
And inflate the value of their wealth.
They talk tough but shake to the bone
When the grim reaper’s on the phone.
Old men wage real imaginary wars
With everyone except guarantors
And by killing those they don’t know
Add microseconds with which to oppose
The long night of their own souls.