First Father’s Day
When one day you sing independence
as you must one day
if I am a father worth a damn
This will remind me of one other day
when you were content
to fall asleep rocking in my arms
singing songs you learned from the angels
before the first fall of the Morning Star
First Monday in March
1.
I probe this ash heap for an ember
As I might search the keyboard for a song
Can I revive? Dare more than to remember?
Who could have dreamed that Winter would drag on so long?
2.
But Winter was a season, not a destiny,
A passage, not a final resting place.
No one is more surprised than I
By this upswelling light and greenery.
Having faced death, I now stare life full in the face.
* * *
3.
Cobblers who worked by candle light
Commemorated this first March Monday
With a festive rite.
That afternoon, the master would invite
His staff to gather for a roundelay.
4.
The tradesmen traded toasts and laughter
As master overturned his glass to drown
The Winter work light block candle — Thereafter
The sunshine, ever climbing to the rafter,
Would light their work — and pathway home before sundown.
For My Grandfather
The boxer with the shattered hands
knows that his hitting days are through,
and yet rage boils hot in his blood
and there is fighting yet to do.
Opponents cannot knock him down,
no referee can count him out,
but he stands powerless to punch
and force conclusion of the bout.
He takes a steady rain of blows
with hands hung useless at his side,
while bleeding from his battered nose
and from his lacerated pride.
He does not wish the fight to stop
and flat disdains a saving bell;
he craves the use of his two hands
so he can send his foes to hell.
Please do not jeer or pity him,
or minister his bleeding head,
and neither judge nor sympathize,
but help him heal his hands instead.
For the Children
from Persephone
Shall I gather you as flowers —
Beautiful within my arms?
Shall I watch you pass like hours?
Or wonder at your sunlit charms?
Flowers wither with the Winter —
But your beauty cannot fade;
Hours pass me without laughter;
Charms lose lustre in the shade.
So I shall gather you as children,
Beautiful within my arms,
And we shall share high hours of laughter,
Magical as any charms.
The light we make shall be our own light —
Without objects, without ends —
Save that we shall feel within it
Warmth, my sweethearts —
Love, my friends.
From the Depths of this Hollow
From the depths of this hollow
I can see
the deeper depths of this hollow
and the canyon rim above
where the sunlight leans on its forearms
peering over the edge
into the depths of this hollow
So where are the others? the light asks.
You are not so entertaining by yourself.
You just sit there.
There never were any others, I reply.
I am not here to entertain anybody.