What Would It Be

to be the queen of goats,
to know that the other does recognize
in the bearing of your horns,
the curve of your ears
that the content of your coat
has more value than theirs?

Sorority sisters vying for titles
and crowns, frat brothers combed
and carded after Saturday scrimmages,
their worth silently dependent
on the fleece ranging among granite
boulders of Kasmir mountains.

Each nibble of grass, each touch
of muzzle to a chilled stream,
warmth transfigured in a commercial
array of sweaters and coats, slacks
and scarves, neutral nature subsumed
in purples, magenta, and sunburst gold.

What would it be to be the goat
that year after year sacrifices
companionable fleece, intimate fibers,
to the intrusive burr of the electric
shear, naked to spring winds and rain,
not knowing the value of cashmere?

Brogues

 My Dad placed great store in his wingtip  brogues.

Paid a weekly quarter for the shine on those brogues.

Thin laces, rounded with wax, tied in  firm bows,

Cordovan, rich brown, the sheen on those brogues!

Silk socks, stretched tight in corpulent rows

Above lacey leather holes in the patterned brogues.

So many feet standing firmly  where good beer flows

Men who treasure the cut and last of their fine brogues.

 Almost a secret society whose handshake no one knows

These men who prefer the intricate design in their brogues.

What an outrage--the turns the fashion runway shows

When the dignity of design is stolen for women’s brogues.

Potatoes

It's all his fault!  Had Parmentier                           

not taught Europeans to eat potatoes                   

American teenagers wouldn't be fat.                     

They'd still be slender as snakes                           

slithering through dew-dawn grass          

to drink at  favorite watering holes.                                               

                       

The Prussians played their part in this black hole

in American experience. When Parmentier,

was captured  among the leaves of grass

of the Seven Years War, he was fed potatoes,

the fare the French fed their hogs, snakes

tempting their porkers to market fat.

That captive never forgot the fat

that saved him in the dark prison hole,

not even when clerics raised their snake-like

heads and denied  the pharmacist Parmentier

the right to garden potatoes

among  his other vegetative grasses.

As inevitable as the persistent grass,

the French caught on and voted the fatty

tuber edible. Ben Franklin even ate potatoes

as the guest of this mad scientist with a holy

obsession.  Wishing to convince, Parmentier

lured luminaries far and wide, snaking

his beguiling dishes into banquet halls,  snaking

his theories into mass production.  Like the grass

that sustains herds of  cattle, Parmentier's

efforts put fat

on famine-starved ribs, filled the holes

of 18th century stomachs with les pommes de terre.

Mashed and baked, salads and soups, his potatoes

left the table of necessity to swim in vats of grease, snakes

made crispy over flaming holes

withering Whitman's grass,

adding pounds of fat

never envisioned in the dreams of Parmentier.

Now, American culture is holy super-sized on French fried potatoes.

Wouldn't  Parmentier be surprised to know that he became the snake

in the grass duping a generation to fatten likes hogs for the slaughter?

Straws of a New Order

What’s the purpose of a scarecrow

in a cucumber patch?  Does it provide

the young cucs a secure environment

to grow in cucdom?  Does it provide the crows

a centering purpose for their lives? An idol

to worship?  A place to gather, to rest their claws

before descending for the kill?  Do they hang

out boasting of the cucumbers they’ve seen,

the delicacies they’ve sampled in gardens

of the world? 

And what does the scarecrow think

of himself?  Does he dream of gardens

beyond his own?  Wish that he could select

a new jacket from L.L. Bean?  Meet a mate

on an evening date?  How would Facebook

change his boredom?  Provide connectivity!  He’d

give all the straw of one arm to be able to send

a single tweet.  He knows. Yes, he knows
that at best he is the limit of one man’s imagination,

the fragments of cloth no longer valued.

His  creator worked in the vacuum

of his culture.  He was locked into mere craft

that replicates the images of his race, incarcerated

in stock icons. He will have to jimmy the lock, tunnel

beneath the cell, steal the the key to open rusty hinges

if he is to escape.  Somehow, he’ll have to kindle

a new fire, burn every scarecrow, serrate his eyeballs,

pluck them out of the shared illusion of his race.

He must sacrifice more than a dozen crows
if he hopes to gain the edge, to broil his task 
over the flame of artifice.

Rust

"You need a new wheelbarrow," my neighbor remarks

watching me trundle my shallow, rusting

cart to the curb, orphaned limbs and sticks

protruding like morning hair fresh

from an unmade bed.  "I've a better one

that a friend brought for our yard sale."

I'm not impressed.  He doesn't know that when

I lift the handles, the weight shifts

from my hands to those of my father sleeping

beneath the debris of a Missouri winter.

He doesn't know that this handcart

carries the fragments of my mind, the tributes

housed in the rubbish of winters turned

to spring, similes and metaphors waiting

the right poem, fractured lines

of hyperbole and hope, alliterative alleys

of childhood discards.  How could he see

beyond rust, the sonnet reclaimed? 

Jeremiahs All

In almond trees and boiling pots, the word

            of poetry finds it womb.

From the imperceptible breath

            of photosynthesis, carbon

dioxide and water mystically melded,

            oxygen generated, released.

The heat of growth breathes and bubbles

            in the cauldron of creation.

Cool winters dream the seeds, fruit

            releases from its pulpy uterus

like water escaping from a cylinder in vapor.

It's the transformation that calls us,

            the energy ignited in changed

molecules, the sudden event we neither

            perceive nor understand.

God brushes our mouths with finger tips

            transfiguring halting words

into language of nuts and stews,

            roiling and frothing,

the initiation of thought and idea

            making us Jeremiahs released

from the paralysis of infantile speech.

The Voiceprint of the Seer

Huldah. Huldah, the king’s trusted seer,

a mother-figure beyond any doubt.

You spoke with an authoritative sound

and set the pattern that men would follow.

You recognized a sacred source for what

it was and had no fear in giving voice

to its mandate, its insistent voiceprint

on your mind.  When Josiah needed a seer,

you were happy to provide the  king what

he needed.  You knew he would have no doubt,

would recognize the one  that you follow,

would heed  the message of God you sounded.

You had watched him grow, heard the kingly sounds

of the man in the little boy’s voice.

Your life was being shaped to follow

the one who called you out, made you seer

of things others missed. Your vision enlarged, doubt

diminished, so that you knew what

dangers lurked in Israel’s future, what

idolatry would spawn, and the sound

of God’s anger at those who doubted

the power, the violence  in his voice.

Prophetess to the women,  a seer

they would recognize and own, follow

as loyally as the men followed

Jeremiah, his sense of what

was right and just.  And you, female seer,

did you ever question God’s certain sound?

Did you immediately know his voice?

Did you ever feel a slight hint of doubt?

For us, you ease every fear,  every doubt

we have when we hesitate to follow

the muttering within that demands a voice.

We look at you and we wonder at what

we might say, what new message we might sound

to those who wait the insight of a seer.

The  voices of reason are needed  when doubted

certainty reigns, and seers falsely follow

whatever treacherous tenor resounds.

Peacock Prophet

            . . . his head on the long blue reed-like neck

was drawn back as if his attention were fixed

in the distance on something no one else could see.

            --Flannery O’Connor, “The Displaced Person”

Flannery’s peacock stalked into her tale,

his prophet’s eye evaluating the scene.

His strut foretold that he knew the crisis

these mortals would face, the descending doom

on their unwitting heads.  He knew that the death

of the judge had ushered a new order.

He had seen his tribe decrease, reordered

to fit the widow’s distaste for his tail,

its reminder of a world where death

and life sought justice in a colored scene.

His night call sounded in her ear the doom

that lived just beyond the threat of crisis.

The priest sensed the answer to crisis

in the peacock’s display, saw an order

in the green-gold pattern of deferred doom.

He saw the sacramental sense of the tale

unfold through eyes that seemed dim to the scene

of culture-embedded stagnation and death.

But the women characters, bound to die,

calcified minds lost in their own crises,

were unable to change or shift the scene

that beat a rhythm of boundless order,

a set of events that formed its own tail

like some giant chameleon of doom.

Displacement, the common factor that doomed

each character and brought on grizzly deaths

to two, was the human lot in this tale.

Each person was made to face a crisis

in his or her sense of place and order

within that space.  But the peacock had seen

more than they could see.  His vision of the scene

was linked to a golden ideal that doom

could neither understand nor reorder.

Guizac’s work ethic could never match death’s

certain visit nor avert its crisis

for his kin in this parabolic tale.

Even Astor, whose life measured the tale’s

span by the widow’s three husbands, had seen

more changes than he could explain.  The crisis

of mutation beyond his ken, the doom

of displacement was like the knell of death

to his segregated sense of order.

When order was restored, the peacock’s tail

had escaped death.  The priest, still on the scene,

served the plumed mystic of doom and crisis.

The Nature of the Vortex

Richard Hartner placed his hand

on his father’s old gun broken to receive the shell

in its chamber, and thought of the life

that gun had known at his father’s side or pegged on the wall

by the kitchen door, obsessively cleaned, ready to whirl

into action each time the family needed meat in the house.

Richard longed to rerun his childhood trek to that house

the day he shot his first squirrel, its furred tail in his hand

as his mind spun with a mesmerizing whirl

of scampering fur stopped by the single shell

that penetrated the wall

separating life from life.

His father had taught him that to live

responsibly one must respect the house

of his birth, that this house was a  virtual wall

protecting all who lived within against the hand

of doubt and despair, a turtle shell

into which one could retreat when life began to whirl

out of control.  His father had plowed this land, leaving a whorl

of rich loam to incubate the seeds he sewed, the life

coaxed from its stubborn shell.

He’d felled the trees and designed the house

that he later built with his own hand.

In his mind, the land offered a protective wall

to keep his children safe from an alien world, a wall

that somehow connected him to a grand design, a whorl

akin to the print on God’s own hand.

An energetic man, he had treasured life,

but he hadn’t known that a house was only a house,

a shell

that could be crushed like the shell

of a terrapin crossing a busy street, its cartilage a poor wall

to fend off the metal monsters beyond its mind, its inadequate house

left fragmented in the road.  Richard’s mind filled with a whirl

of monsters of another kind.  His own life 

was reduced to the halting fingers of a useless hand.

That hand trembled as he slid the shell

into the gun’s breach.   His life had hit the wall,

and he could find no way to stop the whirlwind within his house.

Sestina for Suzanne

Suzanne has buried husband number three

and all her dearest friends have come to mourn

the pass.   The casseroles devoured, the plates

returned for future use. The widow plans

to be a model saint and stay away

from matrimony’s snare, to die to live.

For years, Suzanne has set her goal to live

within the rule of masculinity.  For three

and more have sought her hand and took away

her will to choose by her own lights.  To mourn

the passing loss of this one man, she plans

to move beyond her first  instruction--plates

and knives, crystal and linen cloths.  She plates

intent with golden hope, a wish to live

a life fulfilled where she takes charge of plans

and determines each move she'll make.   Her three

resolves are not to whine, nor cry, nor mourn

the passing loss of former self.   Away

she says to seal intentions plot, away!

In days to come, she drops her coins in plates

from church to  church while some devout still mourn,

and others celebrate the mass of live

and die hedonistically.  Of three

new aims--to go, to see, to do--her plans.

                                                    

Art galleries, plays, and symphonies, the plans

were carefully made to spirit self away.

To Asia, Africa, Australia--on  three

large continents, her photographic plates

record the camels, pandas, kangaroos—all live

evidence of cultural life for which to mourn

if lost to modern man.  She would not mourn

the loss of her own dignity.  New plans

she made to snorkel seas for fish that live

in freedom’s coves, to bungee jump away

from heights unknown, to carve her name in plates

of stone—to do, to see, to go—these three.

One day mid-mourn, she met a man.  Away

she threw the plans requiring license plates.

To live, number four was better than three.

The Flight of the Hawk

A sestina is a hawk, its distance

controlled by short wings

and long tail.  It’s the sprinter

among raptors. Flight beginning

close to the ground. Launching

from fence posts, it centers

its prey, spiraling downward, the center

a target distanced

only by the pivot of the launch,

the strength of the wings.

From the apogee of beginning

to the collapse of the sprint,

it frees the sprinter

for the growing definition centered

in startling beginnings,

distanced

understanding of the wings

of doubt and belief true to the launch.

The sestina launches

orbiting motion that sprints

to the core of unknown significance, wings

of character and dialogue centering

the delight of distanced

experience, a narrative’s beginning.

Each hawk repeats the rhythm begun

by hawk-fathers, time-launchers

whose wings have spanned the distance

of infinity, wings spread in sprints

that define and catalog the center

of conquest, the descent and ascent of wings.

Word wings

rise, their quintessence begins

to shape in relief the thought-centered

impressions that fly free from launching

emotions, sparks ignited to sprint

from the heart’s distance.

And so words are feathered wings,

their distance from time’s beginning

measured by the launch of their sprint.

Faulty Fences

“Your cows are in my corn,” Turner’s voice rasped             

over the party line, when my mother                                                

answered the three longs and two shorts, our call                 

to a community that bound us, wired                                    

us to the lives of neighboring farms                                       

as surely as fences that separated us.                                    

“Hey guys, the cows are out,” mother told us

as we came to table, our chairs rasping

against the linoleum on our farm

house floor, the tang of pancakes from mother’s

skillet more important than any message wired

across morning stillness, reluctant call

to work that could wait for the higher call

of pancakes, maple syrup set for us

as we pondered the gap in fencing wire.

“I’ll bet it’s down by the pond,” rasped

my brother’s changing voice, causing mother

to foresee blame in his view of the farm’s

fence, the sections repaired,  She knew the farm

better than we, knew its persistent call

to blame and shame, the ruth of mothering

our need to lay guilt.  She knew each of us

carried burdens beyond the fence that rasped

our minds, a metaphor of our lives wired

to haunt us for past action. Our  mother

was there when everything on the farm

went sour, when a gate we left open rasped

our father from the scene, beyond the call

of warning, target of the bull that robbed us

of father and younger sister.  Our mother

learned to cope with loss, to father/mother

us through those difficult times as we wired

our lives back together.  She provided us

the strength we needed to hold on to the farm,

but she could not lessen the guilt, the call

to blame that rose in denial and rasped

at our hearts.  Our mother knew that the farm’s

faulty wire was yet another dark call

for us to confront what rasped our souls.

Sestina of Betrayal

Miranda had known that Jason’s best friend

in college was the girl who lived next door    

to his parents in the small town where he     

had grown up, but the two had never met,    

and Miranda had long dismissed the threat.  

“Susan will be in New Orleans next week.”  

Miranda smiled sweetly, knees growing weak,

and waited for Jason to suggest his friend

stay with them.  Unaware the threatening

storm, he opened windows, unlatched doors.

“She wants us to know a man she’s just met,”

Susan eyed the receding hairline he

tried to disguise and thought how funny he

would look with his hair completely gone, weeks

and years of careful combing, eyes meeting

mirror, images bending like old friends.

An invitation was given, the door

flung open with no thought of  winter threat.

The couple arrived, and nothing threatening

could be seen in the warm welcome when he

stood with his wife at the wide open door.

But Jason would learn something new that week

about Miranda, her history of  friends,

and find that not only had she met

Susan’s Mike before, she vowed not to meet

him again, so serious was his threat

to her sense of who she was. Jason’s friend,

on the other hand, had been used when she

allowed Mike to come with her that week

to enter her innocent friend’s open door.

  

“Beware of the past!” warned the door

while the whistle of the wind rose to meet

the epiphany latent in that week.

Neither Susan nor Jason sensed the threat

that Mike posed for Miranda, a threat he

intended to fulfill with his former friend.

Mike walked through the open door and the threat

of Miranda’s past met the present.  He

became the weak betrayer of friend by friend.

Sestina for Fishers of Men

The village watched as Jonathan Siler            

cared for his mother, nursed her day and night.         

They saw him drop out of school, stop seeing         

May Johnson, the girl of his teenage dreams.            

While the village loved Mamie Siler, they                 

began to wish that Jonathan be freed                         

from responsibility, a fish freed

from the hook in its tender mouth. Siler

neither knew nor cared what others thought, they

were as remote from him as the stars at night.

For the first time, he could see his dreams

fleshed out in meaningful tasks, he could see

what others couldn’t, and in truth he saw

a life of ministry where he was freed

to give of himself.  Meanwhile, the town dreamed

of other goals for their young man Siler.

They looked for the stars and saw a dark night

when the fish wouldn’t bite the bated hooks they

dangled.  He couldn’t avoid his fate, they

reasoned, and there was no way he could see

what they could see.  They determined that night

that they would take matters in their hands, free

him from the curse of the only Siler

child.  They thought and thought and finally dreamed

up a scheme.  While the stars blinked, the fish dreamt

of bigger seas, Oprah was contacted. They

convinced her of the sacrifice Siler

was making, and she immediately saw

ratings rise as she provided relief, freed

this young man giving him several nights

to see Chicago, be on her show. Night

fell over this city but starlit dreams

masked the truth.  Well-meaning villagers freed

him from responsibility, but they

couldn’t prevent his mother’s death or see

what effect that death would have on Siler.

The stars in the night watched the fish as they

swam in and out his tortured dreams.  They saw 

that freedom for Siler would never be.

Sestina for Shelby with Apologies to Days of Our Lives

When Shelby left home for college that fall,

she couldn’t have known she’d never return

to that house, that town, that set of parents

or her old high school crowd.  Her romantic

sense of the ideal would forever change.

In university her mind would alter.

No questions asked when her alternator

went out causing her old car to falter

before she reached Atlanta. Nothing changed

her mood, caused her to think of returning

to the idyllic town where romantic

notions had been formed,  She called her parents

and waited for her father, the one parent

she had always trusted to come to alter

every problem she ever faced, romantic

or otherwise.  She never dreamed he’d fall

from grace before he could make the return

trip to Anniston to the wife he’d exchange

for a younger model who gave him change

for coffee on I-20.  Her parents

split the cloth when her father returned

but it wasn’t the father who altered

the state of her parents marriage that fall

day.  Her mother had her own romantic

adventure going long before romance

in that happy home had begun to change.

Shelby, too had some adventures that fall,

exploits that stood those of her parents

on their ear, despoiled the church’s altar

and left the town quaking at her return,

But there was no need for her to return, 

to live again within the romantic

bubble of high school life, haltered

and bridled by limits unchanging

or fresh rules hammered out by the parent

teacher association for kids each fall.

To have returned, would have virtually changed

the romantic direction of her  parents,

alter a college prexy’s breach that fall.