THERE ARE LEFT THE MOUNTAINS

Altissimum regionis huius montem, quem non immerito Ventosum vocant,
hodierno die, sola videndi insignem loci altitudinem cupiditate ductus, ascendi.
        —Petrarch

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you
as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and
the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn.
         —Muir

When I was alive, I admired the beauty.
Now, I am part of the beauty.
         —Jeffers

Her life was far too short, but wasn’t small.
We climbed big mountains and we loved like hawks,
Then fought like wildcats. We did it all.
Just try to fit that in this witness box.
We spent most of our honeymoon out hiking
The Kalalau trail to the end, where sand
And waves and folding cliffs were to our liking.
We read and walked and ate and loved unplanned
And naked in the sun. We showered under
Waterfalls and kissed beneath the stars.
We wandered where the blue waves broke like thunder,
Then slept and dreamed beneath Venus and Mars.
And that was just one week. Imagine all…
Her life was far too short, but wasn’t small.

Before we moved west, every summer we
Climbed different peaks on Mt. Desert, until
We’d done them all, or most. So near the sea,
Those little peaks can still provide a thrill,
Iron ladders bolted into rock,
Fierce krummholz clinging to the stony ridges
On Sargent, Pemetic and Cadillac.
We walked the carriage roads and old stone bridges,
Scrambled Penobscot, Champlain, Bernard, Dorr,
The Precipice on Mansell, Bald, Knight Nubble,
Acadia Mountain, St. Sauveur, Gilmore,
Norumbega, Cedar Swamp, North Bubble.
Maybe thirty. We did them together
In every kind of wild northeast weather.

And then we climbed so many peaks, oh, twenty-
Five and more around CB alone,
And eight fourteeners, in all seasons, plenty
Of other big ones, east and west, on stone
And grass and dirt and snow: Mt. Washington,
Italian, Marcy, Teo, Bear, Cement—
It’s quite a list. And she loved every one,
It seemed, more and more each year. She went
Higher, then higher, bigger, faster, stronger,
More and more confident, learning the ropes,
The steps, route-finding, how to pace for longer
Days, how to scree-ski down the steeper slopes.
The mountains were our passion and our choice.
I saw that love ignite. She’d found her voice.

We lived snug up against the wilderness
In a converted barn. We studied maps,
And in time learned up high you do not mess
With lightning. We skied corn and powder laps
On Coney’s, Ruby, Gothic, Cinammon,
Mt. CB, Snodgrass, and so many more.
That time on Gothic, so good, is etched in
My memory like a Dürer: we went for
My birthday in mid-May and climbed for hours,
Straight up the Spoon to hit the summit ridge.
Down in the valley there were little flowers,
Glacier lilies, lupine, pasque. The bridge
Across the Slate was almost underwater.
She ripped the great west gully like Apollo’s daughter.

She could name each flower on West Maroon;
She knew the secret swim holes of the Slate;
We skate-skied under January’s moon;
We went out early and we came home late.
We once made love on Axtell’s stony peak;
Got thundered off of Emmons and Cement;
Skinny-dipped Long Lake and Crystal Creek;
Got lost two times on Uncompahgre, went
Back for a third try, reaching the flat summit
On a bluebird day, fierce, young and strong,
In love with life. Yes, you can only plummet
From such great heights. So what? This was hér song:
She’d found her place. The mountains set her free.
I brought her there. She made them new to me.

Until the day he died, her father thought
That she was on some long backpacking trip
And would no doubt eventually do what
She should, and come back home. But she’d jumped ship.
She dwelt among untrodden ways…with me,
Who strived to know her as I could. Together,
We hiked up Daisy Pass and Avery,
We learned the rocks, the stones, the trees, the weather,
We saw the sun dapple the aspens on
The back of Kebler, cascades pouring down
Augusta, redtail hawks soaring Whetstone.
We skied Emmons’ Red Lady above town.
We kissed the sun on Wetterhorn’s great spire.
We lived in a high valley and climbed higher.

One time, 2003, Thanksgiving,
Me flailing in career despair, we flew
To Rarotonga, spent three weeks just living
As I asked the fish what I should do.
One day we took Jake, nine, to climb Te Kou,
One of the island’s higher points, a long
Trek for a boy, up roads, then through taro
Fields, then steep South Pacific jungle, wrong
Turns easy everywhere, at least a score
Of slippery, steep dirt chutes with fixed ropes.
Lost the trail once, lots of sidetracks, poor
Old blazes, boulders rolling down steep slopes
To a green cliff. We kept our wits. We found our way.
We made the summit, beat the rain. What a great day.

We hiked the windswept Scarp Ridge trail,
Belleview and Double Top, climbed to the sky
On Handy’s and Redcloud, learned how to fail,
To turn when peak fever means you could die.
Most of our friends back east just didn’t get
The way we chose to live, the way we took
Muir, Austin, Abbey, Jeffers, Ness, Belle, at
Their word, Dolores, Emerson, each book
A testimony we too chose to live
With all its contradictions. Leopold
And Thoreau spoke to us, and came to give
Not only words but how to be: wild, bold.
East Beckwith, Jenkins, Rustler’s Gulch, Garfield.
Until you’ve been, you don’t know what they yield:

Celebration of what is—on Wheeler,
Arapahoe, Greylock, Ruth’s, Matchless, Jackson,
San Luis, Gray, Wright, Treasury, Peirce, Peeler,
Sneffels, Adams, Castle—a field of action
Where you can choose to dance, to choreograph
A life among the planet’s harsh, high places,
Like Quandary, where her small, hypoxic laugh
Burst out Oh! Look! as curious long faces
Appeared around a corner munching grass,
And we skied corn under a cobalt sky,
Floating far above Hoosier Pass,
Giddy at fourteen-thousand-feet-plus high,
Indifferent mountain goats still slowly chewing
As we carved past, right then and there renewing

Who we could be together and became
When at our best, a couple caring for
Each other on a mountain. Every name
Here tells the story of a day and more,
Impossible to say it all and so
I write these words in lines, each hour
On each with her thereby inscribed to glow
Against the glorious heights. Come, Eisenhower,
Algonquin, Jefferson and Norwotuck,
Bare Mountain, Hitchcock, Evans, Mt. Holyoke,
And Baldy above Elkton, where our luck
Brought powder deep enough to make you choke;
Bring Boulder’s Sanitas and Green, and bring
The huts, Lakes of the Clouds, Madison Spring,

Mizpah Springs and Carter Notch, the long
Hikes to Cathedral, Silver, Copper Lakes,
To Oh-Be-Joyful Pass, Bryce, and the strong
Stomach that hiking Angel’s Landing takes.
Come, hiking the Grand Canyon pregnant, to
The Woods Walk, Moab slick rock, and St. Mary’s
Thin, dirty summer snowfield. There, there’s no
Imagination merely secondary,
But life itself, the living Power,
Prime Agent of all our human Perception,
Repeated in the finite mind each hour
Of the eternal act of the creation
In the infinite “I am.” That’s why
She chose to live that way until she had to die.

That day on Greylock, highest Berkshire peak,
That some say, wreathed in fog and frost and snow,
Inspired Melville to dream up a freak
White whale, she was still learning how to go
Uphill, so young and lithe and beautiful.
I turned and snapped and captured just a taste:
Smiling, slightly flushed, graceful and full
Of life, blue puffy tied around her waist.
Good God, those eyes, that love, that smile, the ring
New on her finger, looking up the trail.
Looking back then, now, I want to sing
Her life in such a way it cannot fail
To help good tidings flow to you as well.
This is the story that I need to tell.

One time we visited Peggy and Brooke
In Torrey, and Brooke, Em and I decided
To climb Mt. Ellen, from which you can look
6,000 feet down on the desert. Why did
We go? Why not? It’s beautiful, the high
Point of the Henry range. We parked and headed
Off to our goal, not far. The time went by
So easily, high mountain spine that threaded
Subpeaks and pines, wide slopes of klinky talus,
So big and stark, to that wide, rounded peak,
Where white swifts, aeronautes saxatalis,
Arced like rockets, seeking what birds seek,
Perhaps just food…but joy is also true.
Those other two have died. This is for you.

For you. To bring you joy. To show it lasts.
To call it out. Which is a call to bless.
So bless forever with me what time blasts
But with your blessing may not become less:
One day among so many, say, East Beckwith,
12,441 feet.
Parked at Lost Lake and headed up, the heck with
A trail in Middle Creek, scrambled a sweet
Low class-five ramp, three-point, loose rock but fine,
Gained the ridge, turned south, and there she was,
Well out in front, picking a perfect line,
My knee behaving as a bad knee does,
But my heart full. I met her at the summit.
Bluebird. Kisses. What a woman – she had done it,

Become a mountaineer. Now, Orpheus,
Look back in love and loss, the die long cast:
Avalanche Peak, in Yellowstone, just us,
September 9, 2019, our last
Big climb, her 55th birthday, day after
Our 28th anniversary, cancer
But NED for months, a day of laughter
And delight in rain and wind, our answer
To weather being, well, seems there’s no thunder:
Climb. She didn’t make the summit, weak
From drugs, but she climbed hard, and then under
Dark skies we turned back from that wild peak.
There’s more, but this is all you need to know.
Just do yourself a favor: live large. Go.

Remember it was Petrarch on Ventoux
Who first went climbing for no other reason
Than the simple fact he wanted to.
Let these words, too, aspire in such a season.
Let love, your love for those you love, your love,
Burn like the sun at fourteen thousand feet.
Climb through the meadows to the heights above.
Think that’s impossible? It isn’t. Meet
Your love there. Each day is a dying ember,
But by the time I’m done, by God, I swear
Even those stone-cold mountains will remember
Her name, and if they don’t…you will. I dare
You to forget her name and each sweet peak.
She’s dead. I’ll die. But we were there. Let mountains speak.

                              Return to Poems Menu

                  _________________

THE WOMAN IN THE ORCHARD

                 -- For Stephanie at 60.

She stands there on an autumn afternoon.
The branches are weighed down with crisp, ripe pears.
Each day before today had seemed too soon.
Perhaps today will lighten all those cares.
How does she sense the hour is right at last?
As sunlight still burns bright, she seems to know:
Now she can love the present and the past.
It is a way to hold on and let go.
Evening is still far off. The sun is strong.
“Good God,” she thinks, “I’ve worked so hard for this.
Here it is. Nothing lasts for long.”
Under one tree she suddenly feels bliss.
Now she reaches up and plucks a pear,
Then takes a bite, in love with life right there.

BLOOD, DEATH, AND DREADFUL DEEDS

“At last we have put all the knives away.
Everyone is tired of the past.
We want to learn what else there is to say.

We want to live to see another day.
We have decided not to live so fast.
At last we have put all the guns away.

We now can see this is a tragic play
And hope you, too, see we are all miscast.
We want to learn what else there is to say

About each other. Having learned to pray
For something other than a bigger blast,
At last we have put all the bombs away

In some deep cave where we will let them stay
Rusting to junk. On this we are steadfast.
We want to learn what else there is to say.”

If only that were true. But no. We flay
Each other, and the danger has not passed.
We want to learn what else there is to say,
But no one has put any knives away.

MEDITATION ON A HIP RESURFACING

The doctors all say “Let pain be your guide.”
That makes a lot of sense. If you’re in pain,
You realize this means you haven’t died,

You’re still ensconced inside your worldly hide,
And maybe this flushed swelling will soon drain.
The doctors all say “Let pain be your guide”

And smile at you as if they’ve never lied,
Though if you die they will have to explain.
You realize this means you haven’t died

Because it makes you laugh, though you have cried
In pain quite recently and will again.
The doctors all say “Let pain be your guide,”

And then prescribe narcotics which have fried
The pain receptors in your addled brain.
You realize this means you haven’t died,

But you’re so high that the last time you tried
Describing what you’re feeling was in vain.
The doctors all say “Let pain be your guide.”
You realize this means you haven’t died.

 

ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE
                  by Mr. Cuddles

I’m napping. Do that often, which explains
     Why some birds think I’m lazy or just drunk,
Though all I’ve done is lick water from drains,
      Milk from my dish, and into catnap sunk:
Nice day. I haven’t been listening a lot,
      Because my role in life is happiness,—
           Though while you goof around in those high trees
                 I am hatching a plot,
Lounging here in shadows numberless,
      To put an end to your full-throated ease.

Oh boy, I bet you’re tasty! That has been
    One of my goals my whole time on this earth,
To eat a nightingale’s good gizzards green.
    You think you’re happy? I’ll show you some mirth.
O, I’m glad you migrate from the South,
      For I’ve drunk from the feline Hippocrene,
          With mouse and bird guts winking at the brim,
                  And purple-stainèd mouth;
     You think I’m sleeping? I hunt you unseen.
          I’m not asleep. You’re just kind of dim.

Fade far away, dissolve. I won’t forget
         What you among the leaves have never known,
The wariness, the fever, and the fret
        Of killing little animals. They groan
Or chirp or squeak when my claws pierce their hairs,
    But I know what I’m doing and each dies;
         And I’m a cat. I won’t feel any sorrow
                  Or any dark despairs.
    For goodness’ sake, I’m going to eat your eyes,
         And then I’ll eat some more bird eyes to-morrow.

Away? Away? Good luck. I’m after thee,
         Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on four feet, with claws for poetry,
         And my quick teeth make birds look like retards:
Sing on. I’m listening. Tender is the night,
    But hey, the great cat queen is on her throne,
         And my desire to kill is not a phase;
               I don’t need any light,
And every fuse in my small brain is blown
    By thoughts of chewing you. So many ways.

I couldn’t care less what flowers are at my feet,
        Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalméd darkness, you’ll taste sweet
        For sure, and that’s the one truth that endows
The grass and thicket that I prowl, still wild.
   White hawthorn and the pastoral eglantine,
        Fast fading violets covered up in leaves,
              And mid-May’s eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
    Give me good cover on these summer eves.

Oh here I come, dumb bird. Yep, all this time
         I have been thinking of your yummy death,
Although I won’t call out your name in rhyme,
         No, you won’t even hear one little breath
Until you’re in my jaws, and then you’ll die,
    And I don’t care whether or not there’s pain,
          While you pour out your last sweet song abroad.
                 This is my ecstasy,
Not yours. I am a cat. Your song is vain—
    Your time is up. You’ll soon be just more sod.

You were born for death, you silly bird!
         My cunning moves are going to take you down;
I’m going to be the last thing that you heard
         When you stop honking like a loud-mouthed clown:
I’m after you. I’m up and on the path,
    Right here, beneath you, right here, near my home.
          There’s no escaping in some maze of corn;
                 These teeth are what I hath,
And I am going to churn your blood to foam
    And leave the other nightingales forlorn.

Oh, fuck! I forgot about the bell!
        My bell. I hope that you’re proud of yourself.
Adieu, dammit. I did my best. Oh well.
        You just got lucky, like some mythical elf.
You think I care? Nope. My desire fades
   Away like fog. Good way to live. This stream,
          Look, there’s a fish. Maybe a bit too deep.
              But look here, in these glades:
I bet there’s mice. Maybe I’m their worst dream.
   Or maybe I’ll just go back home and sleep.

                              Return to Poems Menu

                  _________________

THE BLUE AND BEAUTIFUL WORLD

What to do with ordinary life?
What to do with every lonely day?
It’s as if the whole world were my wife
And everywhere she lived has died away.
Youthful exuberance, well, that’s a thrill,
But just a dream and laughably untrue.
Thanatos has won again. He always will,
Leading all living things out of the blue
And beautiful world where the forests she
Walked through and loved, the flowers she could name,
Her family, her wilderness, her sea,
Her sun, her moon, her wind, her clouds, her rain,
May still exist somehow, somewhere, I guess,
Although now each seems less than emptiness.

I REFUSE

I refuse to let her memory
Vanish. I refuse to let the years
To come dissolve the joy and sorrow she
Decided she would share with me, and tears
Are not enough. I refuse to let
Her ashes merely settle in the flowers
Until I also die. I’m not dead yet.
294,000 hours
Were ours. Yes, I counted. I love
To count, to measure, making order where
None appeared before. She climbs above
Me on East Beckwith’s ridge. Cool mountain air.
I fix that here forever. This small thing I choose.
I’ll be forgotten. Who cares? I refuse.

 

AUNT QUEENIE

Two weeks before cancer began to beat her
Came her last turn on stage, Aunt Queenie in
Bell, Book and Candle at the Mountain Theatre.
It was as clear as day that she would win
Best Supporting Actress for the year.
Karen brought the plaque to where she lay
Crippled in Denver, wracked by pain and fear,
Courageous to the close of that hard play.
Most knew her as a dancer. Few had known
She’d studied acting. She was good before,
So graceful and assured, but as she’d grown
Into herself her skills became much more
Than merely skills. She’d enter, turn, then speak,
And everyone forgot about technique.

LET EVEN CYNICS

If there is a heaven, let it be
A place where dancers know the score and touch
Their fingertips together playfully,
Then step apart as if it’s all too much.
Now let them always once again return,
Set free in space and time by what’s in them,
Crossing the dirt, eyes bright, to prove the burn
Of loving with a mortal theorem.
Earthly in that heaven, let there be dances
Even when they walk, and eat, and dream.
There, let even cynics have romances
That show them things may not be what they seem.
If this exists and I get there, maybe
I’ll learn to dance at last, and you will dance with me.

SPARK

When the world grows cold, or maybe colder,
Because I know the warmth embodied here
Is less now that you’re gone and I am older;
Whenever I consider how big fear
Seems so attractive to so many of
The people whom I thought I knew, who talk
About their lives as if they can’t imagine
Love or gratitude become a clock
By which to live, I think on you and then
I see the world is, well, still pretty cold.
Space is mostly empty and again
And then again tells us what we’ve been told
Before. But look, here in the endless dark:
Here are the words, and there you are, a spark.

DIVINELY SUPERFLUOUS LAVA

The planet is indifferent and is fierce
Much of the time. Plants and creatures cling
To life, but blizzards, floods and lava pierce
Pretense. We watched pahoehoe spring
Once from Kīlauea in the park,
Sliding across a road, igniting grass
And popping as it oozed into the dark
And sighed. We stood amazed. The molten mass
Began to harden, so we left and walked
New, cooling real estate where nothing grew.
Then we returned together and we talked
About the wonder of the earth, the deep
Blue steaming ocean, fire, the deep blue sky.
Our marriage prospered in the mountains and
Rejuvenated on bright islands. I know why,
Although I also want to understand,
And words can’t show what such good gardens gave.
But bless: perhaps they can. Perhaps they have.

                              Return to Poems Menu

                  _________________

NINE POEMS FROM ORPHEUS LOOKS BACK

TO EMBRACE ME SHE INCLINED

Emily and I are in bed. We are naked but it is not sexual.
I am flat on my back, she is on top of me and we are kissing.
It is loving and gentle and so beautiful. I can smell her hair.
It is sweet as always just to hold her, to feel her against my skin.
My arms are wrapped around her. I can feel the length of her firm belly
And her legs, and my warm hands are slowly moving up, around and down,
Are rubbing and caressing her lithe back, deadly birthmark, moles and all.
But something seems strange. She seems a bit uneasy. Distracted. Distant.
Well, nothing too strange about that, I tell myself. I am calm, drowsy.
She was often preoccupied. She was often depressed. Often dark.
But today is different. And then suddenly I realize what it is.
“You’re not really here, are you?” I say. She looks me deeply in the eye
With indescribable sadness from an incommunicable depth,
Slowly shakes her head no, hugs me hard, and vanishes like smoke.

'TIS BETTER

My sons, these times are hard. You watched your mother
Take her last breath between us on the bed.
She fed you with her body and that body
Is now no more than ash and memory.
Now both of you must be as good a brother
To each other as you can, for here
We are, alive, together yet alone,
A tiny fleet upon a wild sea.
You know me well enough to know that I,
Despite a passion for the greater good,
Will not suggest to you our troubles lie
In winds we cannot change. Would that we could,
But that’s a dream. So, keep your distance from the rot,
But don’t obsess on whether love’s worth it or not,
Or what’s too much. So what if love’s a storm? Get caught.

BUT IF I DON'T, WHO WILL?

Not good enough. Not wild enough. Not sweet
Enough. Not long enough. Not strong enough.
Not wise enough, and no chance to repeat.
Not quite enough. Not smooth enough. Not rough
Enough. Not yes enough. Not no enough.
Not big enough. Not small enough. Not fast
Enough. There’s not enough space for this love
And not enough time now or in the past.
You think you know what’s coming but you don’t.
People are more important than ideas.
You think you will remember, but you won’t.
Not real enough, not pure enough, these words
Aren’t even false enough. Or true enough.
And now you’re gone, they are not you enough.

THE SECOND DATE

As the wreck of her once-gorgeous body
Drifted in a dream toward death, I knew
At that same moment our first kiss, the shoddy
Apartment where she lived thus turned into
Not only her place but the point in time
From which she’d work the rest of her life out,
The joys and sorrows, hard work, every dime
We earned and spent, our sons, our faith, our doubt,
And it came clear how then and there she’d made
The most rebellious choice of her whole life
Enthusiastically and unafraid
To help a man learn how to love a wife—
Though as I fumbled with her zipper and my fate
She laughed and said “I don’t do that on the first date.”

ONE LAST CHANCE

Most of my lovers, with my closest friends,
Have said they just don’t get it. And it’s true
I often said that what I planned to do
Was leave. Could not see how we’d make amends.
We broke our vows and marriage only bends
So much. It’s hard to walk far in one shoe.
And yet we limped through years as partners do
When there are children whose whole life depends
On it. Marriage is hard and ours was no
Exception. We both bitterly complained.
Then we were given one last chance to see
How what matters need not be explained.
I learned she couldn’t tell me what she needed, though
She needed it. My love returned and overflowed.
She let it. How strange: cancer set us free.

HAUNTED

This is how it happens. You buy steak,
And while there think about what else to cook.
You think “Potatoes would be good. I’ll make
Some roasted slices. I don’t need a book—
Oven at 400, olive oil,
A little garlic, pepper, salt, maybe
45 minutes on a sheet, or foil,
Check at 30 minutes just to see…”
And then it strikes you where you learned all this.
She used to sigh as you said “Then do what?”
And say “This is so easy. You can’t miss,”
Hand you the knife and with a laugh say “Cut.”
I turn the knob. I hear the oven start.
Now where’s that knife? Oh, here. It’s in my heart.

DINNER WITH MOSE

Jazz was not her thing but she was game,
Although she hated late Coltrane and bop.
When for hours I practiced the same
Bud Powell line she’d finally yell “Stop!”
Or start the dishwasher and leave the room.
I’d get up, turn it off…and keep on going.
Meanwhile, as I learned how to duck the boom
When tacking, what a plié was, and slowing
My mouth when it was working overtime,
She developed her own tastes. So when
Mose played Fat Tuesday’s back in ’89,
She said “Let’s go.” I know she liked it. Then
We somehow wound up hanging out. Late night.
Em was fascinated. He had killed it,
And she loved his hip demeanor, right
Down to the trembling hands. That hour? He filled it
With stories of a long life on the road.
Her molecular structure warmed, then glowed.

ORPHEUS LOOKS BACK

It’s not as though if he did not look back
The underworld would ever let her go.
Eurydice must always fade to black.
There is no other choice. I know,
You want her laughing, flowers in her hair,
Embracing him, suggesting they make love.
Who wouldn’t? So do I. But I’ve been there
And back a thousand times. I’ve learned part of
What’s going on in Hell is that it seems
So real. She’s present there, persisting in
Herself. She climbs obscurely through his dreams,
Alive, alive as she has ever been.
Now he hears footsteps on the path. She must exist!
He aways turns. She always vanishes like mist.

SHE WAS BEAUTIFUL

Good God, but she was beautiful. I don’t
Mean merely body, whose remains now sit
In a green urn. Only more, that won’t
Comport with simple motion and won’t fit
Inside the visible, shows what she was.
How to say that when I knew her as
I knew her, more than naked, all the laws
Of tenderness compelled me, as love does,
To love her as we slept within our flaws?
Elegant and tender spirit who
Chose me, in that one great rebellious act
Of your clipped life, I see you clear and true
Despite my blindness, gratitude intact.
You were a precious singularity
That I here submit unto eternity.

                              Return to Poems Menu

     _________________

TEN POEMS FROM ORPHEUS LOOKS BACK

IT'S MADNESS

These days it seems the madness is complete.
Obsessed with the impossible, I try
To make it make some sense. This is why:
I dreamed I had the crazy luck to meet
This girl so fierce and sweet she almost shined.
She made time stop and go. She made it fly.
She danced the truth of what it’s like to die
But also said to leave that truth behind.
She speaks my name and smiles, now she’s dead.
She gives me grief but dares me to a test:
“Travel the waste land where you’ve gone and curled
Up like a dog. Find my spring. Drink, though fed
On facts. Then—you can do this—write the best
Damn love poem in the history of the world.”

JACOB UNDER THE RAINBOW

You painted well, just as your mother does.
I keep the watercolor that you made
Of Jacob in the storming street because
It’s real, it’s true, it’s life itself. Things fade,
But not this memory: just one year old,
He wandered, holding his shoe, laughing, through
The door. We were preoccupied, and bold
As barefoot love he made for his rainbow.
“Where’s Jake?” you said. I said “He’s not with you?”
And then we both dashed down the stairs to see.
No Jake. The door ajar. We almost flew.
Now there he stands, with what you wrote to me:
“September 8th, 1995.
Happy Anniversary. I love our life.”

POSTCARD TO AN URN

A day so good it overflows the cup.
Last week’s rains have not ended the drought,
But the dust is down, the rivers up.
Now both sun and flowers are busting out,
The valley floor a mess of columbine,
Phlox, mule’s ears, lupin, bluebells, Queen Anne’s lace.
Politics? Whatever. Town is fine,
Tourists dropping coin all over the place.
Most poems are not joyful, because one
Of the defining qualities of joy
Is that it spends itself until it’s done,
As unconcerned with sorrow as a boy.
I am no boy. The air is crisp and clear.
Oh, Emily—your kind of day. Wish you were here.

SAY IT

When the sadness comes, what will you do?
You need a plan. For it will come, and take
You where you do not want to go, back through
The years to swimming in a mountain lake,
To kisses on a sailboat deck, to mountain
Summits ringed with quaking aspen gold,
To an old, rusty Venetian fountain,
To winter nights in Crested Butte as cold
As…no. No, let it come. Do nothing. I
Say yes. Yes. Yes to everything that was,
From orgasms to arguments, because
Any other move would be a lie.
I ask for nothing. Rather, let me bless.
Blessed art thou, who gave this to us.

A CURSE

Forgive, forgive, forgive, forgive, forgive.
That’s where I want to go, what I would do.
But there are days that, if we are to live,
We need to sow some salt to show what’s true.
God forgive me, I can do no less:
“You injured us, and did so at your peril.
I bless our love and curse your wickedness.
I’m undomesticated now. I’m feral,
As the one who held me back is dead.
So yes, I curse you and deny the lies
You told as she lay broken in our bed.
The curse: May you too watch as your love dies.
And when you die, may even Hell not let you near.
Be forgotten but for what I’ve written here.”

JUNE 23, 2020

In the photo on my desk they stand
Ankle-deep in Long Lake, Noah on
Her right, Jake on her left. A healthy stand
Of Engelmann Spruce rises dark upon
The far bank to an aspen-grove ridge where
Some small, unthreatening clouds drift down the sky.
Calm water muddies at their feet. The air
Is clear as glass, the way it is up high.
We hiked there, but in less than four months, she’ll
Be dead. One long, thin hand is wrapped around
Jake’s waist, the other is just visible
On Noah’s shoulder. I can taste the sound
And touch the colors. That’s what lovers do.
I will remember this forever. So may you.

MUSTANGS

This is so hard. And yet it must be done.
Because it is the truth. And love requires
Messy honesty. Which isn’t fun.
But beats the fairy tales told by old liars.
I’m not a jealous man, but it was clear
This guy wanted to sleep with her, and she
Was spending one full day a week more near
To him than in those days she was to me.
They’d go and do what I’d taught her to do,
Climb mountains, while I worked. I know that there
Was nothing more than talk. They didn’t screw.
But it was an emotional affair.
We fought. What she yelled made me want to die:
“Well, I have needs that you can’t satisfy!”

Well…don’t we all? Have needs that can’t be met?
By mother, father, sibling, child, friend, spouse?
I did too. And so a choice was set
Before me. Leave my wife, my kids, my house?
Hurt them? Or stay and see it through and try
To work it out? She couldn’t even say
What her needs were. Who wouldn’t wonder why?
A dozen years together. What a day.
I stopped the car and looked back at our son,
Just five, and made my choice. We all have needs.
I met mine. She never knew. It’s done.
But love is strange. Who knows where deep love leads?
Mustangs, we ranged where the shadows lurked.
We loved each other. God forgive us both. It worked.

I'D RATHER BE LUCKY THAN GOOD

In grief more cruel because the world is blameless,
I still cannot resist seeking a cause.
It’s stupid, but I want to know the nameless
Yet real reason she had to die. The laws
Should have been kinder, though that word, “should,”
Is obviously laughable. What strange
Tweak in the monkey brain makes us think good
Things happen if you’re good? We have to change.
No, luck is all that matters. Try as I
Might I can’t see how being more kind
Or loving would have saved her. What a lie.
This stuff can drive you straight out of your mind.
But here’s the thing: I rage and come unglued…
Why, then, do I weep with gratitude?

TEN YEARS BEFORE THE FLOOD

I dreamed she didn’t love me once again,
And woke in silence and a sweat. I had
Been trying to explain something but then
She turned and walked away. A line of sad,
Cold, dark, enormous waves rose up and dragged
Me through our ghostly house and out the door,
Surrounded by tsunami wreckage, jagged
Glass shards, some chairs, a bed, a piece of floor.
I floated, staring into nothing, lost
In sorrow and regret. God bless the muse
Who then descended where I had been tossed
And carried me away. “You had to lose
Your mind,” she said, “to learn how much I care.”
She kissed me then, and vanished into air.

YES, THERE IS SOMETHING YOU CAN DO

Imagine a vast desert. Dusk. We are
Alone, the only human beings there.
We don’t know why. It’s cool. We see a star.
We walk, at peace, embraced by gentle air.
A bird flits back and forth. We have heard
Its song before, somewhere. We feel no shame.
The snakes she hated are asleep. A word
Is on her tongue. Perhaps it is my name.
But I have learned the deepest love must be
Unrequited in its passionate
Pledge to another’s solitude. You’re free
When you see that. Can you imagine it?
The moon comes up. Love is everywhere.
Imagine Emily and me, together, there.

                              Return to Poems Menu

     _________________

NINE POEMS FROM ORPHEUS LOOKS BACK

WE DID OUR BEST

She did her best to stay alive. I did
My best to help her live. She did her best
To stay alive. I did my best but hid
From truth, a truth that loomed with its great test
That I put off as best I could. I did
My best, of course, and it was pretty good,
To stay the course and stop what killed her mid-
Life, but, oh well, it didn’t work. I would
Give anything to know if there’s some way
To balance life with knowing what life is.
Dogs seem to have no problem. They don’t say
“Arf. I refuse to give to death what’s his.”
But screw it: I’m no dog, mystic or saint.
Let it be said that I showed no restraint.

YOU KNOW

What to do with the king bed, that lighter,
Shray’s brass sculpture and the bright green shirt,
Each slowly fading through each day and night, or
Not, though all of them will turn to dirt
Some day, I guess. And what to do with rings,
Books, sketches, notes, the ukulele, freedom,
Regret, boots, videos in which she sings?
How do you live, and live in a museum?

“Wait. Wait. Remember when I said to wait
A while after I die and then go out
And live? I know I had big problems saying
How I felt, but I meant that. Don’t doubt
Me or yourself this time. Weren’t you paying
Attention? I know that you still like…you know…”
That laugh. “Keep some. Then trust the rest to luck.”

BRIDGE OF DARKNESS

To make the invisible appear, I labor.
Under the bright star where it’s possible
To meet the dead in words that transform paper,
I summon a sweet ghost to drink her fill.
To balance tiny bits of time and matter
Against the infinite abyss in which
Even molecular vibrations scatter,
I wield a pencil that makes zero rich:
She loved life and brought more into the light;
She knew love and was known beyond your never;
She wept and fought with demons late at night,
Yet when she danced her life became life’s lever.
So, Darkness, bring it on. Do what you do.
You cannot win. For now she’s your wife too.

TO LIFE

To life. To the lovemaking and the wine.
To our sweet sons, the mountains where we walked.
To every single flaw, both yours and mine.
To every single time we ever talked.
To the way you shaved your lovely legs,
So flexible, one foot up in the sink.
To how you only ate the whites of eggs.
To your anxiety about each drink.
To all of it. To everything, the kisses,
The shoveling, the jokes you couldn’t tell,
The fights, the making up, the hits and misses,
The blessed days when everything went well.
To every minute, hour, day, week, month, year.
I cannot say it all, but it is here.

FOR MY FRIENDS

You have to act as if it all is meaningful,
Something those who love you say is true,
Until meaning returns, coming through
In its sweet time, responding to the pull
Of something hard to name, like gravity
Reasserting itself on a ball,
Or what a lost child feels hearing the call
Of someone who loves her from far away.
Here, through an autumn afternoon there walk
The living, with their love. It all surprises.
The ashes settle, then there’s drinks and talk,
And like a curious fish the spirit rises.
Someone cracks a joke. The cat’s asleep.
Food’s good. It all makes sense. You start to weep.

SOMETHING MORE

Once, when boarding an airplane, walking slowly
Down the aisle and enough behind her so that
Other passengers didn’t think we were to-
Gether, chance tossed a truth that had been hiding
Right in front of my eyes, a truth of beauty,
Something more of the depths. I’ll never lose it:
She was wearing a sweater, jeans, no makeup—
Rarely did—and of course the men were looking,
If discreetly, above their books and tablets,
Curious. Nothing new there. It was the women
Doing something I’d never seen: veiled daggers,
Rarely shown to a man, of envy burning
Like a flare in the night of eros. I could
Almost read their resentful minds: “You bitch-whore...”
She, as always, was unaware of strewing
Such confusion. So when we took our cheap seats
She said “Why are you laughing?” And I kissed her.

THE ICEBERG KING

How does he do it? Ounce by ounce, his home
Is melting, yet he sits upon the ice,
A naked, perfect king holding the throne
Of days, laughing and singing “Paradise!
I have my song, I’ve paid the purchase price,
And now I’m bound for warmer oceans, where
I know I will abandon every care
To water, melting back into the sea…
As if it matters…” And now he is sad.
He remembers how she could not be
Herself, how arabesques could drive her mad,
Her fights with sister, brother, mom and dad.
Her roast chicken. The birthmark and its shame.
Weeping now, he starts to carve her name.

YES

100 years before, it would have been
Mere fiction, and a hundred before that
Unthinkable—my people to hers sin
Incarnate, hers to mine unclean. But at
This end of time it came to be, across
Eons of hatred and misunderstanding,
Centuries of violence and of loss,
Silence, cunning, exile, famine, branding,
That back on planet earth we two could see
What clearly was invisible above.
Give me my sin again. It set me free.
Love conquers all. Let us, too, yield to love.
If life’s a riddle, we made a good guess,
For when I asked, yes, she said, yes I will, yes. Yes.

THAT IS WHEN I SAY THE BLESSING

When time is crushed. When everything is dark.
When emptiness is all I am caressing.
When nothing seems to live or leave a mark:

When loneliness transcends the arc of words.
When every memory begins undressing.
When reason scatters like a flock of birds:

When love has shattered like a hammered crystal.
When fire weeps and rocks begin confessing.
When every dream looks like a loaded pistol:

Strange how some words carry what they weigh.
Speak them. They do what they say. It is a blessing.

                      Return to Poems Menu

 HOME