Poems

Catching the Show

I dreamed I was flying

High up above my eyes could clearly see

The Statue of Liberty

Sailing away to sea Paul Simon, “American Tune”

As the day is dying

under a dark blue-gray sky,

a reddish-orange glow lights clouds on the horizon

from the sun that has already

slipped below the curve of the Earth.

I look at a disappearing contrail

swiped across the sky like a scar

from a jet long gone.

The New Mexico sky puts on a show

like this more nights than not.

You have to catch the moment

as the light fades quickly

into the coming night.

Like that contrail

our less perfect union

has been scarred and wounded,

dying into a darkness

that hides so much in the shadows.

Liberty’s symbol is drifting out to sea,

perhaps toward the country it came from.

It remains to be seen if that nation

or any other can carry the torch it holds.

Don’t blink – make sure you catch the show

before it’s gone.

Everything Is Practice

Someone told me once

Just think of it as practice,

and suddenly the atmospheric pressure dropped.

I feared if I didn’t do something right

it stamped Failure on my forehead

and everyone would know.

I knew practice improves performance,

but this part of my brain didn’t know

what that part of my brain knew.

I didn’t know it for me

until I saw in his eyes and heard in his voice

that he didn’t see an F on my forehead.

Like an old rock and roll song says –

I’m gonna do it wrong till I do it right.*

Failure is what we do until we succeed.

So everything in life is just practice?

Practice for what?

For the rest of my life, I suppose.

And There is no there there to get to,**

no place to reach where I’m finished.

I’m just a work in progress that’s never complete.

Life is just one damn thing and then the next,

but it doesn’t mean it’s not an adventure.

Like the ash tree out my window –

it just keeps making new branches.

Monkey – There Is Here

There is no there there. Gertrude Stein

For years I carried a monkey on my back,

chattering in my ear, holding up to me

my failures and shortcomings,

clothing me with a shirt of inadequacy

that I wore as if it belonged to me.

It was hard to teach myself

that the chatter was only what I learned

in life’s twisted school, which I could unlearn

if I took a stand and held my ground.

Consider the source of that opinion.

Now I know there’s no cosmic judge waiting for

my arrival in his court for conviction and sentencing,

and no happiness waiting for the achievement

of something called “good enough.”

Good enough for whom? Good enough for what?

Life is a daily process of weeding out

the truth from the lie.

I’m continually becoming the man

who will every day be a bit different

than the man he was the day before

but never finished because there’s

no end of the road,

no There to get to.

There

is simply right here.

So I’m already there,

right here, right now.

Stranger

Did your lover break your heart,

make you cry,

leave you behind and alone,

dreams washed away in the rain?

Will the sun still rise

and will you ever find the one

who can fill the hole in your heart?

What do you do when

your love goes away

and leaves not a trace?

You pick up the pieces

and sleepwalk along,

living by rote,

doing what you’ve always done

but moving through the day

with this companion

who’s always there,

an emptiness that walks beside you,

the unwanted stranger

who’s entered your life uninvited.

You’re a hollow shell, but you go on

because there’s nothing else to do

but put one foot in front of the other

until the numbness leaves

and you start to come back to life,

taking pleasure once more

in the beauty of landscape

and the smiles and laughter of friends.

At last you feel like the next day might be

something to look forward to,

and you’re living again,

the world once more bright with possibility.

Like Hand in Glove

Walking through a stand of old cottonwoods

down to the banks of the Rio Grande,

I watch Canada geese

float peacefully in shallow waters

near a sandbar exposed by

the poverty of water from dams and drought.

They’re Daoists in perfect harmony with the river,

serene and at home in their winter niche,

at one with their place in a desert river ecosystem,

a corner of the universe they’re masters in.

I admire their apparently untroubled existence,

fitting like hand in glove here,

at ease floating on the river’s deep blue

reflection of New Mexico sky.

They don’t argue with the world.

They don’t worry about climate change,

only the month-to-month and year-to-year

variations in the landscape

over their span of experience,

changes they absorb over time

without the idea of future.

They know only the moment,

and the moment is all they need.

While they float here in peace and occasionally

fly off honking to find a new resting or feeding spot,

I aspire, dream, worry, struggle, and strive –

and stand in wonder at the river-hugging Bosque ,

at our limping, astonishing blue dot planet,

and a cosmos outrunning my mind’s reach.

I bow to the geese’s purity in acceptance of their world,

while I’m married to my human

bent to desire and aspire,

till death do me part.