“Attila Smiles”

Attila smiles while Leo stands his ground
With shepherd’s staff in place and piety on his face;
The Hun is not impressed and as the city has no grace
For him save what its wealth and gravitas might allow,
The Holy One asks, “Who are you to take the city down?”
Perhaps because he knows no better than the javelin and mace,
The sanctity of words and something of its commonality erased
He needs to follow more than strands of wisdom in his crown
And though he takes the gold, there is no urge nor fancy to remain.
The Hun then turns his posse round through the lobby to the outer steppes
Of chaos, the loom of what’s beyond imagination in his wedge of space to the left
Of mystic ordre in the child of disordre and the fruits of a fecund cosmic strain.
It is just so within the greater scheme of things, a gossamer trace
Display the planets in the maw of darkness where the stars
and blackest matter still hold appointments with but vain imaginings of our past  and blindness beneath the glory of our own great avatar.

“The Phrase”

 

The phrase transcends the pen withdrawn
And so, too, the movement in and of itself.
The notebook’s filled, volumes line the shelf
And there upon a winter’s night, the low straw
Wins and he reviews the lot and finds the flaw
In each. Perhaps a word crossed out, a gulf
In time allows a light to objectivity less the self.
And when the wheel stops, the law
Of averages condemns the thing to sit there
Once again, forgotten, anonymous as a star
That far away, explodes with fireworks
That would consume a galaxy—matter gone berserk—
Ignite and what had no energies now amassed, a pregnant flare
Until at last, one starry night, a whisper reaches earthly ears.
Just so, the incomplete, the Word to words and back again
Traverse the gap as the task of phonemes
Aspires to ascend to higher stations, morphemes
Honoured in this natal happy path. Observe:
Throughout the zodiac of conscious meaning
Stars that matter to velocities in galaxies
Reborn inspire genitive ignition in the gravity
Of natural wisdom’s past and present leaning
To fruition in what was always meant to be.
The moon, in its phase; the sun, its angry season,
The poet writes within a pendulum of forces, reason
Bound, but nonetheless eternal mysteries
Revealed as the Ancient of Days calls behind the present hour
Words from phrases only time, distance and the pen can devour.
As the audience is eternal, so, too, what will compel
The heart and mind to ideal calligraphy; the wordsmith’s nod
Secure. And as “the source of all learning is the knowledge of God,”*
So, too, the gravitas of the nib cannot be silenced, nor the muse expelled.

*Bahá’u'lláh, Words of Wisdom, Tablets of Bahá’u'lláh

…pieces of scupture by Hazel Reeves…

“Take a Number”

“Take a number,” someone whispered in the night,” any one
Will do!” and come to think of it, it happened to be true..
They’ll dine in or out or perhaps linger in that long blue
Moment in the atrium, or then again, they’ll take the sun
At midnight or take the stairs and skip the banister. They’ll taste
The wine gone flat; and why not? That is, of course, unless they’ve read the signs
In time to outwit the posse just a little forward in the line
From where they are to where they’re surely going. The race
Is on, you see, to falter willy nilly at the altar, to settle the bill,
Unzip the lining of the thing, pick up the ball
And run like hell through the side booth in the kitchen, down the hall,
Turn and cash in their chips on the spot. The cogent thrill
Is gone, perhaps, but not the will, and if they’ve read the bulbs correctly,
They’ll never reach the pantry door directly.

“Diversions Mount”

Diversions mount, but decisions are determined
And timing in celestial spheres and signs
Are not paused for dilatory motives nor do the blind
So easily blot out the sun. Some there are who enter
Darkness seeking the mercurial stations of the tongue, the move
From where they are to where they divine they must
Be without so much as limb or wing but straight through the dust
To strike pavilions over what is not and never could be a truth. Note all who’ve
Owned a cause to glorify the effects of blows to obfuscate, to conceive a sure
Obstruction of all evidence, nothing more. “In My Father’s House
Are many mansions,” written plainly in orchestrated independent clauses;
The caveat in escrow, the final contract awaits the ink *and “If it were
Not so,” He would have writ the mystery of galaxies and stars
as when polemic balances mark the seasons’ endless cosmic scars.
Simplify the matter, choose the either, consult the ether, pick one,
Be, and it will be! An avizandum is no match for public exhibition
And the journey never really satisfies the abyss of timely erudition
Further than a fortnight nor the rule of planets beyond a single sun.
And if the moon’s the object in the search,
Winter’s clouds will override the story
If they speak at all in apostrophes of midnight glory
While the appetite for fear what must follow the zenith. Dirty shirts
And all the king’s fine laundry’s better left
Unwashed if the pawn neglects the very lint of ragged pockets. Socks
Are so easily separated, so inevitably lost forever. High tech stocks
And clever use of futures are stuff of much the same in strategies in what’s left
Of patience or detachment, or verisimilitude when the trend in toys is moot
or confidence in leisure time exacerbate so strange a shrinking;
Ships and stocks are never stronger than the thought of either sinking.

* John 14-1-9

“The Cello Hours”

The cello hours born in satisfaction’s flowering
Struggle for the taste of sunlight ambered
Quotidian pause between the yellowed evening hours in the embers
Of any passion’s flames, a body’s needs, so immediate, so towering
In the vertical for lack of space to run;
Steeper slopes too raked, some desperation’s blotting out
What memory’s suns’ refuse to yield–the stout
Resolve, the countenance of all volition’s fruits undone
By now and all but totally forgotten in the dying folds of coals.
We rush from one safe haven to another.
Absurd, but on this earth tectonic shifts that smother
Linger in the soul and while all the world’s aglow, the body sees but single goals
In search of yearning for the satisfied in every earthbound swarm:
“Touched or touching, now I tell you friend, I must be warm!”

“In the Meantime”

And, in the meantime, what?
If the requirement is the sun
And in the hour, none;
If patience swells but in the rutting cuts
No clearance, no escape from paths
To howling destinations; if the moon
Must hide behind the earth, the cry of loons
Is heard no more for lack
Of seasons in the ether;
If the house depends on creosote,
And vessels pine for tides; the coat,
The autumn’s lack of warmth and wintry blasts recuse nor
Will they join demand to orderly confusion, what then?
The egg exacerbates the vigil not within the cock but in the hen.

“Solace in the Courtesies”

…just a note to say that about a year ago, I posted the following sonnet induced by having seen the Moon and Jupiter in their full glory together; they’re both back, and contrary to public opinion, so am I; for the mind, “the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to:; for the heart, time is conquered, thank God… —Once, 23 July 2011

Solace in the courtesies of the constellations, Jupiter
Surely there at sunrise, the brightest star,
Visible while the jealous moon, scarred,
The closest audience; apt, significant. The irony. Her
Dwarf, yet here in circumstance; the bond a quiet perpetuity.
The mighty planet rests for moments in the night,
And we regard the larger aegis the greater light
And think so little of her smaller celebrant; so great an inequity
In vision we’re wont to dote upon from such a station as this.
It is just so with all luminaries of perspicuous wisdom and guidance in the night
That they are worshipped in coal black skies, but preludes to the dawning light
Because it pleases the eye see none but them and rest awhile in ignorant bliss.
Yet with the rising of the sun, all former brilliance must surely fade,
Withdrawn by force to honour greater virtues than the night has made.

I wonder why it is that knowing consciously the identity of what that star is that shone this morning just before the sunrise and has been shining every morning so significantly in the southeastern skies makes so much difference. Tonight it was joined beautifully by proximity to the moon.

A few weeks ago, I learned from a friend that that bright, unusually vivid star was in fact the planet Jupiter. Not that the news was astounding, but in some quiet way it was comforting because as I looked out from my balcony in the early morning hours always just before sunrise, when the skies were clear I had seen that star and wondered just what it was. Somehow I wanted some confirmation as to just what that thing was. I wrote to my friend who was kind enough to confirm its identity for me that it is true that it’s Jupiter and it is very visible in the skies during the whole of June into July. Now, then, this silent delight in knowing consciously that I have seen with my own eyes this “other world” that shares our solar system in some subtle way pleases my soul. These are the signsof God, my friend, as if the moon and sun, the inevitable revival of the earth at spring, and countless spectacles of greater and lesser significance were not. Did I need another confirmation of the majesty of this Creation? These days, for me at least, even breathing is a sign of God and becomes more obviously so with every passing day at my age. —Once, July 2010

“Plans; the Summer Vapours”

“Plans; the Summer Vapours”

Plans; the summer vapours through livings while they last
And wonders of a sudden clime where suns beat furiously through
The year and winters never come. They share eternities and views
Of strife that feed on life, or then again, the days become the year, the past
Is yesterday buried in deposits, today, in streams of sweat and constant growth.
He’ll never know, of course, because his choice prefers the seasons
To the season and the many to single lives they breed. His sanity his reason
Tempered only by the change of venue, moods by grace bestowed,
And whom he’ll know for just a little while. Loneliness; no.
Alone, but, yes, of course, and is there any better company
Than what just came strolling down the lane or some symphony
That’s never finished, what was heard but moments in the rain? The “lo!”
The turning of a page and there scribbled in the margin
The word, the phrase that spoke but once is missing in the bargain.
And once again, the rocking chair is carelessly placed
There beside the balcony rail along with some makeshift table,
Discarded relics from a marriage vow, so worn, so outcast yet so able
To the task and uses of a former front page story from a case
Of misplaced destiny and that last unbroken glass. I stir the brew with ease,
The instrument an orphan from the spoons
she used in warm Nebraska noons and jars
Let years ago to contemplate the morning
beneath the clothesline by my mother’s hand:
A bag or two, the backyard sun, and some few hours to see
Three gallons full of topaz in the fridge; scars,
Perhaps, or something dear, a badge of honour
In the meaning; I was of one of hers. She’s gone the distance so much farther
While the mighty Platte’s gone shallow, but magic brews within my hardened
Heart’s plucked tranquilities in hyacinths of memory and thinking deeply on her
Comes as simple as lemon laced with sugar in the brew, and afternoons in amber.

A word of caution…when I was still living at home with Mom and Dad, there was nothing quite like the sun tea my mother made; it was always perfect, it was always fresh because she made it every day in a two or three-gallon jar with two teabags left in the sun for several hours. Delicious as it was (and probably still is) it has been learned of late that it is not a good idea to let the sun do the trick on the tea; it sits there at just the right temperature to allow the nurturing of bacteria in the water and the tea leaves normally eliminated by the longer but more healthy boiling of the water to make the tea. I was surprised to learn this; yes, well, obviously I escaped from my parents kitchen (or backyard where she left the sun tea to brew) and am still alive to tell the tale. As a matter of fact, I don’t remember ever hearing of anyone getting sick in my hometown or in my state from what they caught from drinking sun tea, and of course, my mother would never have served me anything that would harm me….but of course, there was always my Aunt Lillian’s fried chicken…and Mary Kitchen hash….by the case….

“It Is a Consolation”

It is a consolation as well as a curse that none
Of us lasts within these bodies past the grave;
While here, we have no choice but to mark the moon’s phases
And it is the sun that tells us that we have passed another day.
Still, insofar as all of us are eternal, once created, what honours could
Exceed this single blessing? It takes a thousand years for a sunbeam
To reach the surface of the sun and eight seconds from that portal to the earth,
So we are told.
What we are not told is that once created, the sunbeam never dies,
Nor does it remain with us for long here
Among the living nor there
Beyond the last hotdog joint on its way out of town,
And we are left to guess whence it came and where it’s going
And what the hell it was doing here.

“The Wager”

“The Wager”

The wager of the least are promises
Of the best. The monoliths of reason are quantity
And quality perceived, the indicative of possibilities
In either mode weighed in equity and thus apprised.
The logic of the thing promotes the certainty of hope–
The life blood of change–and nothing in this world escapes
The kinetic causal catalyst’s craft upward or downward. Scrape
The bottom and the top begins its messianic anthem; cope
With transformation and in the fray, a certain moderation
Comes to mind, a casual but determined glance at maps
From here to there and back again. The Sadrat?
The siren’s illusion that what it seems, it is: confusion
Of the senses breeds capitulation to the daily run:
If these precious seconds lie, so, too, the sun.