Sons of Hounds

At Achnacarry and Spean Bridge,
the cry of Camerons, Commandos and Rangers
could be heard all the way up Ben Nevis:
"Sons of hounds, come hither and get flesh!"
Those warriors are with us still,
but the hounds are fat, aye, overfed;
they sleep there on the master's bed
and will not come when called.


(2013)

The Last Match

You can give me the world's last match,
and I'll strike it for you, keep it lit
long enough to light democracy's torch,
or whatever blown out torch you carry,
not that I care that much for planetary fires,
but I've smoked a sun full of cigarettes,
and I can light a match in a hurricane.

I know of others like me,
soldiers, quite serious people,
who make fire for the incompetent,
but you'll give that stick 
to a politician,
and you'll get what you deserve,
the phosphorus wet with perspiration;
at best, the lighting match held head up,
the momentary flame, then a wisp of smoke in history,
the spent head nodding down like a napping president.



(1985)

Waiting out a Summer Storm

Electrical rage,
fractured dimension, flash
and fissure of mortality,
Occurring, it seals itself, but
in that trice, between extremes,
light and noise, divine voltage,
vision of another side.
Sometimes, you think
the wall will shatter;
sometimes it cracks
so close, you know you
could leap through, but if you
did, what would they do?
What would they do
without you?


(Arkansas Magazine, Arkansas Democrat, July 12, 1987)

Hawk

Squirrels hide and bark
in water oaks hanging Spanish moss;
crows and cardinals taunt,
circle and dart, yell
(that's all they can do),
while the hawk from a kill
watches with those warrior eyes.
When I stand to admire him,
he flies.


(August, 2013)

Polio

At five, I couldn’t walk.

Doctor’s diagnosed me with polio.

A pretty word, polio,

and that short for poliomyelitis,

still pretty though.

The Greeks were good at that;

some Romance languages good, too,

but less so, while the English is ugly:

Gray…bone.

In any event,

my mother laid hands on me and prayed,

and I was cured.

It doesn’t bother me that you don’t believe,

but why the look of disgust?


(July, 2013)

Blue on Blue

Blue on blue, the sky and sea,
God colors each to hue,
and, love, what he shows to me,
he shades and shows to you.


(1974)

The Last Leaf

Quiescent, like the last leaf,
its failure to fall, I suppose
I must have one more poem remaining,
but I'm reluctant to shake it free
and see it fall like this
with no pretty pirouettes
in the music of the wood,
nor will it find its way to water,
silent ripple or tsunami;
it won't make a plash,
but fall brittle and brown
beneath a canopy of arthritic arms
and fuck you fingers
where the leaves have been leavened
to the point of compost, so that
I no longer know what's mine:
It's rotten like the rest,
and I see no need to add to this,
to pluck this last quiescent leaf
while you so hate the forest.


(January 1990)