Out of Context 1

around, I found that Chandler was an English surname meaning one who makes and sells candles—a good person to know during an age without electricity.  In fact, a man by the name of Chandler was aboard the ship Hercules that in 1610 landed in a place later known as Jamestown.  Attebury, too, is an English surname and means , “the dweller at the borough.”  An Attebury of note popped up in one Francis Attebury (1663-1732) who was the Dean of Carlisle and later in life, the Dean of Westminster.  Churchill withstanding (no need to go there), the big one is Beckett—as in Thomas Beckett, as in Saint Thomas of Canterbury—who was the Archbishop of Canterbury from 1162 until his murder in 1170 by the king’s knights right there in the cathedral.  (I visited Canterbury Cathedral a few years ago and stood where Beckett was slain.)  Apparently, he and King Henry II of England didn’t get along.  Beckett had the king in a tizzy, and the rumor goes that Henry II, thinking aloud, said, “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?”  A few knights overheard him, took it as a command, and did the dirty deed, cheaply (for you AC/DC fans).  Now, while Godiva, or Lady Godiva, is not a street in Canterbury...


from "Bridge of Doon"--2011 

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)