RESPITE

This morning

while reading 

about the life

of the mind 

and the divide 

between the 

world of objects

and the world

of private 

consciousness

and all that

stuff that fills 

our heads, fear

of losing

control

I recalled 

a dream from

the night before:

We were driving

by the river

drinking coffee

from a thermos

when the boys

giggled and pointed

their skinny fingers

out the window

and there in 

the thick grass 

three woodchucks

sniveled clover

like ridiculous

lotus-eaters, 

absurd philosophers,

phenomenologists

of the soul,

their fat haunches

and stumptails

waddling to

retrieve their

dignity, their

heady propositions, 

their mentalsitic

schematics--

--they were plump 

whistle pigs,

petty thieves,

street hustlers,  

hobo pedagogues

learned carpetbaggers 

hustling ideas  

and secret theorems

as they waddled

in the grass,

and we snickered

at their brown 

wobblefur

glamuphing 

and wishing we

could join them.

SANIBEL ISLAND, CHRISTMAS DAY 2.0

Riding the big 

balloon tire bikes

we tooled the island

      in long lazy curves

      under the hot sun

      down the narrow

asphalt roads and 

mangrove swamps

until the road opened

     and we rolled past 

     flamingo and sherbet 

     colored houses -- 

 

a drunkard's rum 

and coke fantasy, 

orangesicle bungalows

     lavender cape cods, 

     lime rickey cottages 

     bragging luscious red 

azaleas, lipstick

roses and rhodedendrons,

it's Christmas Day!,

     and once again

     we're alone, roaming

     the streets, lost

among the migraine

whine of the locusts,

all these empty

     homes and the hot

     afternoon sun 

     on our heads and

the aimless ease

of these bikes,

pedaling the world's

     loneliness, it's

     all so big and 

     distant, like 

imagining the world 

when we grew up, 

wishing we were stars in

     some rock band, Tommy

     James and the Shondells,

     singing "Crystal Blue 

Persuasion" and 

"Crimson and Clover," 

to really know what 

     love is all about, daring 

     to hold hands and 

     understand that 

unspoken something 

in the mangrove swamps,

in Percy Faith's "Theme 

     from 'A Summer Place,'"

     impossible to 

     cross that bridge

without knowing you.

DAWN, MILWAUKEE HARBOR

              How appalling it is to sit here

at river's mouth,  under the red 

lighthouse, uninvolved witness to 

the slow unfurling from the east, 

another day, like any other,

destiny borne to spread its 

indifference across the sky -- the 

river slumps harborbound while red-

bellied gulls circle overhead

like some great pagan  wheel, as if 

some eternal message can be 

divined in their mockery, the river 

pushing, insisting its vagrancy 

everywhere.

                    How appalling, then, 

to be reading  Matthew Arnold--

Matthew Arnold of all poets!  

Might as well read Arnold the Pig

or Arnold Schwarzenegger!

This is a darkling plain right here, 

the river, the sky, the dying stars, 

the sun crawling through slumped clouds

and consciousness.  You cannot hear 

the rumbling of stones here--the 

crashing of waves--there's no Sophocles 

or Sea of Faith here!, no great thought 

or myth, no blood-drama, no goat,

no redemption, just these speechless 

facts, the lighthouse, the harbor

glimmering copper, these gulls 

caught in the tragic flight of time,

the slumber of water, the 

pale phenomenon of light

dividing facts from shadows.

CEDARBURG

I should write a poem about this rain here

in Cedarburg where time is preserved in

antique shops and woolen goods, nostalgic

hideaways like this bed and breakfast where

time is arrested, where you can return

to the old values, the old ways, where craft

and truth blend in the great loom to form 

a single vision before the Great Disruption

tore our lives to shreds.  At breakfast we

gather in the dining room before the hearth

and the spread of peaches, a basket of bread,

crockeries of cream and pistachio pound cake,

crocheted place mats and oatmeal with maple

syrup.  We gather after a night's blessed and

sinless sleep in pencil post beds: the pregnant

woman, immense in her imminence, ignored

by her husband and the rest of us, she swells

in her radiance.  The women Harley riders

seeking to cleanse themselves of something they

do not know the source of, the couple from 

Illinois staring out the windows at the rain,

wistful, they'd made plans to buy scented candles 

and handcrafted silver jewelry, and now 

it's cold and raining, and, what's worse, "It's really 

a wet rain!" one of them declares, while I eat 

my peaches and pistachio bread.  

We have all gathered here to what?  

To stare out the distorted glass--the old 

wavy glass!--at time itself, this village, 

this settlement, this restoration of 

an earlier time, a simpler time, a time 

we ache to enter.  

It is March, and we are removed from 

these trappings, these rocking chairs and linens, 

the ye olde's and blacksmiths and stablers, 

by a 100 years.  We live in a Great Depression, 

where value shrinks and dies.  Here in this 

museum the air is tale, the ledges 

are dusty, the sachets of lavender and 

potpourri have dried out, we agree to 

return to this story because we 

do not dare face the cold rain, ourselves, 

the rain chilling our skin, the smells of copper 

and dirt and skunk flooding from the  marshes.  

We are each of us desperate to find our way, 

desperate to hide, each afraid that the lives 

we've been living are not wholly lies but 

not wholly true, either.  If only we could 

remain here, behind this old glass.  If only 

we could hide in this story that was never true, 

the lies of the Great Narrative, and live 

among the trappings of deceit, the shared 

awareness that it was all good, it was all 

so much better, it was even better 

than we can imagine now that we are 

trapped in our own time, our own lives, our own 

fear of the rain.