(In Rome, a small plaque on a wall shows
how high the river rose in 1872.)
It says a lot, this little marble line.
The river (Rome’s life-giver), prone to flood,
could raise, erase: the rhythm of Proserpine,
of summer, winter, it’s the beat of blood.
What are we, then, we humans? So much krill,
to flourish and then wither? Nothing more?
Accretions crowding every Quirinal Hill,
but rinsed away like Ephesus, Elsinore?
A tremor pulverised the gems of Giotto.
We labour, learn and languish – then we’re dead.
Achievement? Summed up by the Ponte Rotto.
Try grasping, with your educated head
(encapsulated in this modest motto)
that rivers rise and fall. What’s then been said?
My mind has become a hoarder’s paradise
As I have gotten older, fat and lazy.
All that I gather collects
Along the halls, across table tops
On every available surface.
Eventually only narrow pathways remain
Through the labyrinth,
Pathways I traverse daily
As I shuffle back and forth
On my habitual ways.
This is the anatomy of a mind calcifying,
Layers and layers of thought and memory
Cemented accretions which then erode
Into the walls of my labyrinth.
Somewhere at the center
I know there is a garden still untouched
By the clutter of this life,
Complete with eye bright centaur
Chiron on his grassy knoll.
Knowing it’s always there
Is all the solace I need.
(9/7/25)
By what labyrinthine repetitions,
by what agile, precise divisions,
by what accretions, do we compile
a life's arcane hieroglyphs,
its subtle, unmathematic mysteries?
What cold calculus shall we yet invent
to construct the introspective model?
What distribution curve, what standard deviation,
shall predict the time remaining 'tll we exist
entirely in a universe of our own creation?
Shall we make of stars mere red-shifted
spectral lines on photographic plates?
Will heartache be reduced to sine waves,
mapped by styli on graduated rolls
revolving in precise concurrence
with computed average biologic rates?
Shall we expunge the record from the file,
shall we precipitate a system crash?
What key will be called escape and which restore?
What impulse may span the neural gap,
what synapsis presage what deity?
And will there be a world left to explore?
Will we stop to soliloquize?
What obeisance shall we require?
Piety is no mark of barren earth and rocks,
nor of sterile wind and raging fire.
Milton Bradly....
Condos castles etched in accretions dye along
The boardwalks flower made sorbitol scenes
Number twenty-twos scented sunrises, pastel piers
Neon lights enticing dreamscopes of, breathe....
The box-cars mundane roulette wheels
Spinning mirages of polyesters white gloved, hopes
Let it ride; everything I own upon, number twelve
Moonglow glazed margarita rainbows for, you and I
Cinderella, she folds....
"Games," lots and lots of, games!?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
{...."Monopoly"....}
sailing
free
building
clusters
of
sand
in the
desert
accretions
forestalling
time
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