The April morning's quiet
and so is the November.
Wherever people outnumber trees
or the dominant cover type
is unquiet. Nothing wrong with that.
Walt got it right, and Jane Jacobs:
the city is an experienced,
used beauty. Her toes are long,
nails thick and hair thin. Yet
her kisses can be sweet; or
smell of ****. All my life I've tried to point my window toward
some narrow wedge of nature.
On Seaman Ave., over the roof
beyond the chimneys to the park
where every dog was walked.
Could I survive soot and an air shaft now, pigeons and cats,
or even a desk in the legislature for my lot in life. How about
prison like Etheridge Knight,
Nazim Hikmet?
I've gotten soft.
When he builds that house in the pocket
wetland my window now looks out on,
the developer will have given me what I need.
Amphibian mortality,
gravel, fill,
oak, ash and maples felled. Good
to the last drop is our bitterness, our love.
Categories:
jane jacobs, april, beauty, kiss, love,
Form: Free verse
Dinner with old friends:
salmon with red cabbage, asparagus, Caesar's salad, penne with
broccoli, two white wines.
Jane Jacobs could analyze how it all got to our table
or even how their daughter came to us from Cambodia.
The economy or market bringing a thing of beauty, the farms, the trucks,
such comfort. The ancients knew this too
yet we are anxious about famine, genocide and nuclear war.
How can we organize (govern) ourselves to end self-imposed suffering?
That Quebec and Puerto Rico may secede peacefully at any time a
majority chooses is a source of pride. Why not Kurds, Chechyns,
Tibetans and Armenians?
Difficult to write a poem about it. At table, candlelight, we debate
or whine about the other side winning and making a mess
of our lives. The election could be stolen, tampering with voting
machines,
what policy question does that possibility raise? War in Iraq,
school testing, prison population. Religion, the abyss surrounding the
little promontory life.
It'll all work out in the end. Go to your daily practice, be a good citizen.
Another failed effort to write what I mean. Such confusion, yet
two white wines.
Categories:
jane jacobs, daughter, farm, friend, old,
Form: Verse