Poetry

Day One
the big bomb to win
the war of wars, the big
one, how many times
do you think, Doctor?
The Army wants to know!

Dr. Oppenheimer says he knows
the gadget will work and be one
big blast (in his doctoral
opinion), a dud would not win
us anything, we need more time
to develop a device that’s big

enough to blast a whole city...

Up near the northern border of North Dakota
the third day of an arctic blizzard, a social worker
loads her hatchback with jackets and coats
and drives the frontage road beside a frozen river.
She comes to a man wrapped in a hospital blanket
seated on cardboard on top of a bed of snow.
He doesn’t want the jacket she offers.
“Then I can take you to shelter,” she says...

Sitting on the train,
clickidy-clack, clickidy-clack, clickidy-clack,
hour after hour, after hour,
towns slip further and further away
as the ocean rises to greet us.

I watch the waves grasp the coastline,
spew white fingers of foam over tops of stone,
and I am pulled from my green coach chair...

He took a frayed hat from his head,
And “Peace on Earth” was what he said.
“A morsel out of what you’re worth,
And there we have it: Peace on Earth.
Not much, although a little more
Than what there was on earth before
I’m as you see, I’m Ichabod,—
But never mind the ways I’ve trod;
I’m sober now, so help me God”...

I am the faceless man
The empty hand
You passed
And left to stand
A stranger on the corner
The friend in the mirror
That you didn’t find
A reflection of your hidden mind...

and so is the wind
and so are the oleanders
the wind is bothering.
The porch light is no longer

anything but Mexican.
It’s true; tonight
is full of this miracle.
The river

is finally Mexican and...

From the road,
the Brazos Cliffs rise up suddenly from the valley floor,
as the mountain falls away
and leaves brown, gray rock
exposed like broken bones.

I imagine being the first to trundle up the hillside in furs
with food,
and stepping up to the ridge and looking out
and down:
2,000 feet...

One friend writes from prison,
as helpless as I am
to help him.

Another friend, dead, reveals
himself through words left behind, signs
of him I never noticed
when I thought I knew him...

The last of the roses are on the bush,
one red bud caught in the brief dips into cold,
it's final form a tight embrace.
The other opening, opening, insistent and resolute,
bearing the last gleanings of warmer nights...

Man. Woman. Huddled. Crouched in a dark corner.
He hears scuttling roaches. Phantasmagoria. Demons. Pixies.
He hears Stygian depths downward.
“Listen carefully,” she says,
so gently, to calm a child in a schoolhouse of terrors
long before she purportedly stole from the apple tree...