Island Solo (Outward Bound, Penobscot Bay)

A sturdy craft comes alive under the boards,
As if in recognition of familiar waters.
The night's dark splash is ignited with phosphorescence
And trails away, bubbling in distinctive chords.

The stern red beam of a lighthouse
Asserts an invisible shoreline,
And warns of an imminent landfall
Through ledges, 'bricks' and 'No Man's Land',
Towards ill-defined sentinels of birch and pine.

A granite island looms behind darkness' deceptive vision,
But safe haven promises a gentler welcoming.
Empty moorings and trim wooden shacks
Legitimize at once the navigational decision.

The unwieldy blocks and obelisks are as marvelous as those
At Stonehenge and Easter Island,
For they hold in their gargantuan impassivity a story
And a mystery, perhaps,
Of a time when human spirit and endeavor arose.

But in daylight, the ruins beg a question or two.
Jumbled heaps of stone are scattered about;
Here and there stand unfamiliar sculptings and carvings,
And the ghost of a quarry where industry grew.

Will a future civilization look at these ruins and wonder
At such a chaos of pioneering landscape architecture?
(Or ask why foundations are now choked with wildflower,
Or for what purpose an island's marrow was torn asunder?)

It seems we hack and hew at nature, as at each other,
Not envisioning the questions that may be asked later.
Meaningless blocks, we strew haphazardly on our paths
For others to interpret, if they bother.

Leaving the island before sunrise, the red light is dim,
The phosphorescence gone.
But my understanding has been enlightened
By the granite, and by other builders
Who serve, strive and never yield
In their quest for a reconstructed dawn.

One Night on the Ridge

Immeasurable stars over night's mountains
Challenge the eye to identify patterns
In scattered plentitude, like mist from Roman fountains;
Constellated confusion of a million Saturns.

The face, a pale moon itself, beams upward to seek meaning,
While still maples hide behind night's cloak;
Puffs of breath blur the clarity of each star's gleaming
But re-affirm life... then dissipate, like a comet's smoke.

Stars won't share their sound with us,
But their fires spark our perceptions of time and distance
And stoke our mythologies of a belt, or of a necklace,
Making light the impediment of gravity's resistance.

Our planet glows only in reflecting another star,
As we stand on this chemical stew we call dirt.
Speculating on the light reaching us from afar;
The fastest we know of, yet seemingly inert.

Our miracles are out of reach and comprehension
Yet we crave them no less than when we didn't know as much.
Disbelief and belief: both held in willing suspension,
While spiritual guides provide us the necessary crutch.

It's enough to believe in one another on this humble globe,
Although we know only as much as we know Mars.
We leave it to blind faith to guide each probe,
And hope for a beacon as bright as a star's.

West of Boston

Streaks of sun filter through bare pines;
Proud sentinels from an earlier age.
You turn your eyes upward to those vertical lines,
As dusk tempers another day's languid rage.

Here in nature's heart, your true peace,
The honeysuckle emerges with each warm Spring.
Snow and rain preordain such release,
And give way to May winds' beckoning.

Deep in the woods we find in our lives,
The pine needles offer little comfort underfoot.
Errant bees pester, then retreat to their hives,
As we, too, retreat: to our cities, and their soot.

One hopes, then, for blessing, for those
Who find blessed meaning in a wooded walk;
Who take the time to anticipate the rose,
And leave all behind to hear the pine trees' talk.

Warren Cove

I watch the sea
Come alive on the beach;
It's a newborn child
Testing her reach.

I watch the tide
(Slave to the moon);
Climbing the breakwater,
Fading too soon.

I watch evolution,
Alive in the Cove;
Symbiosis,
'Neath the waves and above.

Fall

The streetlight casts its pallid glow
Upon my lonely sill,
As through my mind the memories go;
I fear they always will.

The plumbing rings its hollow knell
Beneath my empty floors;
I thought I knew her very well,
But she's on distant shores.

High in the night, an airplane hums
Above my earthbound woes;
The bread we had has turned to crumbs,
But why? - well, neither knows.

Love Poem

He did not create
A man to let him hate.
Instead that man was taught
To love without a thought.

So can I love so pure?
To risk, and still be sure?
A man, a child, am I;
Alive, in love, I die.

The paradox persists
(Though modern man resists...)
A song sets it apart:
Just love can break your heart.

An unrelenting force
That battles 'till divorce;
It dons so many guises,
We're used to its surpises.

Were I a jilted spouse
Imprisoned in my house,
I'd try to love the sinner,
If not the sin beginner.

Were I a killer's dad
Left redefining sad,
I'd try to love my boy,
Relinquishing the joy.

Were I a partisan
In Mussolini's Milan,
I'd try to love my nation,
While causing conflagration.

I know not where love leads
But know it grows from seeds
We sow on stony ground.
Not so? Just look around.

Sonneta Pamplonese

Stoned Sangria Sunset, brazen bull breath baiting
The caballeros crowding the tapas night...
Where the only commitment needed is waiting
To stanch the paralytic fear of morning. The Fright.
Running from: dusted destiny on cloven hooves
Through pain-wracked alleys alight with cries
Of challenged machismo, scored by notched grooves
Cut into cobbles where the injured writhe, attracting flies.
Running to: a safe place, a sturdy gate, a saving arm;
A life spared for another year
In which to plan the sprint from here to harm;
From feared impalement upon Fortune's Spear.

Once more the bulls and runners chase across the page,
As I sit in my room, and write... and age.

Near and Fair

Two fields in winter
Equally stark;
One under snow,
The other dirt-dark.

I remember the first
As I stand in the second,
And smile at the snowdrops
Which once to... us... beckoned.

There, the snows of New England
Blanket all down below,
Here the flint fields of Norfolk
Stay bare to the hoe.

Are they really so lifeless,
Or just freezing, half-buried?
Was there time for maturing,
Or were seasons too hurried?

These matter less now
Than the acres of distance,
For the first field lies far
From my vision's persistence.

Will I grow in this field,
Or fall still 'neath a shroud?
(Far above both the plots
Looms a threatening cloud.)

So I turn towards the hedge,
Past the drifts and the mud
And the path to the village,
And the bridge o'er the flood.

Leaving both fields to nature,
Where memories are grown
After snowdrifts and leaves,
From their faces are blown.

Laugharne Lament

I've seen enough of the pelting rain,
I've heard enough of this world's refrain,
I've scarred enough to remember pain,
Yet still I look for more.

I've lived enough to give thanks to life,
I've raged enough to confound a wife,
I've warred enough to have mastered strife,
Yet still I fight for more.

I've felt joy at celestial rises,
Been shocked at Cupid's sharp surprises,
And drowned in booze's many guises,
Yet still I thirst for more.

I've mused with Frost through "Fire and Ice",
(The end days won't be very nice,
And Shakespeare's Witches vowed it thrice,
Yet still I pause for more.)

The selfish "I" who knows no bounds,
Routinely makes his worldly rounds,
Scarce heedful of eternal Sounds,
Yet need I ask for more?

8/98

Headline Poems

My three most recent poems - "Man in Tent", "Tenant" and "Council Worker" - which together I'll call "The Trilogy of Travail", derive from articles I've read recently in the British press.

They are all three the sort of sensationalistic, tragic records which draw people to newspaper reading; as a former reporter (who often used the exalted job title "journalist") myself, I remember the attractions of writing these sorts of stories. I also feel compelled to ask those who would criticise the press for publishing such stories; which came first, the chicken or the egg? Who's holding the mirror, and who's looking into it?

In my brief stint "covering" the Town of Hanson, Massachusetts for the Memorial Press Group in Plymouth, I fortunately never had to cover a tragic death. My colleagues sometimes described the pressures from above (e.g. the editors) in covering tragedies; the expectation that they, the "journalists", would have to go and knock on doors of family and friends of the victim to catch some good quotes for the expected article.

In these poems I've tried to capture the twisted relationship between the press and its readership; beyond that, I suppose my themes are fairly routine and unoriginal - the quest for meaning in life; the day-to-day struggles we all face; where we fit in nature, etc. etc. For these, I have to thank my poetic heroes: Coleridge, Blake, Tennyson, Eliot... and especially Frost who, I believe, towers above the others.

“Council Worker Found Dead at Lake”

Our lust for these stories
It seems will not break.
A tree, a rope, depression? – that’s life.
No note and no motive – let’s talk to the wife.

He worked for the Council,
It said on page five,
And walked round the lake
With his wife when alive.

“A son, a brother, a dad –
Will be missed.”
When he last walked away,
Did his wife say he kissed?

On Facebook’s a page
Where the tributes are glowing
From the mates who once knew him,
But are now left not knowing

(Though it’s well understood
No foul play is suspected.)
Now the wife’s plea for privacy
Must be respected.

So the newsprint will fade
And the paper will rot
And we’re on the next story,
Whether caring or not.

“Tenant Lived With Body
Under Sofa for Ten Years”

Let’s read about the tragic lives
Of weirdos, drunks and “queers”.
Our taste for the bizarre outweighs
Our horror and revulsion
So we soak up every detail
Further feeding our compulsion.

Must I write about it, though,
Instead of reading and forgetting?
Yes, I say to Mr. Murdoch,
I’ll be aiding and abetting.

Thus the facts: a Mr. Derrick
Used to drink with Mr. Pring.
One night D. went out drinking but
“I don’t recall a thing.”

Mr. P. lay on a sofa
In old Derrick’s grubby flat
D. came home and turned it over
Then passed out, and that was that.

Derrick, so you DID recall;
Or was that lager talking?
Didn’t threaten or dismember
But your senses went out walking

For old Pring became a dead man
At some point that fateful night
And drunk Derrick, you did nothing
In the cold, harsh morning light.

Not just that, you let Pring lie there
Undisturbed a decade long
Seeming not to care a firkin
What was right and what was wrong.

True, we’re sorry you have issues
With the voices in your head;
But not one of them made mention
Of the fact that Pring was dead.

Then the coppers came to see you
As the neighbours smelt a smell,
But they thought it was the toilet;
They had not heard Pring’s death knell.

Only later did they find him
With the rubbish in your flat.
He was busy decomposing,
You were “shocked” and that was that.

But we must not be judgemental
At what lies behind the doors;
Life is messy, tempermental:
There are corpses on our floors.