Leaves, settling
This one-way flight
never regained -
Paralyzed butterflies
in bright orange and gold
make peace with the ground
reconciled, done.
The cold, rain,
and the passage of blind feet
will soon diminish
their hushed, eloquent landings.
----------------------------------------------------
Lions
Not enough study
has been done
on old lions dying.
Unable to feed themselves,
without pride, teeth
or claws, their death
is starvation.
We don't wonder
what happens
to predators past their prime,
pastures are
for the meek, and
only reasoning primates
would contemplate
last rites
for their ancient nemesis.
The lion needs
no winter to die
and no writer.
-----------------------------------------
mass
I'm marking time on the pavement
a whorl of people spilling from curbs;
destination's gravity an attractive pull
while time, early light and sensible physics
bend perceptively to the mass
of close social pressure;
expectations and deadlines delayed
'til the light turns green.
----------------------------------------------------
Matt's Manifesto
The Renaissance men are aging now,
having survived Industrialization's Original Sin
and the Information Age flood;
the need for specialization
drives wrinkles of obsolescence
through their shriveling faces
that have seen too much popular culture,
folk wisdom, colloquialisms, and fads born of boredom
to have much patience left
for the exaltation of yet another
generation of humanity so frustratingly changing,
yet flawed as we've always been.
I've given up on love,
it's a game I've never figured out all the rules,
and I'm getting too old
to be any good at playing it anyway:
"That cranky old man,
who'd put up with someone like that?"
I hear them say way too clear,
though I've gotten good at normally ignoring
what I don't want to hear.
I'd thought of holding you in my arms
while you'd tell me of the cracks in your pavement,
the ones that were flowing together today,
and the ones you'd worry would become chasms,
the ones that could drive us apart,
both of us in love with the persons we imagined us to be,
neither of us realizing then,
that living's just walking,
the cracks coming and going under your feet
and all you can do is keep walking,
and sometimes there's music coming
from places you pass, but never look up to see.
The Renaissance man from upstairs
has packed up now,
he's got his "I'm done" look
draped over his shoulder against the cold,
he's out on the curb;
the New Kids have come out to play
on the cracks of the sidewalk,
and from the next block
the encroaching ice-cream van crawls, bringing music.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
bottles
Farewell to the bottles!
I have celebrated their contents,
then filled them with messages
releasing them slowly
on wild current promises,
imagined their travels,
feared for those shattered,
dreaded those found,
more.
At their conception,
I've followed orderly shelf-rows
guessing their contents,
sneering I could see through them.
They weren't deep,
their only claim to profoundness
their origin: Like earth, beginning in fire,
an expanding sphere, reflecting its maker,
horribly glorious in its flow,
endlessly patient in being formed.
A bottle flows to my feet:
Filled with enough hope
or imagination it is, precariously,
up to its neck in water.
Once I was filled with spirit,
but drunk with my own power,
I consumed myself.
My emptiness now
has made me more transparent, I think.
