Spies

Out of the womb, our first disguise, we slip
Into the outer world, unknown, unnamed.
We’re introduced naked and unashamed,
To shiver, stare and cry out in the grip
Of harsh hands and bright lights.  We are here
Without a passport and we must deceive,
Adapt, adopt, assimilate or leave.
Later, registered, accepted, we still fear
Exposure.  But we have fathers, mothers,
Relations, lovers, friends.  Cover that lets
Us learn our lines, our lives, our lies, and sets
Us on our way to imitating others.

And when we grow weary of  being spies,
We put on death, the final deep disguise.

Getting It Together

I met my body many years ago.
At first I hardly knew him but he grew
In size and strength and strutted steadily
Deep into stubborn staid stupidity.
Oh, he was foolish.  He would say and do
Things I thought unwise.  When I told him so,
He laughed at me and did them out of spite.
What could I do but sit around and wait?

That's what I did.  He put on weight and years.
Sometimes he'd listen to my hopes and fears.
Sometimes he'd follow my advice, too late.
Then finally I found his nonsense quite
Outrageous and I knew we must be one.
Dawn now finds us facing the same mirror.
Evening finds us snug in the same bed.
When he remembers what he did and said
He hangs my head in shame.  Now I'm nearer
To myself then I have ever been, am done
With his perversity. And I can see 
What joy he took making a fool of me.  

Extremities

When I was young I marveled at the hand,
The tapering of fingers and the twist 
Of sinews snaking from the gnarled band
Of knuckles to their anchor in the wrist.

I read palms, both the life line and the love,
And mystified, I found what fate had planned 
For skeptics, whom I’d had no knowledge of
Before they tendered me their tender hand.

Now I am old and looking further find
Feet a far fitter fetish for my age.
They have hands’ stretch and structure, understand
The body as it shuffles off the stage.

Hands raise us high to celebrate our birth.
Feet never fail to bring us back to earth.

Vision

The sandman called again last night.  I yawn
And scrub my eyelids with both fists.  But still
Computer print is blurry, my eyes fill
With tears and grit collects in ridges on
Both lash and lid.  I blame the dirty air,
The strain of reading late.  In years long past
My eyes were clear, my hazel iris cast
In spotless cerements of white, the clear
Untroubled gaze of youth.  As years went by
Blood vessels burst and bled, cataracts grew,
Travelers floated in their fluid and you
Would be amazed how often I would cry.

Eyes are the window of the soul they say,
But mine have left a laggard soul behind.
They focus on a still reflective mind
And see a little farther every day.

My old eyes, rheumy, reddened, but scrubbed clean,
See further now than they have ever seen. 

Inner Ear

“In the composition of their salts, the fluids of the inner ear still carry the memory of primordial ocean.” – Gavin Francis

A tablespoon of ocean near my brain,
Is trapped by tubes within the inner ear.
So everything I'm close enough to hear
Sails tides of comprehension and explain.
The resonating membrane in the brine
Sends rippled rhythms deep inside my head
Where somehow it becomes just what you said
And I can mesh your understand with mine.

Down the slick channel of my human birth
I slid, to creep and crawl and sway and stand.
The saline broth that steadies me on land
Is the same sea that balances the earth.

Speech and language, stable stance and motion,
Birthday gifts from greatgrandmother ocean.

The Teacher’s Voice

The teacher’s voice comes from far down below,
Diaphragm-driven, from the bottom up,
Vibrations that could break a coffee cup,
A pitch that Sandy Koufax couldn’t throw.

It cuts across the crowded anteroom
And stills the tumult and it has been known
To quiet mongrels squabbling for the bone
Of notoriety from out the tomb.

Who needs a mike?  Just find a teacher taught
In elocution.  Let that teacher’s voice
Silence the room and cancel out the choice
Of pandemonium’s chaotic thought.

Steeped in Stentor and precise inflection,
Let my teacher’s voice command attention.

Wind Chill Factor

We carry our own atmosphere, a thin
Slick of warmth and wet, aura, psychic sweat, 
Insulation for an innocent skin,
Protective cover’s cover.  We forget
It’s there until a chilly bit of breeze
Whisks it away.  It’s then we feel the true
Ambient temperature.  It’s then we freeze,
Open to weather and its residue.

The same glaze surrounds my cherished thinking,
Resisting alteration till a gust
Of speculate sets my mind’s eye winking,
Blinking away the chimera of trust.
Intuition guides the active actor.
Insight is the artist’s wind chill factor.

Body Memory

My body remembers more than I do.
It knows how to swim, to ride a bike, to
Move through crowds and it probably still knows
How to crouch and hide when a tiger goes
By.  I don’t have to give instructions when
I need to breathe or to go where I’ve been.

Driverless cars are nothing new.  I wish
I had a dime for every time a dish
Too hot dropped from my fingers, a hot drink
Spewed from my mouth before I stopped to think.
Better enjoy this while I can and not 
Think too much about what I haven’t thought.

My body functions on the afterglow
Of lessons that it mastered long ago.

The Fall

Red yarn led from the bottom of the tree
To the dark dining room and the  kickstand
Of a new maroon Hawthorne bike for me, 
An unexpected Christmas in my hand.
But for three months this skeletal steed’s home
Was the garage.  God, who had his reasons
To move mountains, keep rivers in their beds,
Still had time enough to sort out seasons
And perfect paths for either bikes or sleds.

No longer saddled with the old family bike,
Schwinn with a bulbous tank and built-in light,
I and my new comrade did what boys like 
To do, cement their standing in the flight
Of close fast friends.  Crookie, B. J., Jerry,
We played Ditch, Tag, raced away the day,
Harried cares the way young kestrels harry
Pigeons, light-foot lords of the town’s highway.
But later that autumn on a sun-glazed morn,
My tire grazed a grate, the wheel skewed.  I found
Myself, blue jeans rent, arrogant knee torn.
Blood welling slowly out upon the ground,
A scarlet scribble dripping on the tar.

I fell, but only now I know how far.

Cut Finger

Right to the bone, I sliced into the tip
Of my left index finger. I could feel
The flap of flesh, the blade, the blood, the heel
Of French bread on the board. I heard the drip
Of snow slow off the eaves. A two-hour trip
To town and stitches made no sense. To seal
This seam before the juices could congeal,
Restore the finger, ravel up the rip,
We wound, my wife and I, strip after strip
Of gauze and tape and gauze. And now it's real
And whole except it's learned how to conceal
Its heats and hurts. And now I have a chip
Of frozen flesh to carry on my hand,
A bit of death to own and understand.

Hay Delivery

Scott Valley baled hay on an old flat bed
Truck comes down the dirt driveway. With my pole
I rush to raise the electric wire, sole
Provider for the freezer in the shed.

Too late. Sixteen feet of hay snaps the wire.
Now I need my nippers from the tack room.
I bang the door open. A blazing bloom 
Of yellow jackets fills my face with fire.

No matter. Cut the power so I’m not toast.
Reconnect the line and check the freezer.
My poor wasp-stung ears hear the old geezer
As he backs again and again into the gate post
At the hay barn. I must sprint down the path
And guide him through the gate. Then we unload.
He leaves. The wire sways above the road.
I give my swollen face an ointment bath.

It’s a hundred and five, time for a cold
Beer and I’m almost 35 years old.

The Parade

When fever grips us, it can set things free.

Brass gas masses march down the avenue,
The heart leads with his drum and you can see
The lungs puffing along behind.  There’s a few 
Spectators.  Fidgeting kidneys.  The kind
Stomach.  Cruel coiled intestines, creatures
Who left little appendix far behind.
Now he sits sulking beneath the bleachers.
Lord Liver casts an envious eye at heart,
He swanks his way past gall bladder and spleen.
They doff their caps, praise him for looking smart,
Then cock a snook when he cannot be seen.
Of course esophagus chokes up.  And pale
Eustachus sighs.  But all the little glands
Pancreas, thalamus, stand on the rail 
Waving banners clutched in sticky hands.

Night is long and always a deceiver,
More so when you’re fathoms deep in fever.

Emotional Lability

Tears should be saved for serious matters,
Shed for the moments when dear ones give birth,
When old and trusted comrades leave the earth,
When my eggshell ego cracks and shatters.

But as I grow older everyday things
Scatter salt drops in my eyelashing blink,
And set my face into a furious wink.

I find it happens when the diva sings
An aria and someone dies for love.
The thought of my sons as children, the way
The wind moves through the leaves and just today,
When my sweet wife told me what she thinks of
Absurdities I’ve scribbled all these years.

Age needs no rhyme nor reason for its tears.

Walking the Dog

The old dog totters. So does his master.
It’s late afternoon. They’re out for a walk,
A 2-hour trip around a city block.
Long enough. They can’t go any faster.

Every six steps the dog collapses. Then
The man in knee braces flinches and trembles.
The leash in his palsied hand assembles
Authority. The dog rises again.

It’s bone on bone in my arthritic knees.
Clumsy swollen calves tend to their tangles.
My ankles no longer form their angles.

Still, compared to this pair, I’m Hercules,
Watching this crippled couple’s fettered feet
Stubbornly stumble down a city street.

Meatsuit

When I first donned my meatsuit I more
Or less provided it with food and care.
I scrubbed its hands and teeth and combed its hair.
I scrutinized it after and before.

I permitted everything that’s lawful.
I supervised each glistening glob of gland
And organ, though as you can understand,
Secretly considered them as offal.

The guarantee’s expired on my sack
Of skin and what it holds and now I know
I can’t get any sort of trade-in.  So
They told me when I tried to take things back.

Now only junkyards have replacement parts
For baffled brains and syncopated hearts.

Aging

Die young and leave a good-looking corpse.  So
They said in the 60s.  But it’s too late.
I’m in my 80s, flaccid, overweight,
Liver-spotted and I have one dead toe.

My vision’s faded and, over the years,
I’ve heard so much, my ears choose to muffle
Much of it.  Instead of stride, I shuffle.
Mention my mother.  I burst into tears.

So much for dying young.  Now I’m consigned
To unsightly old age.  But I can still
Remember life as maybe and until.
I’m old enough to know love isn’t blind.

I marched a lifetime in the big parade
And can’t complain my uniform is frayed.

Living Forever

When the curfew comes, time to dowse the fire,
Everyone has to understand alive
Was never guaranteed not to expire.
You pay full fare and finally arrive
In nowhere, also known as paradise.

And those who seek eternal life know they
May linger longer only in disguise
By passing on a twist of DNA.
 
In other words, you may be dealt a flush.
And think the winning hand is what you hold.
You tell the skullface dealer not to rush,
But when death calls, believe me, you will fold.

Hitch up your genes and find the perfect mate.
God longs to be a woman and a man
Who lustily arrange what they create
With what was here before this world began.

When the mind finds its time to disappear,
The rest of us rejoins the biosphere.