Wesley Willows

At the home for rich old people today
I looked into the common room--2 pm--
there was a huge TV, six feet across,
with a sixty year old movie glowing out:
Judy Garland was singing "Easter Bonnet"
to a sunshiney Fred Astaire.
five or six old women were watching,
their aluminum walkers waiting by their chairs.
They sat completely quiet, absorbed
before that big burning block,
that city of colored noise
to which all their commandeered faculties
were busy feeding life

A Peek

You know that bit about
"You never know the world aright..."
Well, it's true--
Please, Please..
I know whereof I speak.
Take trees...
One summer
maybe 30 years ago
trees got very good to me
especially when I drove
the eight or ten miles to town
on clear lit up mornings.

So well I remember this:
I would wait for my favorite trees.
Really! I would hold my breath
and wait for them
and as I approached them
and as I passed...
well, it was like you feel
when the music you love best
reaches the part you love best
I mean bliss...
People, I mean a kind of ecstasy!

After that summer it was gone.
Trees were just...trees again.
Never once since
have they been anything but just trees.
It was as though one day
the most beautiful woman
in the world
is walking down the street
in a big fat heavy burlap skirt--
covered from head to foot
in this shapeless burlap burqa
which suddenly
as she walks over a sidewalk grate
gets all blown up above her waist
and you find out
that is ALL she is wearing!
She passes
the skirt falls
it is over.

And you spend
the rest of your life
hanging around that grate
and the woman
doesn't come .

New Neighbors

They were not here two weeks
and the tree company
was out there
cutting down the oak
the huge huge oak
that made you feel
little and proud both
when you got close
that had been here
longer than anyone
longer than 90 year old Jerry Hart
who was born in the house
on the corner
it was probably here
before there were any houses
any street at all
maybe it was here
when the indians were
or before that even

So old man Hart
stood watching by his fence
and some others came out
and stood around long faced
finally the guy comes out
"Took up half the yard"
he says neighborly
and starts talking
about what they plan to do
with the space where it grew
and you could tell
why that tree never had a chance--
the man didn't even know enough
to shut up
to lie low
to get the idiotic smile
out of his voice.

Proposals

If you have any plans
for your life
please forget them
completely.
Your life
doesn't recgnize you
as its owner
and every part of it
no matter how tiny
is vastly beyond your sway
and will happen
without your help
and in fact
you will be part
of that happening.
For this much
many thanks !

After walking all morning

what I remember best
is the raccoon
lying on its side in the gutter
full grown, but lean
like a rangy teenager
with the ugliest grimace
I have ever seen
on its smashed muzzle
as though it had whirled
to face the death
rushing down on it
and had died
trying to scare it off.

Old Life Magazine Photo

I've never seen anything deader
than this little dog
smacked by a car
smacked unmistakeably
completely dead
held up now
embraced
by a boy kneeling in the street
a boy with a black hole
in his face so huge
all the green acres
of God's first garden
are getting lost in it.

Watching Boris

Matti Salminen
looks like a crumpling tower
swaying and staggering around the stage
while a hundred faces
of little Dimitri
loom behind

looks like a giant fetus
when he falls down
curls up
and begs the child ghost
to go away to go away

He's got Boris down cold
poor little big man
who wanted to be king so bad
he had a ten year old
stabbed to death

It didn't seem so awful at the time--
that little delegated murder--
after all, he'd seen his master Ivan
roast his enemies
over a slow fire
reciting psalms
as he turned the spit.

Poor Boris
thought he could play Tzar Ivan
hahahaha
not pop-eyed enough
not dead-meat cold enough
not lost enough

Just a little second hand murderer
who still had a little piece of heart left
a flaming little piece of heart
like a match in cupped hands
that would not be quenched
even as he stumbled around
in the windy boots
of a monster