Lionel, I think of you
as an old grizzly bear
all burly and tough
but also a teddy bear
full of cuddly stuff
or as my grandfather,
all seasoned and wise
but also my grandson
full of awe and surprise
[for our 53rd anniversary]
In the living room within these walls
Snug we sit on the softened sofa
And watch the dance of pixels on the screen
Replacing our extinguished hearth.
I recall the cozy chesterfield
Where we cuddled in front of the fire
While the storm roared in the hollow,
Our future but a threatening swirl.
Could we then have seen ahead
Our joy and comfort half a century hence,
Before the plague began to rage,
That moment might have lost its treasured worth
Like this perilous time’s, when every minute counts
When 25 million precious minutes since
Cannot be taken from us
By whatever now our future holds in store.
The mockingbird returned
on Spring’s first day
filling the silence
left by students
gone on break.
Its bebop warbles
replaced their hiphop grunts
with a memory of hope.
Yesterday’s elegy dispatched me
on a search for “waggle dance.”
By URL I found it out on YouTube:
the manic moves of worker bees
that vector angle and distance
of nectar to their sisters.
On the drive home last night from sangha,
a podcast announced that science now
can eavesdrop on those numbers.
Coincidences abound
in reunion’s aftermath.
The hive is a web.
The end of the road
Leads back to corners.
The night surf’s whoosh and rumble
Gives way to dawn.
Pelicans glide in line,
Skirt the crests,
Thread through spray, and wheel.
Way out there, the gray surface
Explodes in a flash of foam
Seizing light.
Grandson and pal
Lie inert in the sand
Fourteen hours now,
Growing cells, storing fuel
For the day’s unceasing patter–
Adolescent giants
Nearing boyhood’s end.
He turned fifteen two days ago
Weeping in the station house,
Caught stealing once again
From those who raised him
To whom he’s offered much occasion
For exercise of generosity.
But on this camping trip
To a place I’ve longed for
To return ten years,
He gave some sweeter recompense:
“Grandpa, we’ll run back down the beach
And carry your pack with ours.”
“We’ll pitch your tent.”
“This food tastes great.”
I stand at the edge of the sea
And watch each wave take form and break,
There a million microseconds
Grinding mountains into dust.
I feel my shrunken spine, my eyelids’ droop.
Behind me on the beach, I hear a laugh
And turn toward arms and fingers
Stretching in the sun.
see: https://www.flickr.com/photos/smarx/albums/72157675418113981/show
(April Wells 1943-2016)
I loved you for your name–
the bloom of youth, the standing daffodil.
I loved you for your voice, in full Canadian lilt
Its high and low note chord.
I loved you for your strength,
To clear the brush and split the wood,
and raise those kids alone
in the dark house across the road.
I loved you for the gifts you brought”grace and song and dance
And for the gifts you gave–confidence and joy
I loved you for your laugh.
A holiday to celebrate
The end of holiday.
I sit cross legged in the closet
Trying to subdue thoughts
that tumble like laundry.
A work in progress
Thirty minutes, every morning,
Forty years.
Or is it only labor
Watching the clock?
I face the closed door
Of an antique washstand
That holds the ashes
Of two who made me.
Creation or endurance
Their lives and mine,
Headed for now
Or never?
It ain’t necessarily so
It ain’t necessarily so
The things that you’re liable
To read in the Bible,
It ain’t necessarily so.
The psalmist says three score and ten
Is the year that it’s when to say when
But some disagree
And say age seventy
Is just time to start over again
It ain’t necessarily so
It ain’t necessarily so
Our days may be numbered
But we’re not encumbered
With twenty four hours to go
So here’s a small something for you
To keep track of them in all you do
La Grande classique they call it
Cause it’s classy and above all it
Grows old and yet always stays new
Mann und Weib
Und Weib und Mann
Reichen an
die Gottheit an.
(Wife and husband
husband wife
together reach
for godly life.)
[Updated June 30 2013]
Soon after their move to San Luis Obispo in 1989, my parents, Lise and Henry Marx, presented Jan and me with a gift they’d been working on for several years: a collection of German proverbs they had learned from their parents and grandparents.
I remember continually hearing these sayings from my earliest childhood until their final days. Each time one was uttered there was a moment of satisfaction”the speaker pleased to have found a way to make familiar sense out of some new experience and the hearer gratified to grasp the connection. Growing up as a first generation American, I reacted to these old-world pieties with boredom and embarrassment.