A Note for My Descendants

I don't know why

it's of any consequence,

since I won't be a witness,

but thanks for the gift,

for your reassurance

that there is a future

I would welcome,

though I've done nothing

to earn such good fortune.

You must forgive me

this bare presumption,

appropriating your days

to serve my ends,

fashioning my happiness

 from your uncertainties 

and your certain future grief,

for I have no explanation

that would satisfy plain sense,

but it is good to know

that you'll be there.

Two Poems

Note:  I rarely write poetry about current events, but there are always exceptions.  Havel was a Czech who led the revolt against the USSR and served as the first President of the freed republic from 1989 to 2003.  January 8, 2011, was the day of a mass shooting.  I could have picked, sadly enough, from a plethora of dates.

January 8, 2011:  Tucson, Arizona

What is the darkness in our hearts,

the knife we must hold at bay,

the tarnished eye, the gnawing mouth?

Hope and love are shared grace,

those supple common arts

which lift us all above the clay;

but anger feeds itself alone,

a demon which grows in the night,

a weighty self, as if of stone,

squeezing out each ounce of light,

setting Cain once more to run

along the paths of rage and wrath.

Vaclav Havel, 1936-2011

“I am constantly preparing for the last judgement,

for the highest court from which nothing can be hidden...”

--Vaclav Havel, To the Castle and Back

Dear V.H., surely you were not worried

about the ancient pleasures of our knees,

or eternal claims against our souls,

but more likely, the measures

we hold up to ourselves, that distance

between possibility and deed;

and your task was not ordinary,

you with Mandela and Walesa,

bequeathed a mission of proportions

beyond what is usually asked,

the courtesies of the grocery aisle,

or the duties of the voting booth:

not merely thought, but the body itself,

belief fleshed into commitment--

and thus, you are where you belong,

written into our pages

beyond any doubt or disavowal,

among the ranks of the acquitted.

Maya and the Toast

If there’s anything that will make Maya frown,

it’s being served toast that is too brown.

She commands her bread just barely heated--

any color and she says that she’s been cheated!

On her toast she wants sugar and butter--

any less and she’ll start to mutter;

for of this world she’s clearly the queen,

and her orders we must gladly esteem;

thus, she said in words royally turned:

“I will not eat toast that has been burned!”

May 11: A Hymn

We would call it an ordinary day,

nothing of importance to report

beyond the usual matters,

the errands and walking the dog.

There was a picnic under trees

sheltered from the breezes,

a meadowlark crossing the field

and music from the song sparrow;

and a hope these works of wonder

not cease, but persist--

to the rhythms of the clocks

which beat in our wrists.

May 2

Consider the slope of the sun, 

the difference of a few degrees,

the magic that light makes

as it warms the soil.

To witness is joy enough,

even among the weedy blooms,

the water leaf and baneberry,

poor cousins to orchis and may apple; 

and then, there’s a world of sound

of turkeys proclaiming love,

the bees in the honeysuckle,

the song sparrow standing guard,

and I hear, somewhere distant,

some mysterious warbler

passing through my woods.

It's another day full of answers. 

Campaigning for Stevenson (1952)

Politics as I first learned  about it:

  

Adlai was my mother’s distant third choice,

no equal to Kefauver and his coonskin cap,

and much less than President Harry,

but she was a loyal Democrat to her bones,

and dutifully volunteered for the crusade

to convince the American public

that Ike was no hero but a mere Republican.

Every Saturday afternoon of that fall,

she marched us off to party headquarters,

an old store front on a forgotten side street,

downstairs from the Odd Fellow’s Hall,

an amalgam of old tables, six folding chairs,

buttons, folders, blue and white campaign posters

and old plank floors, worn smooth and gray.

No one came. The banks and stores closed at noon,

leaving downtown in the care of the bars.

As the afternoons crawled, I memorized

Democratic faces destined for November oblivion,

my mother gave up and read McCall’s,

and I walked my brother from Lincoln to Broad,

counting parking meters and studying the sidewalk.

Each hour the local passed on the viaduct,

shaking the windows and rocking the floor,

the crickets sang in the doorway

and my brother napped in the empty display window.

From sunny days in late summer,

the dust dancing in the warm sunlight,

we passed into darkening October chill,

and no one came, not even an Odd Fellow.