On the go...

I wrote this poem as I was listening to John Mayer's song Friends, Lovers or Nothing and the following line: "Anything other than stay is go" got me thinking. I looked down at the current poetry definition I was recording for my midterm coming up next week and it was RHYTHM: a measured movement. But how could I attempt to "define," [literally from Latin finire-to limit,] or even remotely restrict such a thing as rhythm? The whole exercize in itself seemed futile.


Thus, I began to sketch a short poem about rhythm and try to work with how rhythm plays out in everday life. This is the result:


"3. measured movement"
Roads entwining, winding, binding.
Hoof beats swiftly grinding, grinding.
Your voice lifting, laughing, lulling.
Tantrums often pushing, pulling.
Hurry, for we must get going!
Moving, moving, never slowing/

Rivers flowing, raging, roaring.
Herons watching, sometimes soaring.
Youthful chanting, singing, songing.
Tiptoe whispers, sleepers yawning.
Hear, Oh Israel, your longing:
Moving, moving every morning/

Rest, ye weary on-the-goers,
Healing for you harvest sowers.
You will find your peace beside me.
Thirst no more, for I will guide thee.
Hearts once pounding, always racing.
Moving...moving...now embracing/

THE DESOLATION


Dream invades my mind like a shadow
                               
                *

The hunt for hungry hearts foretells my gift:

                A vision learned deep inside my skull.

The dusting and defining of a wish –

                A warped imagination I forego.

A hundred heads of hell betray my lust

As I arise from ashes, then to dust.

Yet now I choose to focus on the grip

Which bids this solitary soul to Rest In Peace.

I am Mary crouching as I weep beside a bed of wondrous promise.

Fulfillment ravished me – yet somehow I am chaste;

Of bile and of blood I taste.

This holy thing I bear will give me life,

Though doubt again imprisons me like the empty words I whisper to myself.

Here am I, your servant, trembling  –

Not so much a victim as a virgin.


                  *

Alone I listen for some evidence of truth

As I stamp out the last trace of light

which lingers on my cigarette.

Look

Oh Learner, to the leaves in the road.

Look to the tree that is resting above.

Look from the branches, which lead to the sky.

Look high, oh learner, look high.

Look to the birds which rest in the tree.

Look to their nests which rest within.

Look at the leaves they have left in their nest,

The leaves from the tree they are resting in.

Look to the sky which captures the scene,

Look at the blue which beams from above.

Look to the lake which points back to the sky.

Look high, oh Learner, look high.

The Man with the Purple Heart

     A pair of off-white Reeboks rest beneath an antique bench that he bought at a garage sale in the sixties. The tapestry which drapes over the bench is faded and smells of dust and pine needles. His wife made it for their first anniversary and it has rested there ever since their last together. Her ashes lie above the fireplace in the front room in a Grecian vase that his mother-in-law purchased for their wedding. Beside the vase, a crinkled paper drawing of three stick figures holding hands is framed with a wood that doesn’t match any surrounding furniture in the room. Floral printed couches encircle the fireplace, an ideal setting for a story teller complete with a wooden rocking chair in the corner. But the rocking chair does not face into the room; its back is turned away from the central living space and positioned towards the west window of the house.


     Bill Arkmeyer sits in that chair every evening around 7:00pm in the winter time and nine or ten o’clock in the summer. Each night he wears the blue bomber jacket they issued him in the air force. He never fails to watch the sun disappear behind the skyscrapers that didn’t used to be there ten years ago.  A knotted, wool blanket covers his lap and some nights the cat curls itself between his bony knees, falling asleep on its back. Bill remembers bringing Lily home from the hospital and sitting right there with her bundled in his lap looking up at him for the first time with those deep questioning eyes, the eyes everyone said were his. A few tears descend onto his cheeks as he struggles to remember the things she used to say and her favorite outfits.


     A plane makes its way across the sky, silhouetted against the deepening violet horizon. He sees the cockpit and imagines himself looking out across a grey sea; the temperature is below zero and his wingman is running low on fuel. The aircraft carrier is located almost one hundred and fifty miles away. He looks back at the lagging jet behind him, calling in on the radio for a status report. His wingman mumbles, talking rapidly. Panic. His heart pounds like some living thing dying to break free. Slowing his own aircraft, he responds over radio signaling the fellow pilot to follow his descent into the foreboding mist ahead.
              
     The winter sun is shy, abandoning the earth like some stranger at a holiday party, the same parties he, himself no longer attends. Bill’s eyes water and the salty drips fill the creases which line his lids, trickling down his face like a meandering stream into a delta of wrinkles. A few joints crack as he props his arms and lifts himself from the unsteady chair. The scene before him is now black, save the dim glow of a street lamp at the end of the block. The lamp beside him glares in the window and he folds the blanket, turning away from his solitary reflection. Standing before the fireplace he slips his hand into the breast of his jacket, where his gnarled fingers clench a small war medal. Around his neck hangs a gold chain and a locket, inside of which is a picture of two women: one with brown eyes, and one with dark blue ones. Closing his own dark blue eyes, Bill smiles and looks at the crinkled drawing again.