Book16

Book 16 Summer Fall Winter 2016-17 Antiphones

The seafaring sun

lifting the dawn’s

pettyfogged pettycoats

whips her wisped

cynosure obscuring

scarves

to cumulous foam

clouds the sky’s

superflous mirror

and sets

the varied vapors

dancing

with married veils

an osprey wefts

the spray

an airborn otter

levitating over the water

petitely stooping to

neatly talon

her dejune

a talented

spume swooping

sky coyote

deftly looming

a needle point net

to uplift

from the spindrift

her weaving prey

while coquettishly

shivering the sheer

sea shawl away

Once I dreamed

I was daring enough

to extend into

the unknown

to eschew the

obvious embodied needs

but the forest path

was full of trees

and I was fooled

and fascinated by

their shadows

Lost in the

see sawed forest

blinded by to many trees

warped by the lumber

of the tense past

present imperfect

bowing down to

a bored future

knotted, stumped

is when then

reminded

new pruned

limber

sawn from

the legerdemain trunk

the thicket quickens

and again begins

stalks stacked

in the field

yellow gold

toil’s yield

Henry’s affordable

harbinger

the starting gong

status symbol

bellweather of the

steel century

I have created

a curtain of illusion

upon which is projected

the protecting persona

that screens the reality

of my uncertainty

and insignificance

it is only when

I observe you

believing in me

that I begin to suspend

my disbelief

misplace my confidence

and to my shame and chagrin

find

in this patently

pathetic and transparent stranger

the danger of hubris

and unearned relief

The descent of man began

on the eve of evolution

whose ceaseless mill wheel

grinds exceedingly fine

grating all creatures

to entropic greatness

In the unhurried hush

of the newly broken

snow silenced day

where no ray

suns the eyes

why does white

seem wrong

colors in demise

coated in cashemere

shun to shine

unbeamed

under the falling blanket

drifting toward obscurity

frozen in

the final curtain’s

lightly veiled surprise.

Summer’s aroma nosegay

rose musk redolent

rasberry wild

an ambrosia of milkweed

mild soporific honeysuckle

with phlox

in the pherome’s mix

bloom heads bent

in commingled conspiracy

to tranquilized by the intense

banquet of proxy scents

that with their

olfactory inspiration

take our breath away

The unopened flower

never unfolds

the bloom’s perfume

the inner blush

self entombed

until the sudden

storm of summer

rains away the

stoic restraint

revealing anew

all the gardeners

admiring her view

In marriage

may you be

above all

merry!

Two like plumed

songbirds

partnered in

an ever elated duet

In your Hope chest

find a Love nest

Be sole mated

feathered in gentle

conjugal concern

Caring advocates

for growth,

but not division

Supporting

and seeing

shared visions

Honest, solicitous

yet respecting

dual perspectives

from an equal’s

licit not flighty

point of view

Looking beyond

any brief

squall ruffled feathers

weathering and recalling

that the strongest

pair bonding is

Love’s crazy glue

There is time

in the mountains

for the valleys

of love

sometimes

the insurmountable

amounts to just passing time

while the mountain

moves its heart of stone

keeping time with the valley

together to rise

Comes a day of dark

when the breath can’t

keep the spark

when the weary’s rest

is found

free of sight

and softest sound

a profound stillness

calms the barely rising breast

and fingers fall

uncurled from palms

released from pain

and the helpless palindrome

of birth and death

fear and qualms finally

put to rest

then quandry free

comes the life of

unembodied endless ease

at last at liberty to

do as you please

The bard’s palindrome

helpless in birth and death

Halyards clanging like

train crossing bells

gale hooting up

giant swells

the stout hull

an eggshell

the sail a shroud

the mast a cross

The universe

has no center

no portal to the immortal

to enter look to

the scalloped shore

the nautilused whorl

the mosaic geometric mosque

of an unbudded leaf

the sufi cursive folded cosmos

creased upon itself

in the unwittingly natural

original organic origami

of a multiple orgasming megacosm

an astragal

hiding the lacuna

providing the

interstellar interstices

an escape gap

beyond the

ringing welkin

Old money a

thoughtlessly

deposited penny

dated on the day

cached on the

banks entrusted

to the repository for

nonliquid asssets

unfit for

currents and seas

saved unchanged

on the shore with

the sand dollars

and uninterested

greenback turtles

the real treasury

waiting for the finder

to be its keeper

the loon alone

in the mist

distressed

mourning to

the moon in

a melancholy

tremolo solo

whistling for

a missed mistress

prognathous billed

pelicans

paunch bellied

pouch filled

winnowing

minnows and fry

roman nosed herons

serpentine necks

frog full

pinochioed plovers

and pug beaked pipers

inveterately crosstitching

the seaboard for invertebrates

the tight highwire walker

the walleyed knife thrower

the palsied shootist

the crapulous motorist

the brain surgeon

with ADD

operating unapologetically

its all a thrill until

the shoe on the other foot slips

the heart is daggered

the bullet just misses

the vertigo won’t let go

you’re not behind the wheel

but under their buses

as the fascination with

intoxication doesn’t abate

swains and sweethearts shrug

and we learn too late

that love is just another’s drug

the soul’s begging bowl

hungers for solace

a fresh dream to replace

the stale solecisms

fruited from

thoughtful labor

not the thin insights

of unloved neighbors

the toothless wisdom of youth

belied by the bite

of necessity

nor the unprovable tenets

of improbable faiths

withered by enthusiasm

peddled as peace

instead an infusion

of invigoration

an empty room

a bloom

of new aims

anchored in action

adjusted by age

with a permanent smile

plastered in place

that you can

turn to face

to make certain

each word decision

is wrought with

the precision worthy

to convey the urgent

thought’s tenor

fraught with stratumned

sensorily intense

diverse significance

infused with

recondite time, place

and proper cadence of

the inspiration’s burst

purposed to reveal an

emotional locus

rivered with woven rhyme

craftily nuanced

to recompense the nescient thirst

of an uninsousiant

curiously parched audience

one needs must sidle

with chanced nonchalance