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
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
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