Courage

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Samuel would have a Nobel prize for Frisbee
if they gave one and if he were human and not a dog.
And they played positions: others throwing, him retrieving.
And catching. Samuel Cetera sure could catch.
One day he saw three scruffy men in wheelchairs
applauding him, him churning his three legs
to make another jump, a dashing catch.
Distracted by their clapping, Samuel missed.
The Frisbee sailed beyond him, to the men.
When he got there—running, limping—Samuel saw
the men flip the Frisbee gently to each other.
They had no legs, these veterans of three wars
that no-one at home remembered. Wars without names.
The Frisbee fell, none of them could reach down.
Samuel picked it up, gave it to one of them
who threw it and he caught it. Brought it back
to the second man, and a next time to the third.
All afternoon the dog ran on three legs
and the legless men threw the Frisbee high and laughed.
Samuel Cetera, and three maimed men, and courage.

Extras

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We streak across the stage pursuing stasis,
which, although it stands still, we do not catch.
We stride and skulk, scale props. We speak of mazes,
as if our words were more than breaths we snatch
from winds that waft us nearer to the wings.
The stage boards wear, but it is we who splinter.
Each spotlight shadow takes a bow, and brings
us one step nearer to our personal winter.

Doctor No Much More

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He feels the weight loss that he still calls hunger.
He wishes to hear English native spoke,
or was that spoken? Harder to remember
alone inside his nearing-empty mind
with him Humpty-Dumpty bumping down the wall
at the bottom of the garden. Night time falls.

He goes inside and lights the guttered candle.
He pours his cup, last of this morning’s tea.
He disinters a banger. It revolts him.
With eyes tight shut it’s nourishing, he assumes,
so he throws bits at the cat he found that’s blind
and they both eat tea in silence. Midnight falls.

It is early somewhere warmer, he is thinking.
Not stinking darkness. Never rising damp.
He takes his diary down and tears out pages
that he holds above the candle, watching smoke
glow into flame then falter and char dark.
The cat meows, which seems to say it all.

He watches ash fall on the antimacassar.
Downtown the church bells ding-toll 4 a.m.
The neighbour, the one working, starts her car
for commuting to the hospice where she reigns
when she isn’t drudging, which is usually always.
The candle gives the ghost up. All is dark.

A silver lining on an ancient bookmark
succumbs to tarnish and his nervous thumb.
He rubs. The cat meows. All is less clear
than they told him back when he was graduating
and when he bought this practice and became
the general practitioner for this town.

Out Doors Life

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He stands at his window and looks at the snow
and the wolf tracks in front of his door.
He takes his new phone – there is no one he’ll phone –
and he makes photographs till he’s bored.
Then he sits at his desk, which is large and impressive,
and he wishes depressively dusk
would absolve him of actions which in the dark he can’t do,
but the morning has hours to go.
A bird whose black shadow was large as his desk,
when it flew over dropping those rocks,
which had scared him, seems smaller in the tree where it perches
and he stands up and pulls on more socks,
and a wool jacket weighed down with a Ruger Vaquero
in its holster he’s sewn in himself,
and a parka and gloves, and, finally, boots.
Then he genuflects, opens the door.

Street Bones in Spanish Hill Town

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I swing
the olive doors’
square shutters — solid wood —
and winter sun runs in and squints
my eyes.

The men
who live up here
have driven off in cars
with rusting doors, to look for work.
I stay.

As stay
the old, the poor;
the gypsy woman who
has fourteen sons, makes baskets, and
who drinks.

Her black
crocheted crepe wool
old wrap protects the sun,
and children running down to school,
from her.

We use
the terrace roof
for breakfast and a lounge.
Not one of the indigenous
admits

he thinks
(she thinks, they think —
new verbs to conjugate)
that we’re less mad than rabid dogs
to sun.

I read
the news in Dutch
and practice Spanish verbs —
except on Tuesdays when I watch
TV.

I look
at CNN.
I need to when there’s war
but otherwise its tag lines make
me wince.

Down on
the dusty street
I sweep up scraps dogs strewed
outside our solid olive doors
last night.

The wind
blows every way
but not enough to shift
the salad left when night strays took
the bones.

The bag,
the plastic sack,
of roasted-chicken bones,
the scraps we hung up on the wall,
had split,

pulled down
by dogs, or cats,
who hunt the midnight streets
for food, by tearing pit-bound bags
apart.

At home
we worry that
a dog might choke on bones
from roasted chicken. Tell that here,
folks laugh.

Riparian Afternoon

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How loud the blackbird sings
above this languid stream!
While unseen smaller birds respond,
an otter and I dream.

The otter on the other side,
and I here in my shade,
and flocks of tiny birds on rocks,
comprise the cast that’s made

this afternoon’s performance grand –
like that of yesterday –
and those of every day for aeons.
Sunlight and shadows play

at dancing, while the current dawdles
over ancient rocks.
Oh, everything is perfect here.
We have no need for clocks.

We have no need for anything
that is not with us here.
The blackbird and the otter see
the water’s clean and clear.

The shade that aids siestas
and the burbling creek sounds team
together, and we all unite,
and give thanks. Then we dream.

Languish Skulls

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I am happiest where what I speak is foreign,
which is everywhere, increasingly, today,
My English suffers anguish from self-exile.
My French and Spanish languish, but get by
in situations where I’m buying something.
I’m told my grasp of spoken Dutch is perfect,
or were they telling me that I am deaf?
What’s next? Who knows? Habléis U Esperanto?

Homecoming

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I can take you there today, if I can find it.
If I can get the key to the padlock on the chain.
You can hold the gate aside. I will drive through.
You click the padlock closed. You climb back in.
We drive across wild meadows where the road was.
We get out where the log bridge washed away.
We ford the creek, knee deep in rushing water.
Our clothes should dry out quickly in this sun
But here the path comes underneath the trees.