Discovery Drafts

  Spend some time turning The pieces around in your mind: They find their fit Even that odd shape Its sharp edges Slicing your heart Like a lump of veal The plaintive calf cry Bleating beating Defeating your heart The light dawns And you see A key, Not a knife, A door opening: “Your daughter called To see how you made out. She said to say she loves you.” A successful operation A robust recovery For exactly a few hours Then a sudden decline Slow passing Not alone but admitted, Home again. At peace In the interlacing constellations Of memory Raised up, alight, a light, Home again Alive at heart, My heart.  I have held this piece a long time Endured the lacerations Because I have loved you, Dad. I have been Waiting, waiting, waiting For time to make the fit.

As the gray of late winter dissolves into muck and slush and rain, I find myself inside more often than not, though not unhappily as I hear the songs of tufted titmice, black-capped chickadees, and robins filling the cool, damp air with spring.  Meanwhile, though, I think of warm days and sunsets.  The poem below, "Gilgamesh, Running," recalls a pleasant evening with a friend at Orenaug Park here in Woodbury, Connecticut. Standing on the platform Of the fire tower at Orenaug Park I watch in the cool evening air As Shamash carries the sun away, Leaving the few drops of fiery ink To paint the evening sky Orange in its wake I think of Gilgamesh running Through a dark tunnel For twelve blighted hours Nonstop for his life In search of the eternity Waiting to be unlocked In his heart Though he could not know-- Not then. The hurry? The sky fire ablaze again On a new day Would make its return Through that very tunnel Scorching the warrior hero To death Without his finding The answer