Free Verse

Gift of a friend, the stone Buddha sits zazen,
prayer beads clutched in his chubby fingers.
Through snow, icy rain, the riot of spring flowers,
he gazes forward to the city in the distance — always

Bit weird at first,
That starey look in the eyes,
The hair down past his shoulders,
But after a go with the ship’ s barber,
A sea-water shower and the old slouch hat
Across his ears, he started to look the part.
Took him a while to get the way
A bayonet fits the old Lee-Enfield,
But going in on the boats
He looked calmer than any of us,
Just gazing in over the swell
Where the cliffs looked black against the sky.
When we hit he fairly raced in through the waves,

american indian
outside the guthrie
forever wounded
by tributes
high western
movie mockery
decorations
invented names
trade beads
federal contracts
limps past
the new theater

wounded indian
comes to attention
on a plastic leg
and delivers
a smart salute
with the wrong hand

precious children
muster nearby
theatrical poses
under purple
tapestries
castles
and barricades
on stage
with reservation plans

east

the whole moon
burns behind jamestown

seven wings of geese
light the thin ice

west

the asian sun
bloody on the interstate

spring flowers
break on the gray prairie

exit

fingerprints
on the rearview mirror

feral shadows
transposed near fargo

A compendium of words was stored here
Just underneath the chimney
I’ d like to see it that way
Fortune won’ t stand still for that
And pressure of the air flattens paper
I’ d like to see it that way
One comes into the room groomed, a pleasure
There’ s a patch of glitter in the glamor
I’ d like to see it that way
Each moment opens up sudden as an umbrella
On a day storms gather like wool
A way I’ d really like to see it
So you can’ t assume a face again
Before the non-face puts in its appearance

Pindar, poet of the victories, fitted names
And legends into verses for the chorus to sing:
Names recalled now only in the poems of Pindar:

His heart is like a boat that sets forth alone
on the ocean and goes far out from him,
as Aphrodite proceeds on her pleasure journeys.
He pours the gold down the runnels
into a great mystery under the sand.
When he pulls it up by the feet
and knocks off the scale, it is a god.
What is it she finds with those men

The mind goes caw, caw, caw, caw,
dark and fast. The orphan heart
cries out, “Save me. Purchase me
as the sun makes the fruit ripe.
I am one with them and cannot feed
on winter dawns.” The black birds
are wrangling in the fields
and have no kindness, all sinew
and stick bones. Both male and female.

It was a picture I had after the war.
A bombed English church. I was too young
to know the word English or war,
but I knew the picture.
The ruined city still seemed noble.
The cathedral with its roof blown off
was not less godly. The church was the same
plus rain and sky. Birds flew in and out
of the holes God’ s fist made in the walls.

I would like to decorate this silence,
but my house grows only cleaner
and more plain. The glass chimes I hung
over the register ring a little
when the heat goes on.
I waited too long to drink my tea.
It was not hot. It was only warm.