April 1-7

April 1 Pomodoro (Tomato)

Pomodoro, tomato, sweet tang of summer,

Winter's crust is watery filth, sand left on the pavement.

Old frozen, canned, tomatoes limp into soups and sauces,

And summer's harvest, ages away, mere stringy sprouts on the window sill.

Pomodoro, I hold the word as the tight red skin

round the thick pink meat,

knife pops the bursting bologna rind

seeds in their gel

and the salt sweet ooze,

I from fingers lick.

as I ingest

on my tongue,

savor the future

in my mind.

Small white two-leaved slip

late summer spreads, up poles entwined,

grand, hairy, green, leafy vines

and at each end . . .

Oh, Pomodoro,

My tomato,

Only the word can feed me now.

April 2 To Marc Chagall--Good Friday, 2021

Today is the profoundest day.

It goes beyond words I can say,

and so I think inside the walls,

the room where painted Marc Chagall.

He in his garret, I in mine,

Painting a picture, writing a line,

I see it now: chair, desk, and bed,

and a window picture to feed his head.

I picture green, blue, olive hues

and donkey heads and cobbler shoes.

I see a church across the street,

an onion turret, not to eat.

And bleary-eyed at desk so late,

what in your inner walls create?

Remember birth you soar overhead

Your wife and baby in the bed.

And also sailing on the cross,

a Jewish rabbi heals all loss,

and flowers come from deep inside,

the healing savior and the bride.

I write of him; he paints for me--

the killing knee's new Calvary,

whose cry must save us from our sin,

as darkening storms let sunshine in.

APRIL 3 Untitled

Returning to the quiet of my house

from the pizza party hosting,

sitting on the back porch,

screen filters chirps and songs.

A lone cycle interrupts the normal hubbub

for his moment of bird fame and is gone.

But deep beyond the bird's chirp

the skill of the insect world

covers the soundscape

or is it tinnitus?

Can this constancy be bugs,

just as sunlight is the backdrop

for all visibility?

Insects are the sky of song.

II.

Walking in the woods today

I heard a cardinal and saw none.

I heard two owls but saw none.

Other birds invisibly sing and call.

I see dead trees and distant silos.

I whistle a chickadee song--

no response.

Nature, even in your mildest form,

you are untameable and do what you want.

III.

And now the birds are back again,

chattering to and fro.

A goose honks over at the lake,

a nearly panicked whistle of some songbird,

and the bugs' invisible background choir.

April 4 Easter

After the kids are all gone

and the dishes done

I consoled myself

with Haldór Laxness

Iceland's Nobel laureate

transferring the sorrow of missing

to the sorrows of losing

two sons and a daughter

and their father

who blindly consoles himself

by caring for sheep.

Eventually, I give in

to the duties of the day:

folding the blankets

of the grandchildren's pallets:

a sheepskin, three afghans, and a quilt.

I realize it is not the expected stuff

that makes the heartstrings murmur.

It's the odd detail that catches at the chest,

on the corner of heart and lungs and abdomen.

The stray cartoon sock under the bed,

the quarter cup of milk in the fridge,

the coffeecup on the windowsill,

without a coaster.

April 5 Tinnitus Variations

I left the Navy with ringing in my ears

Tinnitus ringing ears

for years now

one steady pitch

that I can't pin down.

It's like trying to make an eyeball floaty

stay still for observation.

But today it changed--

an aural forest,

Chirps and buzzing;

quiver, twitter, chatter

one times four, one times one

a guttural chirp,

a pulsing beat.

But deep inside,

I find the fine line,

the original whine,

and there's a tiny sound

It shifts up and works its way

around my face like a Swiss motion hand,

or elevator going up.

Oh, my tinnitus,

at times you are a swingset

April 6 On Being Salt by the Sea

I picture me-- a pile of salt

on the beach of a blue-green sea

that came so close, there'd be no fault

if it consumed salt me.

The sea is salt, and after all

We're bound to go someday

Doggone Adam and the Fall,

otherwise, we could stay.

The sea seems getting closer now,

I want to run and hide.

It licks the angle of repose;

It's reaching higher tide.

I want to run and hide because

I'm frightened to the dregs.

My crystals feel dissolving buzz,

besides, I've got no legs.

And as the sea has had its way,

it's not that I won't be.

As sun leaves salt on hot, dry days,

I'm now part of the sea.

April 7 Wolf Spider Island

There's a place where people sleep in shacks that rock on GitcheeGoomie's flow,

And the race that lives above the deep are cosmic cracked eggs, don't ya know.

They're high on scent of duckweed scum,

then sigh and repent they'd been so dumb,

but the lazy summer only makes them dumber

as the boathouse rocks

when they let out locks,

and the evening falls,

and the spider crawls,

and the lamps are lit,

and the flitters flit

round the chimney glass

and up on the wall

the spiders crawl--

black and hairy beasts.

They don't bite at least.

Well, they don't bite me,

so I let them be,

as they slowly roam

round my boathouse home.

But most every night

there's a fearful fright

when the spiders lack

of grip

means down my back

he'll slip.

Automatic hand

reach to where he'd land

and with practiced fling

the wolf spider king

who'd fallen from his heights

now flies cross the night

hits the wall

with a sound like "Tak!"

Shakes it off to crawl

up the wall and back

to his prior place

where he'd fall'n from grace

and will fall again.

Will he never win?

Well, then, what's to win?

He's just crawling heights,

falling, getting flung

cross many lamplit nights.