The Poetry Marathon

I’ve head it’s important to know the lay of the land, how things work, where to go,

and the arrangements of all that lies on the terrain.

When you set out on a new journey, you want to know

what the distant, foreign earth offers to a stranger,

convenience stores, gas stations, rest stops, restaurants, hotels, visitor centers,

and the habits of the people inhabiting the new land.

In a forest, the land sprawls at will, its own patterns and logic.

The denizens of the trees, owls, woodpeckers, aphids, and bark beetles,

fauna of the forest floor, deer, slugs, frogs, salamanders, and hares,

inhabitants beneath the soil, earthworms, moles, nematodes, mites and rotifers,

they know how the land lies, but does the land know me?

Mother earth swallows me just as she devours the sky; she harbors my scent,

tastes my fear, sweats my nightly dread, sees the heart beating underneath,

her brown arms’ embrace taking me home, the cellular root, where we began.

I breathe for a living.

Not your ordinary breathing.

Inhalation and exhalation IS life

literally and figuratively, we all respire

modulating between the inhalation uptick

adrenaline unleashed in measured drippings

and the exhalation down cycle release and renewal.

We live between excitation and relaxation, rising and falling,

sympathetic and parasympathetic, flight or flight, rest and digest.

Breath to movement, breath in stillness, breath in slumber, breath til death.

I breathe to live, live to breathe, living breath, I breathe for a living, and so do you.

It was the best

You were the best

But the worst was that time

You broke the cat’s back,

When you rushed off,

Tires screeching, to leave me,

You didn’t see the cat in the wheel well,

Nor felt the crunch I heard,

All remaining, bones, blood and tears,

That was the worst.

Time heals some things.

I’ve never been to the Azores but they beckon me.

Small, gracious, resplendent, Atlantic archipelago,

fiercely independent, tiny islands of breath-taking

hydrangea-bordering, green meadow, mountain

lacunae, cloud-filled, like hookah puffs adrift, I

breathe your lyrical language in my sleep, ever

since your letter, 38 years ago, when you wrote

“I’m in the Azores, now, telecommunications unit.

Driving the Aston Martin through the Alps would

have to wait until the next furlough, which never

did come. You disappeared–for 35 years–with the

words, “the Azores,” embedded in my loneliness,

a magical place that holds your shadow, my dreams

and our youth, captive on volcanic Terceira, in-

caved in Gruta do natal, where dark secrets glow.

Lembro-me dos açores que nunca vi.

You held my hand, leaned your head on my shoulder as we strolled,

a warm Miami summer evening breeze caressing our teenage limbs.

I was 15; just my acoustic guitar, faded coveralls and I hopped on that plane

to meet you, my cousin’s cousin, the kid who blew up frogs at his father’s

hippy wedding in the field, where I first learned the term “cow pie.”

Five years later, you lost your baby lean and mean, grown taut with muscle,

cut waist cool and long hair, the way we tagged ourselves in 1975.

When my father drove the Rambler upstate, up Taghkonic Parkway to

German Town, the five of us lived the farm life a few days, meeting our dinner,

brown bunnies in the hutch by day, roasted “chicken” by night.

It was there I re-met you for the fourth but first time, my father’s friend’s son,

his sister’s husband’s sister’s son; were we related? I hoped not. And we

toked and joked, even my father sat on the porch and smoked a jay, the first

and last time, tobacco his lung poisoning of choice at the time. Your sister,

just returned from the army, lay in the arms of another woman as I passed her room.

It was the first time I knew what it was like to be free, though I believed I was

in the new suburban neighborhood my father planted us in, his $1.50 an hour

for 72 hours a week job, affording him the move from the city to the burbs. But the

farm was cool, fresh garden greens, tomatoes, peppers, green onions, and weed.

We stayed for the weekend, and I left with a pulsing heart and a new pen pal.

You wrote to me in French, using the word “chat” for pussy, and even I knew that

was wrong, and how did we manage to pull that off with both our families around?

But we did, and I loved your letters but not as much as when you sang to me, the

next summer, under a full Miami moon, amid the pink and blue summer homes,

“Oh, I’m being followed by a moon shadow, moon shadow, moon shadow.”

My version

Bengal Cat! Bengal Cat! burning light.

Christmas pine and summer bloom, the stars at night,

Christmas pine and summer bloom,

I ask the silly spirits, read my palm, what’s in store for me?

in hands we trust, community we bind, humanity’s thrust

more or less, we could be free, we could be dust.

A fortnight between lunar to solar,

the moon leading the charge, ironically,

since she, stoic, obedient, seemingly lifeless,

bleeds light from her partner’s ebullience.

Rarely do they two-step, lunar, solar, lunar,

except for now, in this epic moment.

Each semester, the six months’ separation of moon

to sun, lunar to solar, a new batch of eager students arrive,

like mouth-bitten peaches and blood oranges, the

sun, moon, and stars, embarrassed by the shady passing,

imperfect spheres of silent angst, expressionless moons,

and blistering gas balls of energetic suns,

and sit in scruffy rows among creaking computer carousels.

But today, as the moon leapfrogs the sun,

sobering the gleeful optimism of a new beginning,

anticipating the new school year, in the season of death,

stars falling from the sky landing in my cyber classroom.

This short summer of pandemic zooms, eclipse all

the twenty years of semesters spent in dusty classrooms,

pacing the moldy carpets in the institutional cement,

encasing the recycled dreams

and air

of generations

of what-if’s

and coughs

and viruses,

now casting

blackness

over us

the cosmos

we are.

I see it inside a frame,

picture perfect,

fine ripples occasionally stir

a plate glass lake, placid swans

linger among the reedy edges,

a squirrel flitting past the pine

needle carcasses, cushioned sleep

for the children who lie, prone,

snubbing the sinking sun,

cheeks to crossed palms,

top of the hand pillow dreaming

atop the soft detritus, a forest mezzanine

among the sussuration of chirp and buzz.

A cloudless sky of indigo dusk

tinges the mountains to the north

hibiscus, glory of an ebbing daylight.

A blanketed trust in quietude,

sweeps my eyes closed to smell

the thick, verdant branches towering

above a summer evening, the

fullness of dawn’s sleepy arising,

like a promise sealed.

There’s only one true path.

Merely peer through the tree tops to find it,

encircled in the highest branches,

not the rain forest’s emergent stems and leaves, a promise

of fresh air, nourishing humanity’s lungful laments,

but the sun-baked, burnt autumn decay

of political scrum,

the aftermath of billions of steps on a trodden trail.

I look up through the turmoil and treason,

and see the sun, dying brilliantly before eternity,

held in a heart’s center,

divine cell of my own making.