To Robert, At The Vernal Equinox

  

There are a number.  This is one.  It's not

The one about the holy fool who saved

Others, if they had golden hair and spoke

Like cello music in a sitting-room.

Nor is it How the Great King Came to Grief

By Trusting to His Strength, though I have heard

That is a tale for little men to tell.

This is the one about true love, made hard

By hands of flint and counselors of pain,

By those who preached renunciation, those

Who'd nothing to renounce, the tallymen.

He loved from here.  She heard from there.  They sent

Their messages by email or by dove

Or friendly friar: messages mistook,

And blood ensued, and loneliness, and smug

Denunciations from fat senators.

This is that tale.  We all know it by heart,

Which tells you why we tell it every day.

Dead Grandpa, The Fauvist

  

The elder statesman of the neighborhood
Remembers giant elk and sabertooths
Engaging in the parkway. He recalls
Splashy bonfires from the age of ice,
Thick blue-gray sheets encroaching on the huts
His parents built from fronds and fallen logs,
And, oh, the wolves--foundation of the blues,
He tells the little children, who step back,
Hoping the white-coat men with nets will show.
He notices. He tells them of the times
He drove off fierce triceratops and saved
The vegetables for winter. Where were you,
He queries, when we carved out the first wheel,
When Og and I invented tempera
And wooden teeth and book reviews? And salt.
The kids have heard of black-and-white TV
And know that WWI preceded II.
They do not need a grandfather who laid
Great Caesar's ghost to rest and lent his ears
To Phoenix, over coffee, every time,
Until the bird was old enough for school
And snub-nosed scissors, juice boxes, and gym.
Old and burned and born again and again,
He lives the story of the Ice Age, too,
The story of true love and painted caves,
Of Artemis and pharaoh's swanky graves;
But giant elk are scarce today. Old Og
Has gone to dust, there, blowing down the block,
And Grandfather will follow, given time.

The Essence of Senescence

 Darling, I am growing old.

Silver threads are growing cold.