The Daisies Mown

  

from These Denver Odes

The daisies mown will blow again.
The moon pines not, nor is dismayed,
rejuvenating without pain;
once man into his grave is laid,

he is no more a man. His dust
may someday form some form instead.
It won't be he. The new moon must
return; but man, when dead, is dead.

So you, figured like Helen, bright
of eye, Celinda, will not see
how good you look, made up for night,
to be illumed like Semele.

The Expatriate

 

For extra credit he remembered much

That wasn’t worth remembering, forgot
The kinship he had promised to except
From discharge, and demurred at growing up.
It made him charming, like a short-term loan,
Lots of interest there, so he changed his name
To Amaryllis-in-the-Shade and wept,
Or said he did, at auld acquaintances.
The Times that try men’s souls, he did not read,
Other than archived, knew that butterflies
Were thinner on the ground than yesteryear,
But worms more frequent. Mr Lowly Worm,
There was a name for next week, if he made
Next week as Amaryllis-in-the-Shade.

Populist Politics

  

This is the country where a commandant

Discovered persiflage and flavored it,

Enlisted Cherokees for crowd control,

Good local color, founded an orphanage,

And called it Huxley on the Hill of Beans.

A modernizer, they say now, who stored

The name of every voter in a barn

Shaped like the Trianon, then burned it down

To prove he was sincere. From the insurance

He bought a trotter and a Brahma bull

With erysipelas and crooked horns.

They wouldn't get it on. He claimed a spread

Deeper in Texas than he ever went,

Who spent his twilight out on old Cape Cod,

A victim of the Zeitgeist and detente,

An advocate for antinomians.

I Love It When She Talked Like That

  

I threw the golden apples all at once.

I might have hit her once or twice, but mostly

They landed where I meant them to. She stopped

And picked one up, glistening like the sun

On cutlery.  The apple looked good, too.

You think I’m Eve, she said, and passionfruit

A golden bauble wrapped around a core

Of propagation and distraction? Run,

You fleet-foot son of Adam. I got far

Enough to watch her curve around the curve

The highway made, the fruit of all my labor,

Some knowledge maybe—Good, Better, and Gone.