When Lions Come

  

This appeared in Orbis.

When lions come to the door to drag you out
into the street, they won’t want elegy
or meditations on the Elder Breughel.
It’s commonsense and die with them: plain speech
is what they have time for. They’re not chimpanzees.

In camps, if you make it there, interrogation
occurs in prose, in real time, not in feet.
Elephants can do prosody; lions think
elephants have gone soft, wasting their gifts
on rumination, wallowing, and tusks.

Under the klieg lights lions want the truth.
They won’t even tell you, Soon you can go home.
Maybe they eye a haunch and hum a little.
Confess the truth and change for death: that’s all
the deal they offer, all they need to know—

lions don’t hope. They are. No note is sent
advising your next of kin you have been laid
with wildebeests and zebras in the pit
where herbivores accrue, praying, say lions,
they could be lions next. Not bloody likely.

When It Was New

  

This house when it was new

was mine. Now we have aged

past midpoint. When I grew

that elm, I kept it caged

a year or so. It soars

and crowds the house beside,

as if the out of doors

were one great neighbor wide.

I guess we haven’t altered

because I went away,

nor would these roots have faltered

if I had chanced to stay;

and yet it seems it bided

until I turned my face,

like someone then decided

to let it have the place.

Arabica Nights

  

Scheherazade called last night, with a tale

Of buffalo and bitcoin. I hung up.

Her name is Scam; her voice is far away

From Rocky Mountain vowels, her face as pure

As real-life happenstance, as blank as pie.

Next time she calls I’ll ask her, Have you more?

More rocs, more executions, warranties,

Or current offers? I am Old King Cole

And full of expectations unfulfilled;

But I can see the chambers where you toil,

A studio walled in silk, and those are pearls,

And these are bread and swine, Scheherazade.

In Adam's Fall

 

Yes, it is autumn. You see the pale tinge

The leaves imply. They know what will come next,

But won't admit it. What's a leaf to do,

Feeling its death, but with no voice to kvetch,

No hand to raise in protest? It's a fair

Fall from here and will be crunchy then,

A lot of company, no one to say

There, there, we were quite green back then, you know?

Called Upon by the Professor

  

I was paying bills when Professor H.,

dressed in his salt-and-pepper tweeds, appeared

and clucked, too long a victim of catarrh

and clerical miscues. The wrong iota,

sense goes awry, the statement gets misfiled.

He raised a saturnine brow. “O loveliest

of trees,” he said and decrescendoed. No

spot of ink stained where he’d stood, no scent

of laurel filled the august empty air.

I turned myself to text and death, his two

permanent acquisitions. In the heat

the cherry blossoms fluttered, though no breeze

rattled my papers. Unhappiness, he said,

is best unspoken. Sweet are the uses of

pomposity. Pains and chains and silence.

The Sight of Snow

  

The fat squirrels have surrendered.

Nuts, I say: they had no other course.

The chickadees complain until they’re hoarse.

I feel for them as though they had been rendered,

Or would if I were nature’s friend;

But I’ve made other, safer plans for fall.

I shall not be at home when ill winds call.

Spring is the goal here; winter is the end.

The trees are sure they will awake.

The frozen grass has done it all before.

Clematis clings to hopes there will be more.

But they're all botany. There's no mistake.

No cyclic show for me; but, oh,

I think of warmth and someone whom I knew,

Someone who spoke in cadences, as you

Burst with excitement at the sight of snow.

The Arc of History

  

Phoebus in his coat and tie

Caught the barista’s wandering eye,

And all was won, and love was done,

And love produced an errant son.

And all the world was hot and dry.

A shepherd in a foundered field

Found him a maid and made her yield.

A golden age, by golden rule,

Began its rain, and it was cool,

Its prior mystery concealed.

They called it fable, called it lore,

The days of rain, the age of ore.

And all of those who came behind

Said it been by love designed,

And they were what had been in store.