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.

The Desuetude of Mr James

Wry Mr James commits enomities

Of style with style. This late in life he knows

Embonpoint is a structural device,

The close that makes the man--his buttons need

Jumbo's dexterity to finish off.

He calls his flowers flowers: that's enough

For floribundant similarity;

But caution comes in shades, like purple light

Climbing a red-brick garden wall at dusk;

And he sees every tint, Adamic man

Mounting a stair which knows no period,

Only a pause, a lamp lit at each landing.

The Midnight Train

 

A lantern on a lanyard on the last

Train out of town to Anywhere at All,

Which happens to be east of Little Jugs,

Gives more illumination than you’d think.

A carrot and a stick and several shoes

Piled on the platform where the caboose becomes

Thin air; and you, you weren’t expecting that.

The elegance of emptiness does not

Include a carrot or a pair of heels,

But Anywhere at All will be amused.

A milliner’s, a pool hall, and a new

Patisserie, in case the gentry come.

A Church of Holy Holiness, a cow

Walking the streets, and then, of course, a bank.

Life can be fruitful, Anywhere at All

Instructs its children, who are dreaming of

A better world, offered in Somewhere Else,

To those catching the midnight train, which leaves

Tomorrow afternoon at 6:15.