What for?

An endless avenue of years
stretch before me:
bus, coffee, newspaper,
do, done, plan to do again
lunch on diet, lunch on wine
work and wonder
bus, kids, wife
then a book to curl around
at day's end; at week's end
books and movies,
baseball games and dinner feasts,
a trip when there's an itch.
Dear me, what for?

It will happen over and again:
Christmas tree and Lenten ashes
fireworks and All Hallows' masks,
sunshine or rain; house, office, and bus
fend off my lust,
my fear of nakedness, of pain ...
to be poor, lonely, old,
to grow weak and hear my body ceasing
to obey
all that can happen, all I dread,
some of it will come before I am dead.
Then I will ask my inner self: whatever for?

Once I thought
I was made so love could shine in winter
so God could be man again
to bless the creatures;
but that feature played to mixed reviews
that coin's been wasted on the beggarwoman
the preacherman's "Jeezus" is a broken record
and the creatures do not tell me what they want
nor can I guess, were I able to fulfill their dreams ...


Before all pleasure turns to rust
my desire pilfered from some others
as theirs is drawn from me till ennui,
I may yet ask the beggarwoman
what have I to give a life
simply to die each day,
to lie undead ...
or what else, and what for?

Papa Heinz

Papa's age is past now fifty-seven,
his years the multiplicity of Heinz
spacing his work with lunchtime vino:
a siesta-less career, now come to call,
an unholy ghost he willed once lost travails.

They say he's traded secrets with the Pope
on microphonic olives in martinis;
we children know his record past reproof:
he's shown he loves his native country truly,
the one he left a life ago.

Papa wasn't always fifty-seven,
grandma's grainy pictures had him twenty:
all meant to force me down her fettuccini
to make pasta stretch me to a pole,
adroit and tall as papa's six foot two.

Now he plays America's true end-game:
his friend's been killed by men on Soviet pay,
his world has shed more blood beyond wars cold,
and lent him robes to rend in horror hate
of spilling ketchup on his beef tartare.



(Blogger's note: I wrote this in June 1978
when my father turned 57, my age today.)

Dream Letter to God

Since I doubt You,
Your existence,
most of all Your churchmen
and the thousand propagandists
who seem so sure they've got You locked up
in their Bahbles,
You're entitled to doubt Me.

Since there still isn't much to show for
My existence;
those of My advocates who've done wrong,
I'm either unaware of it,
have cut them off,
or simply don't care.

Much like You,
who seem so uncaring
about wrongdoing
in Your name.
So we're even:
I'll let you off the hook for
Your indifference; You
can forgive mine.

Timely Poem

Peace

When will you ever, Peace, wild wooddove, shy wings shut,
Your round me roaming end, and under be my boughs?
When, when, Peace, will you, Peace? I’ll not play hypocrite
To own my heart: I yield you do come sometimes; but
That piecemeal peace is poor peace. What pure peace allows
Alarms of wars, the daunting wars, the death of it?

O surely, reaving Peace, my Lord should leave in lieu
Some good! And so he does leave Patience exquisite,
That plumes to Peace thereafter. And when Peace here does house
He comes with work to do, he does not come to coo,
He comes to brood and sit.

-- Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89)

Pirate's Second Cup

Too bad
the work week's
grim reality
spills its thick dark
coffee headlines
on the weekend's
back page.

Why can't we
endlessly continue
in expectation
whimsy
abandon
just one moment longer
one more game level, ma ...?

Because
in Monday's high seas
privateers plunder
waves wash decks clear
of good deeds
freely paid
with just one squeeze
of the hand.

Lapwing's Landing

Are you set for a landing
or a crash? A bird
never knows,
flying in defiance
of the laws
of aerodynamics.

Lava, lavender,
lapwing.
A temporal trinity
imparting life,
liberty, the pursuit of
unity.

Are you a seagull
seeking shelter, a vulture
circling doom, or a dove
bearing a reed
that announces
the end
of the deluge?