Someday, when I am feeling adventurous,
I’ll pull off the road, open the car door,
step out, and push my way through the nearest cornfield,
I’ll try not to think about bears.
When they ask you, my darling, you will tell them,
“She went for a walk.”
Illuminated
The almondine corner of your eye
slides elegantly into
the bridge of your nose.
Your hair, if released from
its sensitive pony-tail guy manacle,
would display its natural wave.
You are as fair as any of those
Kell characters –
Not Jesus exactly, (there’s not
near that much charity in you),
but Matthew maybe.
Your eyes are as soul-less
as a monk’s pen can make them –
all that chastity pooling in the irises,
in the straight-on, judicial stare.
-DMN
Wordy
Where did evolution take so wrong a turn we ended up here?
Should we have taken that left at Albuquerque?
We are cartoons, caricatures of animals, scratching out existences far removed from the realities of eating, sheltering, reproducing.
Curiosity and ambition, qualities highly prized in an individualistic society, have saturated the gene pool, resulting in a world drowning in technology.
It is not all bad. Many technological advances seek to establish a human existence more in harmony with nature, to restore Mother Earth to the health she enjoyed before housing so many destructive hooligans who gave her no thought as they went about their play. Others seek to escape her embrace, to take their games out into the galaxy, to spread our madness among the stars. Won’t the rest of the universe love that? I can hear ET now, “Oh, no. Don’t look. Here they come. Loud, rude, leaving their trash everywhere. And they bite.” Something similar to what Canadians might say if thousands of Americans try to emigrate to the north.
Technology has also been a great boon to communication. We can talk to people half-way around the world, learn each other’s languages with greater ease, share thoughts and images, inform the outside that there might be truths other than those touted by official channels. The great irony and tragedy is that every new avenue for communication is a new opportunity for miscommunication. We create something to bind us closer together, and it pushes us further apart. Perhaps we should never have started speaking in the first place.
Companion Piece to the Hoarder’s Wife
Housekeeping is an archaeological dig;
I sift through layers and rubble,
through middens,
looking for anything of value,
anything to explain Why.
Why would anyone live like this?
The Day After: An Open Letter to Canadians
If we promise to behave, if we sign a contract to act like civilized human beings, would you have us?
If we promise not to pollute your skies with various emissions, your televisions with reality shows, and your grocery shelves with Twinkies, would you have us?
If we brought our money, and our industriousness, would you have us?
If we brought our notions of equality and tolerance that no longer play so well in our own country, would you have us?
We are not all gun-toting madmen – not all.
We are not all selfish, self-absorbed jackasses who can’t spare a dime for those in need – not all.
We are not all narrow-minded zealots who would repress the rights of others in the name of a religion of which we don’t grasp the basic tenets – not all.
We are not all fear-driven racists and sexists resistant to change – not all.
Those of us who are still Americans, would you have us?
The Divine Divan
I can see Central Park from here.
Glory after glory
lies beneath the tapestry of green.
The Lake, the Boathouse, the Reservoir,
the Carousel, the Conservatory Garden,
the Terrace Arcade, the young sails
on Conservatory Water,
the arches, the bridges, the people.
I have seen them.
-DMN
Scenes from the Train
I’ve never before passed slowly enough
to register the little red fireplug
set a few inches too high on its base,
beyond which the grey bulk of the
power station keeps
its dispassionate watch.
Despite their proximity,
they are not friends.
The origami abandoned
in the brush beside the tracks,
what does it mean?
The abandoned humans
under the overpass,
what do they mean?
They have folding chairs,
as though
the train’s passage
was as watch-worthy as
a concert or
holiday fireworks.
Restaurant employees
range for a smoke break
in the back parking lot
in the summer heat,
almost as if they were posed,
or perhaps posing,
for our passage.
In the urban wilderness next
the tracks,
free range grasses and
scrubby bushes
wave their scrappy leaves
in hello or farewell as
the train pulls by.
It is peaceful here
in the train depot,
surveying silent, abandoned cars
waiting patiently for their owners’
return,
the denizens of the neighborhood
coexisting complacently with the chunk and
whistle of the train,
all the passersby,
the patrons of the bar, the
utilitarian apartment dwellers
redeemed by its age.
The train rolls through
the snowy serenity of
winter trees; no one
walks these tracks
in winter.
The land is untouched,
secret, despite the
brief voyeurism of
passing strangers.
Each tree branch is
artfully, carefully coated
in soft white,
outlining the tree’s
skeleton,
defining every detail.
-DMN
The Valiant
The Swiss Chard
faithfully hold the southern line,
with little hope of relief, supplies,
or even water from the shiftless
Gardener General back at HQ who
assigned them to this godforsaken
location in the first place.
They hold despite the dandelions,
bold in their numbers, voracious for
territory, spreading their insidious
leaves across the border.
Nor do they succumb to the
exotic beauties of undetermined affiliation
infiltrating the ranks,
opening wide their
delicate white petals, offering
seductive red centers to the sky.
Could be poisonous.
As the days wear on,
the dandelions redouble their efforts,
though the ground is littered
with their uprooted bodies,
drying to dust in the hot sun.
Occasionally a chard is taken prisoner,
surrounded on all sides by yellow-headed
swarms, cut off from comrades.
Patiently, he waits for rescue,
and does not surrender to despair, but
wreaks what damage can be done from
the inside,
wresting light, water, and food
from hostile hosts.
Tall grasses shoot up as swords
in the midst of the chard compound,
and yet they hold,
until picked for salad detail.
-DMN
Gealach lán
The Queen of Night
shines so bright
to light our stumbling way.
With little care
we follow where
her darling pale hips sway.
Her legs are bare
to all who stare
up her silver array.
So fair on the eyes
we imagine her thighs
the finest place to stay.
-DMN
Haunted House
The ghost that lives in the bathroom
likes to rearrange the
toothbrushes.
Can’t really blame her.
So much of her existence
must be colorless,
Everything in greyscale.
Those primary plastics
shine through the veil
and call to her like
carkeys to a toddler.
She used to play with the
recharging flashlight
before it died forever,
turning it on in the
middle of the night,
leaving it to languish,
with no one to guide
into the light.
-DMN
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