Bernard Fraley describes this piece as “an example of a form I have been working to develop which I call ‘Ventilated Poetry’ in counterpoint to Buckminster Fuller’s ‘Ventilated Prose.’ It is poetry that incorporates prose forms as semantic feeds.”
No day has failed but some days I fall.
There are some days I make mere
thinking I am too old to grasp it.
How that depletes me!
Early every morning, I go outside,
sit in silence that is never silent.
This morning, I pick out songs of five birds.
Here is the sound of a dog barking
and there . . . a response.
Long grass and dried leaves crinkle
as wind gusts them in rough dance.
From somewhere far off comes blurry defines
of traffic noise and industry inclining to place.
What can I learn? The stillness to be touched?
Cool mornings pumped with fog and mist are my favorite times of being. The stage curtains are sheer and everyone backstage is whispering in rehearsals of to be performed. Birds are louder with flights of anticipation. Highway sounds are muffled gossip from the audience. Even the sun slows its arrival in sweetened taste of expectation.
And there is a swift! Now two!
I recognize the stroke of wings, grace of glide.
I have not seen them here before.
Are they lost? Did they come for my delight?
Perhaps they woke with the lights of thought,
“It is time! Let us go! Let us see!”
I feel a need to gather all the old drunks together so we might commiserate over tales of comets we once rode, unaware of how blindly we flew, thinking the cold dust of our lives was a streaking flame.
Everything personal is invested.
Everything dawning.
The old now new.
