October 2020
Bio Note: I began publishing poems five years ago, after an interruption of some thirty years, when the
late Firestone Feinberg accepted a handful of poems for Verse-Virtual. Lately I'm trying to maintain my poem-a-day
pace, writing fiction, newspaper stories, and struggling to figure out how an older white guy with more mouth than
muscle joins the struggle to preserve democracy and extend justice to those born outside the magic circle of privilege.
For poems, flower pics, and occasional politics see www.prosegarden.blogspot.com.
Classical Style Only*
My daughter slide-steps sideways
down the path at Notchview Reservation,
arms akimbo, see-sawing in stately fashion
She’s ‘walking like an Egyptian,’
so the cant phrase goes,
because of course the trail sign clearly states:
“Classical Style Only”
I am trying to imagine a fashionable Athenian
or Augustan way of proceeding
while lacking a toga, or a tunic,
or whatever cloaked sublimely homely Socrates
when he paced up and down the Agora
directing flights of reasoned disputation
to mind-unfogging peepholes into the ‘World of Forms,’
a process copied by the rhetorical imitations
of Caesar or Cicero, laying out clear pathways
for a stunningly decisive Ablative Absolute
...although my own poor gesture at 'style' is clearly lacking
a third dimension.
But no!
The 'Ah-ha!' moment:
These terms of engagement miss by a mile
the undeclared premise the trail makers assume:
What’s plainly demanded is a cross-country skier
with mind and body in perfect alignment... Ahhh,
now we see –
But whoa!-- Heads up, folks!
Here’s Wolfgang roaring up from behind
in a Ford Deuce Coupe,
that long-playing classic,
with both cadenzas blasting!
(*”Notchview offers an idyllic escape for winter sport enthusiasts
of all ages and skill levels…17 kilometers of trails are groomed and
track-set for classical cross-country skiing” —
www.xcskimass.com/ski-areas/about-notchview)
October Rain
When the tempest came
the leaves shrieked
like frightened birds
The sky streamed its unresolved rhythms
like a song made of frantic minutes
rapped on a steel drum
Wind raised the branches of the trees,
shivering the season-soaked leaves
down to a secret slime
of saturated hours and mealy, mortal time
When the wet wind raves
blackbirds latch their claws to skinny shrubs,
beaks lance at nothing,
black knights jousting with shadows
Ascending, later, to higher realms
where winds of change soothe them
with promises of golden leaves, fat worms,
and fairy tales of spring
As Times Change (iii)
The music of the best damn soap you ever watched
or even imagined,
how it courses its sweet corrosive through your gut,
as intestinal as eating,
digesting, working its way through the lower tract
Holy shit, you think.
I don't know who the hero is this time,
or the heroine, even, in this mélange of dreamy reminiscence,
and not sure I ever will
But I am all the characters of
my father's house
I am all the stars in a familiar sky
It will rain on me, if rain there will be,
I will face the heavens
and dream my way through nostalgic constellations,
I will walk beneath the ruddied, thumpy,
keyed-up clouds,
take myself out at midnight to seek the hungry trees
of winter and implore their reassurance,
tracing the line of their wet-smoke reverie
through the twist of their thick-veined bark
Gather their roots in my hands,
(and my roots in their hands)
nails chipped by the gathering,
dig the grubs,
embrace the dark and lowering skies
I will change with the grim, transporting seasons,
I will wait for the storm to train its golden arrows
upon me
and take the squawk of a single crow
to be the love song
of the ages.
(After the instrumental song "As Times Change" by Kathryn Toyama,
available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf4n5VruwvU)
©2020 Robert Knox
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