Neither Elegy nor Hymn


The withered figure bends over the guitar
    his fingers subtle as goose feathers
    coax melody from his ancient strings
    a sound like the wind through falling leaves
    or a distant crowd murmuring beyond a hill

His whole life rises round him
    Sarah who shared sixty years but now is dust on a breeze
    his estranged son buried in a field in Southeast Asia
    a daughter who finds it embarrassing to call him father
    no one left alive who calls him by his first name

His body enwraps the guitar as though it were a weeping child
    imagine dolor given shape and you see him
    parchment is less brittle than his skin
    the ocean less fluid than his tune
    do you hear its steady weeping   a lullaby perhaps or incantation




An Old Actor, An Abandoned Theatre


The stage lies bare and ruined,
No sets, no actors, no dreams.
Yet something won't know its end.

There are whisperers who blend
Their voices into pale streams.
The stage lies bare and ruined.

In the moonlight figures wend
Their ways over fallen beams.
Here something won't know its end.

He thinks he sees an old friend
Who first played here in his teens.
The stage lies bare and ruined.

All through the ruins, the wind
Sends a deep-throated keening.
Here something won't know its end.

Hist, hist, more voices tune in:
Who are these, what is their theme?
The stage lies bare and ruined,
Yet something won't know its end.

-Previously published in Empty Theatres (Wayfaring Stranger Press, 1996)






Life as a Folksong

​
ho daddy ho 
can't jump start the words
locked up tight 
garaged in my smoky throat

jenny dang the weaver
who wove my feelings
into this labyrinth
where no light goes

no lark in the morning ever flew 
higher than my dreams no wounded bird 
dropped into deeper grass than my mind
when hope vanished along a winding road

no orphan train pulled a heavier load
than my feet shuffling through a mountain pass
toward the ocean where waves
would rock me in the cradle of life

just another wayfaring stranger
docking in your harbor loan me 
a compass and I'll be on my way
the river be wide and I have days to cross

just a drifting log rolling and bobbing
one day picking some old dance tune 
on your banjo you'll look around a corner to see
me knocking splinters loose from your rickety door

we'll find a shady grove and forget these 
prodigal years a long time traveling a long time gone
give us a drink of water and let's stretch out
to watch the wind that shakes the barley

-Previously published in There's An End To It  (Lockout Press, 2002)