September 2017
Robert C. Knox
rc.knox2@gmail.com
rc.knox2@gmail.com
I am a husband, father, rabid backyard gardener, and blogger on nature, books, films and other subjects based on the premise that there's a garden metaphor for everything. Still utopian and idealistic after all these years, I cover the arts for the Boston Globe's 'South' regional section. "My poems have been published recently by The Poetry Superhighway, Semaphore Journal, Scarlet Leaf Review, These and other journals. "Suosso's Lane," my recently published novel about the Sacco-Vanzetti case, is available at www.Web-e-Books.com.
Food, Drink, Love
"For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me." Matthew 25:35
If I were one for food and drink,
I'd never stop to mull and think
But fill the pail up to the brim
And bid good cheer to her and him
Now I keep nought of drink and food
For a plastic card is just as good
Its heart lies on a printed sheet
Accept this page, it's good to eat
Somewhere, my lad, your face I've seen
Perchance about the cash machine,
An oasis and a landscape green
With dates and palms and hands so clean
I knew you, Matthew, long ago
Your hair was long, your speech was slow
One of love's tribe, an innocent
Whose glory now is long since spent
If I were giving food and drink
I'd never have the time to think
For urchins with their empty cup
Would line my door to fill it up
And if my stores ran short of rations
They'd give a smile for cash donations
And if I almed them yesterday
Good morrow, sir, is another day
We laud you, Matthew, the truth you serve
And blessed is he who steels his nerve
To follow still the loving way
to him my vote, my voice, my honor lay
But as for me, it's sad to say
My charity has gone astray
My love no more its soul hands out
Beyond 'god bless' and a fading shout
Enchantment
One thing we know about paradise.
Bird song.
Purest in the early morning,
and loudest in spring
Among the trees, in July, not far from the lake
the warbler arrives for late breakfast,
calling, calling
tiny voices respond
(or so we presume),
tuned to their own channels,
remembering when they too were sauria,
clawing the earth
In the evening,
lining the power lines
of the quiet streets of the summer city,
declaring the end of another day...
We listen,
remembering
when we were furry antecedents
already long in our primate molars
recalling little of those saurian dominators,
singing our own strange songs,
wary of the big cats,
attuned to the voice of the earth
through those tiny avian apertures
that sing of the best moments
the freshest hours
the enchantment.
Some Things Are Forever
No man,
No woman,
No day,
No false friend or
faux-president,
No moron in the supermarket,
deathbed confession,
or dark-lord confusion
No word,
or time of troubles
No bad day spilling the coffee on your manuscript,
or your keyboard,
or your neatly piled-up-papers desk
No blinding, umbrella-breaking horizontal shit-storm,
No missed appointment, stubbed toe,
botched procedure, aching tooth,
Insect invasion, white-spackled plant rot on your favorite lemon tree,
No back talk,
No buck talk,
No hard talk
No jammed-up brain-cramp gridlocked
disappointment of the third or fourth degree
of Final Lamentations
No wet tent on Vacation Tuesday,
Laborious Monday, forget-me-not Friday,
Satyr's Day disaster
Glory Hallelujah Sunday
Price war,
domestic cold front,
relationship sulk,
or indecipherable crossword puzzle back-dated enigma
will ever
ever
erase you
or all you are, and everything you are
or impede you, besmirch you
extinguish a single cell of you,
rue you,
occlude you, remove you --
"from the memory of time."*
The highest praise one patched-together creature
may pay to another
You are written in the book of life.
*"No day shall erase you from the memory of time." -- Virgil
Waiting for the Perseids
No stars, but fire
And a guitar,
knock-knock-knocking on the soft diplomacy of clouds, visibility poor
A surge of smoke lunges like a ghost,
then twists back to the lake's black mirror
The weather worker builds a tapered temple of wood,
an offering,
draws flame from his hand
An instrument is procured for the master
The strings wind upward, songs
A few syllables hummed, rise to the diminished sky
From the dark below to the mottled cushion of the stars
The loon calls to the morning light
(From "Gardeners Do It With Their Hands Dirty," Finishing Line Press, 2017)
Food, Drink, Love
"For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me." Matthew 25:35
If I were one for food and drink,
I'd never stop to mull and think
But fill the pail up to the brim
And bid good cheer to her and him
Now I keep nought of drink and food
For a plastic card is just as good
Its heart lies on a printed sheet
Accept this page, it's good to eat
Somewhere, my lad, your face I've seen
Perchance about the cash machine,
An oasis and a landscape green
With dates and palms and hands so clean
I knew you, Matthew, long ago
Your hair was long, your speech was slow
One of love's tribe, an innocent
Whose glory now is long since spent
If I were giving food and drink
I'd never have the time to think
For urchins with their empty cup
Would line my door to fill it up
And if my stores ran short of rations
They'd give a smile for cash donations
And if I almed them yesterday
Good morrow, sir, is another day
We laud you, Matthew, the truth you serve
And blessed is he who steels his nerve
To follow still the loving way
to him my vote, my voice, my honor lay
But as for me, it's sad to say
My charity has gone astray
My love no more its soul hands out
Beyond 'god bless' and a fading shout
Enchantment
One thing we know about paradise.
Bird song.
Purest in the early morning,
and loudest in spring
Among the trees, in July, not far from the lake
the warbler arrives for late breakfast,
calling, calling
tiny voices respond
(or so we presume),
tuned to their own channels,
remembering when they too were sauria,
clawing the earth
In the evening,
lining the power lines
of the quiet streets of the summer city,
declaring the end of another day...
We listen,
remembering
when we were furry antecedents
already long in our primate molars
recalling little of those saurian dominators,
singing our own strange songs,
wary of the big cats,
attuned to the voice of the earth
through those tiny avian apertures
that sing of the best moments
the freshest hours
the enchantment.
Some Things Are Forever
No man,
No woman,
No day,
No false friend or
faux-president,
No moron in the supermarket,
deathbed confession,
or dark-lord confusion
No word,
or time of troubles
No bad day spilling the coffee on your manuscript,
or your keyboard,
or your neatly piled-up-papers desk
No blinding, umbrella-breaking horizontal shit-storm,
No missed appointment, stubbed toe,
botched procedure, aching tooth,
Insect invasion, white-spackled plant rot on your favorite lemon tree,
No back talk,
No buck talk,
No hard talk
No jammed-up brain-cramp gridlocked
disappointment of the third or fourth degree
of Final Lamentations
No wet tent on Vacation Tuesday,
Laborious Monday, forget-me-not Friday,
Satyr's Day disaster
Glory Hallelujah Sunday
Price war,
domestic cold front,
relationship sulk,
or indecipherable crossword puzzle back-dated enigma
will ever
ever
erase you
or all you are, and everything you are
or impede you, besmirch you
extinguish a single cell of you,
rue you,
occlude you, remove you --
"from the memory of time."*
The highest praise one patched-together creature
may pay to another
You are written in the book of life.
*"No day shall erase you from the memory of time." -- Virgil
Waiting for the Perseids
No stars, but fire
And a guitar,
knock-knock-knocking on the soft diplomacy of clouds, visibility poor
A surge of smoke lunges like a ghost,
then twists back to the lake's black mirror
The weather worker builds a tapered temple of wood,
an offering,
draws flame from his hand
An instrument is procured for the master
The strings wind upward, songs
A few syllables hummed, rise to the diminished sky
From the dark below to the mottled cushion of the stars
The loon calls to the morning light
(From "Gardeners Do It With Their Hands Dirty," Finishing Line Press, 2017)
© 2017 Robert C. Knox
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