Robert Knox Verse-Virtual 2018 October

October 2018

Bionote: I'm a Boston area creative writer and Boston Globe correspondent. My recent chapbook "Cocktails in the Wild" is available from Unsolicited Press. My novel of the Sacco-Vanzetti case, "Suosso's Lane," is available from me at rc.knox2@gmail. I am inviting readers to take a look at my serial novel, "The Country/The Country," a combination of politics and speculative fiction, available at https://www.inkitt.com/stories/thriller/226757?utm_source=share_author_reminder
I will be posting new segments each week through the November election.

Searching For Home
(apologies to Paul Cardall*)

We pass through two fields,
but it feels like more,
like all the fields in heaven and on earth,
because our path has been gilded by golden light
on golden fields
Butterflies, monarchs of the open meadow,
pass among the goldenrod,
and twine around one another,
and spin off on their own quests
Above: the fertile green of a lavish region
Hillsides extend their flanks
like the green man of the forest reaching for the sky,
embracing the valley in which we proceed
on our regal, healing progress
And higher still beyond the deep and furry green of the treeline
the rich blue vault holds the sun in its place
while evolving nuances of air
linger like forgiveness
teaching us to be as we are and should be,
Creatures who breathe in
and let it out.

(*"Searching for Home" by Paul Cardall can be heard at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iH7Dud89PI)



Morning in America

Waking in the dark
Walking in the dark
The noise
is the body of night

Inside the noise
the gathering gyration of the city's voice

Wind in the night,
heaven's face

The monster, in his numbers,
waking, walking
Goodness and mercy
will not follow in these steps

Once in dawn the sleeper rose
to walk among the silent tongues of plants
and breathe their air
Surely these green lives will expire in mercy
and order our lives
by the breath of their solace
in a green and temperate place

As the bear walks
up the driveway
Education
by the nose

In colder days the deer graze
the green life of the vines
that cling to a fence
but they themselves are not the fence

Eating the boisterous ivy
browsing on the ever green
What the beasts eat in winter,
the life the man-world overlooks,
pardons, permits
in his careless largesse

Winston Smith walks in the night

ii.
Consolations of the dawn
The life of the skies
alters in the wind,
as the wind drops
what the light picks up
The voice of biz-town stirring
an ordinary morning in
Homeland-by-the-Sea

Here there is Nowhere to walk
in the dark
The wind drops,
Finally, the air wars reprieved
interrupted as if by the flick of a spigot
More goodness, surely,
in the wave of the tree
and mercy, the tiny things we say
the balm
            of domesticity
and silence at the break of day
Shantih, yes,
if only once

iii.
The great brown heron
stalks on the dock
those backward knees lurching inward
The long loose rope,
a living hose of neck
coiling out, a periscope
of curiosity
sessing the future
as she transforms
the busyness of shy creatures awhirl
in the shadow and light
to the illuminations of a livable world
whose miniscules prove her food
Whose food are we?

iv.
Come, said the doe,
we will find somewhere fresh to eat

The spigot turned at sunrise,
as the light deters the wind
and bends
the shaft of the wheel of people
to another quadrant
The pause, shantih, the pause

The land renews,
siphons green into the light
The hour tumbles forward
The trains run,
or fail to run, on time,
having nothing else,
to run on



Love Among the Dictators

Love among the nasty boys, Rump and Kim and Putin
Soldiers march down avenues, hear those horns a'tootin'!
Fan boys bet who gets on top
Some day the kissing has to stop
Rocket man, plus buttons each, wonder who'll start shootin'?

Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to tell him or her. You might say what it is about the poem that moves you. Writing to the author is the beginning of community at Verse Virtual. It is very important. -FF