Robert Knox Verse-Virtual 2018 September

September 2018

Bionote: I'm a Boston area creative writer and hanging-on-by-the-fingertips journalist for the Boston Globe. 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, and an excerpt from my new novel "The Country/The Country" is available at https://www.inkitt.com/stories/thriller/226757?utm_source=share_author_reminder
In these poems I'm wrestling with the classical notion of the "daemon" (the voice of the god within), the influence of the great Walt Whitman, and my recent convert's zeal to the belief that we owe everything to the trees and really shouldn't be destroying them.

Daemon Calling

There is no essential distinction, you tell me,
between a rock, a tree, or person
you or me
(No, not a wrong number)
All enjoy a material existence
that changes through time
The earth itself lives
and is in fact 'the living earth'
and has changed extensively in its four and a half billion years,
nor is it ever entirely knowable to short-term renters such as ourselves:
Why it began, endures and keeps evolving
and why in the course of time it has rearranged the furniture,
troughed the ocean, settled the continental masses,
began growing soil
to make a home for complex organic beings such as you, me, and the tree,
and for the mineral formations we continue to harvest recklessly
(Leave it in the ground
and let Earth turn as it will)

True religion, a voice tells me, is the acceptance of Earth
as the creator of its creatures
"As the Earth Turns"
is the true name of our show
It plays out the string
on which we all dance
until the song ends
"Happy to be here,"
as the guest says on the Evening Self-Promotion Hour
as the poet says in the great book of our time
Recent arrivals at the long-running party
we are no measure of time,
proud as we are of our uniqueness

ii.
Sacred Nature is the name of the song
It's the only song she knows

Hear it in the nestling chirping its monstrous, reasonable voracity
as it grows those few ounces of flesh and feather,
and those hollow, burdenless bones
Like us, wishing to eat everything in sight,
unlike us, happily, a featherweight

See it in the weightless darting of the butterfly
that does not settle anywhere in a garden
lacking the home of its heart, Buddleia davidii of the magnetic scent,
wary of the jaw of the giant eater praying (and preying) mantis

Smell it in the weightless, colorless air
still wondrously cleansed by the green giants
whose expirations called us into being,
those angels of light, eating light, exhaling life
and who now seek to warn us
Look up! the sky's rage,
the tectonic anger.
The freezer melts,
and soon our toes will be in the flood




Long Island Calling

            "As I ebb'd with the ocean of life" -- Walt Whitman

Are you gently then my lover?
Calling Walt, on the shore, Paumanok 5-1-6
I too walked these shores, troubled and down-hearted,
life-wrestling, though not like you with the gods of Jacob's Ladder
who page their poet on the daemon line,
brooding-busy with lower concerns -- and now this!
As you ebb with the tide of life
late thirties poor unmarried son of a failing line,
to live once more with your special, easily agitated brother in the Brooklyn walk-up
on whose bed you sat one evening entertaining Bronson Alcott and Thoreau,
who watched you as if an animal could speak
Enough to send me haunting the endless Paumanok shoreline
            (and I'm not sure I'd return)
for Daemon reassurance:
Don't worry, you'll die, all in good time
Now hear me calling
            with the song of the endless yearning, late-surrendering, all-empowering
big-bellied swallow of the life that is, was, and is to come

We have a place for you, favorite son of Broadway walk-abouts,
gender-bending space-probe of Bohemian hang-outs, South Seas free-love pretenders
Sand here beneath your feet, my son,
            is also free!
Speak-breezes ease your ear
and, always, the plangent, mournful, tender reassurance:
Your place at the table is guaranteed,
safe amid the sand dollars (no change available), and the greenie sea-salad,
and other timeless treats consumed au naturel

You too are natural
Yes, take my call:
I am your lover and your keeper
Speech-maker of the eternal matron-motion of the sea
And I will swallow with softest kiss,
salty lick,
and the churn of your immortal song



Birthday Reminder

What a heavy antidote
Birthday in the offing, summer on its way
I receive the doctor's note
I have Barrett's Esophagus today
I don't believe I know the man
I really cannot say
If he has lost a body part
We're all careless in our way

I can't recall a reason why
I'd stoop to scam used organs
And if I were to finger flesh
God knows I'm no esopha-guy
Admiring a heart or lung
Another stomach could be fun
A kidney for the one I lost
I'd carefully consider cost

I offered up a bladder galled
And woke to find a world appalled
My body gets up to such tricks
I'm an open book -- with no appendix
April, I'm not fooling here
My body's growing hollow
But when I'm charged with organ theft
It's more than I can swallow.

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