Just Up

at 10,000 feet, in bright
early morning sun, the shadows

on the west side of hills
appear liquid, deep pools,

dark pupils watching
the grasping fingers

of shining white
new born cloud rivers,

white tendrils flowing,
curling over, around

and between the mounds,
the mother's tree green breasts

The Isthmus

on the way to Picnic Point,
with Lake Mendota on the right and left
and trail before and behind

trail through overcast drizzle,
where we walked carefully over and around
the slippery wet clay,

and trail up an incline, where the land
swells, broadens, and there is room
for all kinds of diversions, side paths
for views and reviews,

until we get to the point, the anticlimactic
point with a man sitting on a bench, writing --

the point, where we are out of place, intruders,
feeling the gnats and mosquitoes, watching
the grey cloud covered water for miles around --

the grey seeping in.

We snap a couple of pictures,

then leave,
              start the return, as everything
awakens, the clouds lighten, the birds' songs
become louder, more varied, the turtle's head
comes out of his shell, the baby ducks appear
magically behind their mother,

and when we reach the isthmus -- the stem,
the umbilical cord between seed and blossom,
between two worlds, one poem and the next,

the sun explodes like a flash bulb,
etches our embrace in lines of memory
and anticipation,

the lake shimmering
as far as our eyes can see.

Orpheus Greeting the Dawn

at the Elvehjem Museum of Art,
Madison, Wisconsin, holding your hand --

the massive dark head of shade trees
with small squinting eyes of light,
appears as a natural outgrowth,
as part of the dark shore, framing

an oval pool of the purest white sky.

Orpheus stands, back to us, facing
the trees, his head, his lyre,
his outstretched hand, in the pool
of light above the line of mountains,

his offerings to the fire in the sky,
the god he worships above all others.

You squeeze my hand; the shore contracts;
the distant temple trembles, the trees
begin the dance of delivery,

the dance of the beginning of the world.

St. Mary's Hospital

I  
Lady at the front desk, smiling:

"just go to the 2nd floor,
go through the waiting room,
and follow the signs."
                               She knew,
but she wasn't telling.

II
J.D., his eyes as wide, as bright
as streams of new born clouds,
greets us at the door:

"It's healthy ... a boy ... a 10
on the APGAR scale ... his penis
is so big ... "

III
Eileen propped up on pillows, proud,
beaming, J.D. standing behind her,
hand on her shoulder, smiling, tears
streaming down his cheeks, while I
rub small circles in his back,

the baby just cleaned -- the nurses
have not even had time to weigh it --

"But Eileen, he says, Eileen,
was in so much pain"

his tears still streaming --

me thinking: "It's a good thing women
give birth -- we men are not man enough

to take it. 

IV
Chris and I taking our turn
holding the baby, looking fore and aft,
up and down, at the same dark hair,
at the brand new eyes ...

Watching the Ducks

The Centerpiece


I
a bouquet of willow trunks, nine trees
branching out of the same root, sprouting

out of a round grey wicker basket,
a patch of rocks, decorated with bands

of moss and set on a tablecloth --
grass green with a print of puffy white

dandelion heads,
                        seed balls wobbling
on unsteady pale green stems,

II
a spring bouquet
                         of willow tresses swaying

in the spring breeze,
                              ever shifting light green strands

through which we see
                                 rippling water background,

small dots of duck,
                            and a fiery # 1,

a glowing path,
                       a direct line to the sun.



The Eyeball

thinks it's cute, filming the changing
of the diaper, the first poop, the candid
camera grinding away at the unsuspecting
new father and yiayia, absorbed in the task,

catching the shock, the surprise of not
being done, of starting all over,

in media res ...

suddenly, the guffaw, the discovery
that the new camera was being held
ass-backwards,

leaving posterity
the background murmur of faint,
indistinguishable voices and one
constant image, an eyeball,
a male eyeball

with a mischievous twinkle in it.

The Round Monkey Cage

the main attraction of the Henry Vilas Zoo,
contains hundreds of monkeys used

for experiments at the University --
monkeys of varying stages of growth --

like that one, a mother with whole
patches of hair fallen out, or that one,

her smallest, little more than a hand span
tall, swinging along the top of the front wall

of his cage, a wall of empty wire rim
spectacles, swinging to and fro just above

the sign: "Do not feed. The diet of mothers
and babies needs to be strictly controlled."

so cute, his tiny still pink fingers grasping
the bottom lines of the linked octagons --

so cute playing within circumscribed limits --
within stop signs and wire frames.

The L Shaped Pier

If this were the ocean, this
would be a breaker, this L shaped pier,
this cement walkway with piles of rock
thrown on the lake side,

but there are wild grasses,
flowers growing in the rocks,

and about 150 yards out -- a small motor boat,
engine cut, napping on the lake
with three fishermen -- one seated peacefully
in the stern, looking at the sun glint
on the dome of the capitol,

a second scrambling over the windshield,

and the third standing on the hood --
casting his line across the sliver
of the setting sun -- the man silhouetted --
his feet, his thighs against the rippling lake,
his chest and shoulders against the dark strip
of trees and land, his head against the clouds,

a dented oval turned away from the fire --
turned away from the peach and salmon sky,
the humming trees.

James Madison Park, May 30, 1995

The Overlook

at the Arboretum, you snap my picture
on the rocks beside the small creek
leading into the marsh. "Write the poem,"
you say, "The Great Poem of the World."

"You'll have to add a lot of poems together
for that," I reply, "but let's see what we
have here. What we have is not the spectacular
panoramic view we get from the Hairpin Curve,
Mohegan Bluffs, or the Cliff House in San Francisco,
but still, it may do -- this view from the bench

"overlooking the breeding grounds of turtles:
just think of all the turtles not that far off
the trail to the observatory on one side and
to the golf course on the other -- hundreds,

"thousands of turtles -- having found each other
and some underwater space in the muck, in the reeds
near the shore, intent on each other, the male
mounting from behind gripping the front part
of her shell with his forefeet, nipping perhaps,
her neck -- the position is awkward, precarious,

"the male leaning back, seeing the sunlight,
the blue sky, hearing the songs of all kinds
of warblers filtering through the leaves of trees,
the shallow water, the male leaning back, back ...

"the frustrated mosquitoes above the surface --
gossips, buzzing in circles, unable
to get to them ...

"turtles, oblivious of the golfer's 'Fore,'
the sound of cars, or the echoes
of joggers' steps vibrating their bed.

"Well, that's it -- not really the great poem
of the world, but a short stanza, perhaps,
of the beginning."

The Landing: a Collage

Plane just starting the descent to LaGuardia, the odd
shaped patches of farms, of crops, of angled strips
of brown and green, letters, "E"'s and "L"'s, an "F"
or two, an "X" this side a little bunny blue pond
with long ears curved back, "I can't help it. I think
of your father every time we fly, how he remembered
the Wright brother's first flight." and amoebic blobs
of 3 D trees jutting up from the surface, the curving
"S"'s the "C"'s and occasional "J"'s of highways winding
through the fields, the developments, the white mosaic
tile houses in neat lines and scattered amongst the trees --

passing over Shea stadium, Long Island Sound, "And so Aidan
will think of us every time he uses a computer." the wheels
touching down, the landing much smoother than expected.