by Fitz | Jul 30, 2014 | Poetry
I am surprised sometimes
by the suddenness of November:
beauty abruptly shed
to a common nakedness–
grasses deadened
by hoarfrost,
persistent memories
of people I’ve lost.
It is left to those of us
dressed in the hard
barky skin of experience
to insist on a decorum
that rises to the greatness
of a true Thanksgiving.
This is not a game,
against a badly scheduled team,
an uneven match on an uneven pitch.
This is life
This is life
This is life
Not politely mumbled phrases,
murmured with a practiced and meticulous earnestness.
Thanksgiving was born a breech-birth,
a screaming appreciation for being alive–
for not being one of the many
who didn’t make it–
who couldn’t moil through
another hardscrabble year
on tubers and scarce fowl.
Thanksgiving is for being you.
There are no thanks without you.
You are the power of hopeful promise;
you are the balky soil turning upon itself;
you are bursting forth in your experience.
You are not the person next to you–
not an image or an expectation.
You are the infinite and eternal you–
blessed, and loved, and consoled
by the utter commonness
and community of our souls.
We cry and we’re held.
We love and we hold.
We are the harvest of God,
constantly renewed,
constantly awakened,
to a new thanksgiving.
by Fitz | Jul 14, 2014 | Poetry, Raccoon
There is a soldier dressed
in ancient English wool guarding
the entrance to the inn.
He is lucky for this cool night
awaiting the pomp
of the out of town
wedding party.
He is paid to be unmoved
by the bride’s stunning beauty
or her train
of lesser escorts.
He will not notice
this small stone
set across the square;
His eyes will not glisten
when he hears
that two brothers
fell here,
picked out
of disciplined lines
beating
a hot and hasty retreat
back to Boston.
He will not
chasten his comrades
for leaving them
in foreign dust—
the dull and whistling holes
torn into soft
and homesick wool.
He betrays nothing.
Inscrutable—
he collects his check
and drives home.
~The Colonial Inn
Concord, MA.
by Fitz | Jul 14, 2014 | Poetry, Raccoon
*God casts the die, not the dice.
~Alfred Einstein
I am cold down the neck,
turtling my head
to showers of ice
that fall
dancing and skidding
on skins of crusted snow.
I hold my breath when I step,
inflating hopes of a weightlessness,
and so be undetected
to the play of gods
who froze the night’s rain,
and set up this morning
full
of shining and busting—
gambling on rolls,
and chance patterns,
only their joy can see.
by Fitz | Jul 14, 2014 | Poetry, Raccoon
I stutter for normality
across the river
from black men fishing
for kibbers
and horned pout.
Barefoot children rounded
bellies curled
navels stalk the turtle
sunning on a log.
lonely in the field grass
lonely on the curbstones
I stutter for normality.
Not a mother
whose breasts are dry,
whose child doesn’t cry,
who sleep
on a cot
in a tent.
~The Concord River
1981
by Fitz | Jul 14, 2014 | Poetry, Raccoon
These trees have driven so many friends batty,
wedged in unstable crotches, embracing
hollow, heart-rotted limbs, reaching tentatively,
maddened with indecision.
From a distance your gestures
are very lobsterlike—
waving a last embattled claw,
as if dueling some carnivorous kin
and are backed into a battle you cannot avoid.
You are disposed towards duality.
I regret what I had told you earlier.
I should have had you attacking the orchard
in a swathlike way, eliminating extremes,
rooting clean at the base the suckers growing
straight up, or down, or in, or across —
the only disarray being strewn limbs
and the slender, whippish water sprouts.
The kids could then follow you
with feigned workishness,
filling the truck they love to drive,
heaping tangled piles down below—
piles that we’ll burn on an eager Sunday,
lighting a tindered-dry Christmas trees
and lobbing gasoline bombs,
heavied with chainsaw oil,
ducking behind flannel arms.
We as talked earlier of a nebulousness
and then defined ourselves in that direction.
It was you who wanted this job,
eager to join the winter pruning.
You were attracted by my talk
of using nothingness,
of anticipating space,
and being at the point of decision —
bridging innumerable futures.
I laugh seeing you now
apoplexed by the tangible,
contorted by inexperience,
frustrated by the tangled gnarl
you are caged in.
The hardest part is always
the leaving out—
begrudging mediocrity,
leaving what should be.
