Dust

    I thought about smoking –
    Should take longer
    Than I’ve got to get
    Cancer – Can’t take up
    Drinking – used to make me
    Wild – more trouble than
    I’ve energy for now.

    No point trying to
    Sing with no one
    But Duffy and Ben to hear,
    Cocking their heads as they
    Would, wondering what I was
    Doing, losing interest – know
    What that’s like.  Down stairs

    For all those years was her
    World – no point saving it
    Now, might keep a few
    Pieces – let people know
    She once lived here and
    Was ready for relatives and
    Friends with smiles to which

    I’d been addicted – inhaled them
    With my eyes.  She didn’t seem
    To mind, laughing with all
    Those others – all those empty
    Saucers and cups – no one will
    Mind if I take them, drink
    Espresso till my thoughts
   
    Bubble and fizz – glowering
    Up through the trees at the
    Mountain – leaning back
    In my chair – can’t
    Keep dust from covering
    Everything each morning
    With the sun.
   

Recollections

    Outside a mountain restaurant
    We ate submarines, drank
    Coke and looked further
    Then we ever had up from
    My SR500 parked out front.
    I sat near everything back then,
    And on the sand that night

    You bundled up and smiled
    As the breeze ruffled your hair
    Across your eyes sparkling
    With stars.  Drinking espresso
    Now from a corpse powder
    China cup, palpably
    Compressed stress

    Thrummed my mind making my
    Eyelids twitch; something
    In the clouds was humming.
    This might be something new.
    I slid my Marine Corps knife
    Closer to hand, looked over
    At Duffy napping.  Surely he
   
    Would know.  I shoved it aside
    And took a sip.  Sometimes
    It is just my mind, one or two
    Sounds like words, probably
    Nonsense repeated as though
    There wasn’t enough there already
    And I didn’t know what it meant.

On Emersonian Influence

Getting as far as page 157 in Harold Bloom's The Daemon Knows, I read his quote from Emerson's journals "Far the best part, I repeat, of every mind is not that which he knows, but that which hovers in gleams, suggestions, tantalizing unpossessed before him.  His firm recorded knowledge soon loses all interest for him.  But this dancing chorus of thoughts and hopes is the quarry of his future, is his possibility . . . ."  That much sounds very like something I thought recently.  Having had a number of arguments with people who when I noticed a similarity between something they said and the writings of some philosopher only to have them claim vociferously that they had come to their views entirely independently, I invariably take an opposite view,  that is, I assume that I have been influenced by such a writer even if I don't recall the occasion of that influence. 

After all I must have read quite a bit of Emerson in American lit classes if not on my own.  I have a vague distaste when I think of Emerson and must have gotten that some place.  On page 158 Bloom writes, "Frost was an absolute Emersonian; Mark Twain had no overwhelming American precursor.  Of the other writers discussed here, Faulkner never read Emerson, and Eliot scorned him: 'The Essays of Emerson are already an encumbrance.' Melville read and annotated Emerson and attended his lectures, while manifesting an acute ambivalence.  Hawthorne was the sage's walking companion in Concord but held out against him, yet Hester Prynne, Ahab, and Ishmael are dark Emersonians.  Henry James, linked to Emerson by family traditions, resisted him, though Isabel Archer is wholly a disciple of self-reliance.  Walt Whitman, though later he denied it, started from Emerson, just as Wallace Stevens subtly evaded his vast dependence upon Whitman and satirized Emerson while repeating him.  Hart Crane, wholly Emersonian, clearly takes his Platonic daemonization both from Concord and from Walter Pater."

How embarrassing for a writer (could he but know) to learn that despite his certainty that he had (like Twain) no precursor, that he was "an absolute Emersonian."  I searched a bit in the Library of America edition of Emerson's writings.  Surely I read "Self Reliance" at some point, and I recall his essay "the Over Soul" -- thinking him very like Jung, or vice versa, but that was it.  Perhaps I only read Emerson back in the 50s during classes.   I began reading his "The Conduct of Life" and ran across, ". . . You may as well ask a loom which weaves huckaback, why it does not make cashmere, as expect poetry from this engineer . . ."   Feeling temporarily outraged I shall perhaps scorn him once again (perhaps that is why I never read him extensively) as Eliot did.

Steps

    There were bits of
    Wetness, drops of rain,
    Mist mostly, riffling
    The pool, coots tucking
    Their heads beneath
    Their wings and dreaming.
    Beyond was machinery

    And beyond that empty
    Fields where a farmer
    Used to plant and live-
    Stock stood in corrals,
    Waiting.  I leaned out
    Toward the rusted wire
    And dark clouds leaned in,

    Expanding my equivocation.
    A set of crows twisted
    Their heads, watching.
    I stepped back and turned
    Toward a red tailed hawk,
    Not just in the wet sand
    But in steps we’d made.

    Love can be like that when
    It’s old and mostly gone –
    A long row of steps –
    But not so many as to
    Make this more than
    Its plight -- taking its
    Last breath on its last night.

Diving

  
   
    Once on a cold morning
    I dived surprised in a
    Quiet world -- perch, bass
    Suspended in all directions.
    I couldn’t like them remain
    So swam toward a large
    Bass which slipped away

    And  sent others scurrying.
    I never took a shot.
    This morning clouds hung
    From the mountain.  The
    Air was damp but rain had
    Yet to fall.  We hiked along
    The crumbled levee where

    I took several shots.
    The air became dense.
    A swirl of fog-like cloud
    Sustained the feel of
    Being where no one comes
    And nothing waits
    Save one lone hawk

    Who glares contempt.
    What dare we who move
    Beneath, who aimlessly run,
    Who dash from the levee
    To dive in an ocean of
    Tumbleweed, who finally feel
    The rain beginning to fall?

Obligations

                

    Just a few more things to tidy up,
    To Fulfill my responsibility, then
    I’ll be free to go, eighty-one
    Being a respectable age to, no
    One will be bothered if
    I do.  If I choose to
    Stay longer, pondering

    This feeling of having
    Gone on this long,
    Surviving two wives, a
    Number of relatives and
    Friends, I might look again
    For purpose, something to do
    In between reading Borges’

    Conversations and Connolly’s
    The Unquiet Grave, neither
    Of whom found purposes
    Worthy of much though they
    Moved on as long as they could
    With imposing style, and
    Enjoyed each warming day.

Seeking Beauty

    Seeking Beauty           

    It has rained.  Shall I take my camera
    And dogs out when the sand is wet
    And the sky is dark?  What could I
    Gain from such a day?  What thoughts
    Could rise from the mist enshrouding
    The Mountain? If I say to myself
    There is no point going if my

    Day won’t produce beauty,
    I will doubt activity of any sort.
    I will understand why some put
    Bullets through such thinking.
    If I embrace the dread and
    Take my camera or pen
    Into the dark of such

    A day, stand as the rain
    Pours; look up until
    My eyes fill,
    If that isn’t
    Beauty, beauty
    Has probably
    Past by.