THE MAN WITH THE BUTTERNUT GUITAR

His pale blue bones bend
graciously, fragile as fossils
round the place of song

blue is the very world
that grounds him, clothes him
in arrest against blue stone;

blinded eyes shut out
all but his vision of
impending things ; they fall

into the hole of the guitar
where his limp thumb plucks
beauty out of tightened strings.

Pablo gave us this old man
when pitiful and melancholy
were the palette’s only colors

and a gessoed tabletop
the only panel ready to receive
the pentimento of his pain.

This is what it comes to,
the blue painting seems to say,
a blindness, poor and old and

left to suffer homeless
in a world of monochrome
under a dome bereft of stars.

Cold, cold, except for one
dear possibility, colored warm—
the promise of a butternut guitar.
.
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the-man-with-the-butternut-guitar

GRISELDA

She of the dark battle
enters this downtrodden day

unbidden she steals in
upon the windblown cold,
rides on a window’s rattle
creeps along the weather of dismay.

She wants to grasp, get hold
and sink her talons deep

into the tender places
stir and rouse the vicious
powers of the soul
much better left asleep.

Who can answer why
she comes and sometimes stays

or how to steer a fragile craft
adrift and trembling toward
her perfect reasons
and her empathetic sighs

around the urge to simply and
forever slip away.
.
.
GRISELDA

LET NOTHING YOU DISMAY

“God rest ye merry, gentlemen
let nothing you dismay….” —18th century carol

.
Though morning comes again
as grim as gray as dim as
a blank wish to crawl back into bed
and start again some other day,
let nothing you dismay.

The giant plastic manger scene
and holiday inflatables now lie
collapsed all limp upon their lawns
as if a scroogey grinchy neighbor
shot them dead as he drove by

but it was likely just the wind,
so adversarial this time of year,
as weather obeys nothing but itself
regardless of a Santa Claus balloon
or Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer.

Just beyond the window
frost has dangled silver
bangles on a piney tree
and just beyond that…fog
so thick there’s little else to see.

There’s no one here but me
the fog god seems to say…
so rest you gently if not merry;
take a bit of comfort in oblivion,
let nothing you dismay.
.
.

GRISELDA

she of the dark battle
enters this downtrodden day

unbidden she steals in
upon the windblown cold
rides on a window’s rattle
creeps along the weather of dismay

she wants to grasp– get hold
and sink her talons deep

into the tender places
stir and rouse the vicious
powers of the soul
much better left asleep…

who can answer why
she comes and sometimes stays

or how to steer a fragile craft
adrift and trembling toward
her perfect reasons
and her empathetic sighs

around the urge to simply and
forever slip away

COLD COMFORT

Worst days tilt underfoot.
Ground and moorings sway.  Tentatively
now  we grasp into the fog
to ever deeper gray.

Smudged edges lose the old horizon
that so helped our keeping keeping on.
We are so rained upon.
What could the gods be thinking?

Times like this I conjure sight and sound
from wisdom old and vulgar new:
the rats are still around
which means the ship’s not sinking.