Niagara, The Lamp

When I stopped to rest in the woods
an afternoon beam of light
focused the stream’s reflection -
a ripple on the tree trunk.
The pattern of movement
relit from the past a motion lantern
on the bureau above my bed

memory restored.

Niagara, the Falls,
depicted on an oval tube
of translucent filmy flimsy acetate,
bound by a moldy warped cardboard top
and a flaking chrome grillwork base

time dispersed.

Inside the oval,
a smaller cylinder of acetate,
painted with wavy lines,
suspended from a stylus,
propelled by the bulb’s convection heat
through a pierced pinwheel pattern

how it revolved.

Optical illusion of cascading water,
infused with the suggestion of
a thundering lullaby
permeating mists
floating dreams

sleep restored.

After one of her yearly
staged occupations of my bedroom
grandmother advanced a week later
the lamp prey to her pillage

sleep lost.

On E-Bay, Econolite #762 circa 1955
highlighting details of the rainbow
over Maid-of-the-Mist
can be reclaimed,
variable in cost and condition
but, though I toured the Falls years earlier,
I had not conjured the lamp from the dark
until that ripple in the woods

time restored.

How it revolved
time lost
sleep restored
memory dispersed.

Religious Perspective

In the natural food market
just beneath the whole grain bins
a woman raved rhapsodic about
a creative writing workshop she would attend
where participants would be encouraged
to ask god questions.

Deliver us, oh lord, from spiritual workshops.

My daughter, an emerging skeptic
at six years, asked the following question
upon observing the fourteen Stations Of The Cross
in carved relief, mounted on church pillars:

Grant us, oh lord, the gift of inquiry.

“Why did Jesus, carrying his cross
on the way to Calvary,
always have a rock under him when he fell?
He fell three times, and each time
there was a large boulder for him to lean on.”

Let perpetual rocks break our fall.

The sculptor used this device, the imminent rock,
to keep Christ in a portrait shaped frame,
whereas, if he actually fell prostrate,
the deity would require a landscape format.
A rotated rectangle would simply not fit
on the long slim columns between
the stained glass windows.

Yea, though we walk through the valley of the narrow pillars
we fear no asymmetry.

Hearing my interpretation she nodded wisely.
She was not expecting a miracle.
She had already posited that Mary kicked her legs,
like a swimmer, when she ascended into heaven.

Lead us not into sacred vortexes,
oh lord, hear our cry!
Set not our feel on the path of mystic labyrinths,
deliver us from foreshortening zeal,
and grant us religious perspective
as unto a child’s desire for truth,
for ever and ever. Amen.

Two Feete In The Grave

A. Ward Foote
born 1865 died 1925
“He accomplished what he set out to do”

WInifred Burt Foote
born 1866 died 1941
“She did what she could”

pride and humility
eternally they rest
not side by side
but as they must
heade to foote

footenote:
she had 16 years to compose
a modest rejoinder

Piece By Piece

Soldier is the new TIn Woodsman
desert is the new forest

no enchanted ax
no spiteful witch -
think body armor
recruitment propaganda

piece by piece
state of the art prosthetics
replace muscle bone flesh

space age technology
stone age politics

white house
no brain straw man
squanders hired courage

the sunday supplement photo -
a spindle of carbon fiber
strapped into a cross trainer
his heart intact

he can even scuba dive
he can even ski
even run a marathon
look ma, no oil can

Not embedded like a tick
I am removed
I view this image
without a soul.

Dreaming Monotremes

Mammalian, yet without a teat
in grooves abdominally neat
collecting mother’s milk discreet
her furless babe laps up the treat
while swimming up Australian streams
her snout collecting sensory beams
to electrolocate shrimps and breams
and feast with dreaming monotremes

From reptilian genes, in fact
if jealous male suspects attack
with venomous spur he will extract
a pain exquisite and exact
And generating countless reams
I’d scrawl out am’rous giddy themes
seductive sensual supremes
erotic dreams of monotremes

Avian chromosomes decree
five xy pairs the male will be
but just her left side ovary
produces eggs, from one to three
Biologist skeptics searched for seams
in taxidermic samplings
unlikely hoax they must have seemed
to dream up dreaming monotremes

Orificial nomenclature states
one perforation indicates
they eliminate and defecate
precisely where they procreate
blueprint outrageous, it beeseems
A fine economy redeems
designing principles esteem
the pipe dream form of monotremes

Let my symbolic third wish be
to dream what platypuses see
in REM, the genome tree
and each potentiality
mapped deftly to infinity
or to, at least “here dragons be”.
and every path not taken, me.
Rejecting higher branching beams
from evolutionary schemes
and forking alternate extremes
while dreaming dreams of monotremes.