Three straw ladies
in three places
before a wall with straw hats—or faces
(difficult to tell)
and bare feet
but these are straw as well
and do not dance
their only music a bell
that tolls a beat
for straw shadows
that leave no traces
on sunburned lands
Why does the heart skip a beat
for three who only seem to be?
Three
faceless traceless straw ladies
in a Dali-dream
From rock perch
high on a green-grown hill
we saw Ohio
as green-hued as we
and all below the velvet green valley
holding golden river’s water twist
and distant bridges, sky-girded,
winging silver against the blue.
We felt the gentle wind sing:
…….follow
………………follow
………………………….follow
Where? But we could not know where
or when or if ever.
There lay the magic.
…….follow
………………follow
………………………….follow
Song of a long ago summer’s day.
But nothing is lost;
Childhood dreams remain
forever remembered
forever unblemished.
Green hills
And sun-drowned valley
Deep in dreaming.
But when the temblor struck
How that world rose up
With rending quake
And mountain roar,
Wild with coming awake.
Survey the dark damage:
The hills—ravished, un-greened;
Carved rock—scarred and bleak;
And struggling to a new pulse-beat,
The sunless valley
Shadowed by an escarped sleep.
When bright stars rise
nightly, ghost-birds mourn—wild jungle cries
weeping for Atahuallpa slain.
Softly, softly, the winds wail
echo along the mountain sides
down through the whispering golden grain.
Only a memory now—history—to tell tale:
a pageant of gold and sweeping tides
of empire. The old “white god”
and the young golden one
called across time and space
to friendship in that strange unlikely place
on the sun-rim of Peru.
Slowly, deeply the friendship grew
but the feathered Inca god of the Sun
was no match for the iron hand of Spain;
Atahuallpa fell, and when the deed was done
Pizarro, old, heart-broken, knew
that Spain had found its gold
but he had lost a son.
Light dips into night
spooning shadows
from feathered hush
Morning sings skyward
in a waking lyric rush
The delicate wheels of fairyland
Spin around and around
The dreamer tarries whenever
He hears that sudden sound
Of music
Dark rivers roar their tortuous runs
Through the carved canyons of night
While amid the scattered spent shells
Upon the silent sands
The ghost of gentle Sappho weeping stands
Blood-red cutlasses gleaming bright
In the glare of a pillaged town’s firelight.
Each lonely Phoenix must find new skies
From dust-destroyed days, replumaged rise.
The carnival of time universe-vast
dazzles and entices
with its brilliant stars and
multifarious mysteries
But what moves us most
is the carousel
Ah, the carousel, the carousel…
around and around we go
reaching for the elusive brass ring
The calliope rolls forth
mesmeric music as up
and down
and around we go
Up and down and around
to the song the sirens sing
and O, yes….
the possibility of that brass ring