Four Forevers

Inside my heart are four forevers.
One is my occupation. The second is my speech.
The third is a flower. The fourth is a grain of sand.
The flower grows out of the grain of sand.
The speech determines the occupation.
The occupation is the outlet that calms.
The calm is a little louder than silence.
The men and women speak a little louder than the calm.
I am all those who have this occupation when I am done.
I am all the words that these men and women speak.
     The grain of sand is silence.
The flower is all the songs that are being sung.

The Village

Find the lost time of a train that has already left.
She travels on the plains easily seen from a mile away.
Her destination is a village I am hurrying toward.
It began thirty years ago. I wanted to tell you earlier
that I only travel by nature trail. Stop me at this signpost.
Enjoy the view through a row of birch trees.
I understand you've lost track of time.

I'm beginning to save the minutes that are spent by a pond.
Even the frogs remind me of traveling.
A conductor punches my ticket at the next signpost.
He keeps up the tradition. I hope to see him tomorrow.
It is only another mile, but I plan to camp here
at the birch trees tonight.
     The village is closer now.
I see some boys tossing a football on the other side of the pond.
A man walks swinging a briefcase by their game.
He is waiting for the train too. A woman yells at her child
to tie his shoelaces. They are both waiting for the train.
It will get here tomorrow. I lie in my tent and read about the pond
where the frogs make chorus like a train punctuating the night.

The Boat Man

inspired by Langston Hughes

The boat man I am to become is a reachin'
for his oars.
He is a betterin' his place in nature.
He is a swayin' on the crest of the future.
He is a fallin' outside his past.
He dares to flow a moment in the present.
He hears the weary thump-twang of the blues
rollin' in and out of his reach.
He grows strong in the darker mood of his croon.
Tomorrow we'll say to him, "Your song
is still echoing through my head."
"My song, brother, is the old piano moan
of midday mixed with mingling rock and jazz."
Its sound is so near, there's no room for fear.
We are a wave of sorrow out on the river.

The Mice

All around the ranch the mice race.
By nightfall each mouse is a full-fledged mouse.
They are shipped to a great brain so big it needs
neurons the size of mice.

Earth Day:
Heavier than the pyramids
is some conscience
we hold about the earth.
Our planet, her sorrow,
and a sky remote in answers
all call miracles to be worked.
Take into account the bread of many,
for answers are in all hands.

The Child:
The child aspires to live.
Unfortunately for it,
it is only posing as a code
for the body to unlearn.
Bound to a puzzle,
locked to life, each signal
in the sky betters his picture.

Highway 17

There is a waterfall in nearly every Provincial Park in Canada.
A gnome keeps his workshop under glass in the visitor center.
An actor and an archeologist trudge down the stairs
for photographers and those sorts of people.
They have left Highway 17 to find the gold in Rainbow Falls.
The gnome knows nothing of gold. He is busy making wheels
and pipe cleaners and other sorts of things by the water rushing
and his hammer threshing. He is busy winnowing the spokes
for the wheel of a wheelbarrow he will use to haul pipe cleaners
and water bug fossils and other sorts of things.
Out of the corner of his eye he sees the actor and the archeologist.
He knows he has seen one of them in a reflecting pool somewhere
although he cannot remember the cavern.
     Faster than a fox trap eluded,
he hammers out an epigram to send the two of them on their way
to the next waterfall. Then he hastily breaks camp and twists
three pipe cleaners into a wind chime.

Olney

We follow the map from Mattoon to Olney,
the renowned home of the white squirrel.
We check the business district. We keep a lookout
through neighborhoods of modest homes.
     We search high and low.
Our map is no currency in this strange land
of the white squirrel. We circle the block
two more times feeling cheated. Finally,
we slow down to 5 M/P/H on a side street.
Low and behold who should cross the street
but a diplomat of that rare permutation -
the Olney white squirrel.
He keeps the claim to fame of his small town alive.

The Bluest Eye

I stand in the grass and photograph the Walldog pines.
The penguin figurines are now quarter size penguins
in a winter when football games are going on in a restaurant.
     Dad started the tradition of taking self-portaits.
I walk to the end of the pier with my bicycle
and photograph it in front of the lighthouse.
The visitor center overlooks Lake Michigan.
Now a storm moves in. It's beautiful the way it is now.
I find The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison at Door to Door Books.
The foghorn resonates in the sudden change of weather.
I hear the sound of my tires a few feet in front of my stem
on the rails to trails path. It's sixteen miles to Sturgeon Bay.
I hope to hug the coast, take a side road inland, and pick cherries.
One ship was lost, but all were safe. They carried fencing and grain.
Saw only red, green, or whatever color the signals are out there.