Leaden Skies This Morning: A Peripatetic Ode
When I realized that my half-woke mind
was churning out “shining big sea water”
like a grinding engine whose trochaic revolutions
won’t strike fire, a whim took me to dance
my stride to Longfellow’s gitche gumee-
ooga booga beat to escape the humdrum
of a routine spondaic plod that metered
my random reveries. Oops—such hopscotching
calls for a back that swivels and a mis-skip
lurched me onto a lawn where my stagger
knocked askew a yard sign to re-elect
the bizarre demagogue, who at the fell hour
of three a.m. before the wee hour I myself
awaken to stalk still enshrouded streets,
before even sweet birds begin their twitter,
pecks out scornful insults on his clever phone
to the gloating glee of folks who blame
civilization’s plights on folks like me.
Prone on an enemy lawn, I seized
the flattened moment to look for the moon
without the neck-craning dizziness age
brings to any ad astra gazing. But it hung
hidden behind leaden cloud cover,
hidden in turn by that darkest darkness
before the dawn and, despite the folly
of forbearance in a fallen world, I arose
and set the malignant sign aright.
Perhaps a glister in that imagined moon,
like metal cooling in a black cauldron,
surfaced a memory of lead soldiers,
armies of Waterloo bequeathed to me
in a humidor of gleaming rosewood
from which the old man’s ghost rose up
in a sweet cigar whiff when I lifted
its lid. I tucked those antique warriors
in mossy nooks between layers of shale
exposed in the steep defile that eons
of time and water had grooved into creek
gorge behind our house where I fooled
around aimlessly most days, alone
with just pretend friends and enemies
for company. Ready for action, I’d balance
spread-legged atop a log and flood detritus
to ping them off, one after another,
cocking and swiveling my Red Ryder
BB gun in rapid-fire. But when my ear
caught but once shrill echoes of my own
childish glee mocking back like ricochets
jeering off rock, I flushed in shame
at my childish make believe. Inside a ring
of ledge rock I built a fire, and melted
down in a crushed coffee can I pulled out
of stream trash those old toys an old man
had hoped I’d find a kindred joy in,
just to see the silver pool dissolve a love
of silly play. First Napoleon, then Wellington
sank at attention astride cavorting steeds,
like our souls are presumed to meld into one
democratic eternal glow and therein doze
in timeless peacefulness. Their gaudy red
and blue array crackled into a black crust
right before they poofed away in a gout
of sooty smoke—like Lucretius tells us
souls disappear when we disappear.
Even with a new iambic lilt to my tread,
I had to admit that my soul, whether made
of meat or mystery or whatever,
was ballasted by a dull leaden regret.
Notwithstanding, I could imagine sunup
already infusing milky gray into black
as it defined a horizon with a thin red line
that slowly seeped forth across the sky
like blood unfurls from a purling stream
into a toilet bowl. Or maybe belches up
in a pristine sylvan pool where a sad man,
on the advice of a fervent woman
beloved for quavery cadences in poetry
of reverent love in the face of bigotry
and bravery against various diseases,
has sliced his foot on a busted beer bottle
as he waded toward a crystal cascade
to douse his dour head in its bracing shower
to awaken his soul to a thrush’s sweetly
wistful fluting as a hallowed hush deepens
a soft gloaming in a forest primeval.
Then he could feel afresh thrilling tugs
of longing that the old golden poems
recited at firesides by stolid forefathers
once aroused—how the dead are glad
to come sit beside us to bid us dry our eyes
and rejoice in their souls’ happiness
while baking apples sizzle in the coals.
As I ambled across the second bridge,
one seamless pentameter two-step
at a time, I could presume that when day
broke a blue pewter glow would betray
where sun had crept to behind a sky
of obscuring cloud. No alchemy there.
Lead alloyed with tin is the same lead
that brain-poisoned Rome, that hid
beneath a copper sheen in BBs
crows pecked from cliff talus, and still lurks
in window sill paint poor children gnaw on
in a boredom of poverty when the rats
they pet and cuddle as mistaken kitties
scuttle inside their holes. I thought,
perhaps, I thought back then to redeem
self-conscious shame for airy fantasy
by some act of art, to craft a product
that might please the world to forgive
my errant mind. Propping a slice of shale
pocked with fossil seashells between my feet,
I poured with tremulous hands hot lead
into each ancient scallop. But the soft rock
exploded with a shatter crack, shooting
molten ore into eyelets of my sneakers.
Holygodamighty how my fingers tore shoes!
And thus a banal chant summoned
what free spirit willed and when thrown
into action awakened ruminations
that launched memory. Since old minds
anticipate no future, they turn back
to the past and discover even that unknown .
As I came up on my porchlight, gone dim
in dawn’s leaden light, I thought I must look
to see if three small holes still run down
the ridge of my foot, and I remembered
sitting on wet rocks with a wet bum,
weeping while my raw foot blistered
in the slyly whispering creek that flowed
without rhythm like the single strum
of one string that always begins an epic.
was churning out “shining big sea water”
like a grinding engine whose trochaic revolutions
won’t strike fire, a whim took me to dance
my stride to Longfellow’s gitche gumee-
ooga booga beat to escape the humdrum
of a routine spondaic plod that metered
my random reveries. Oops—such hopscotching
calls for a back that swivels and a mis-skip
lurched me onto a lawn where my stagger
knocked askew a yard sign to re-elect
the bizarre demagogue, who at the fell hour
of three a.m. before the wee hour I myself
awaken to stalk still enshrouded streets,
before even sweet birds begin their twitter,
pecks out scornful insults on his clever phone
to the gloating glee of folks who blame
civilization’s plights on folks like me.
Prone on an enemy lawn, I seized
the flattened moment to look for the moon
without the neck-craning dizziness age
brings to any ad astra gazing. But it hung
hidden behind leaden cloud cover,
hidden in turn by that darkest darkness
before the dawn and, despite the folly
of forbearance in a fallen world, I arose
and set the malignant sign aright.
Perhaps a glister in that imagined moon,
like metal cooling in a black cauldron,
surfaced a memory of lead soldiers,
armies of Waterloo bequeathed to me
in a humidor of gleaming rosewood
from which the old man’s ghost rose up
in a sweet cigar whiff when I lifted
its lid. I tucked those antique warriors
in mossy nooks between layers of shale
exposed in the steep defile that eons
of time and water had grooved into creek
gorge behind our house where I fooled
around aimlessly most days, alone
with just pretend friends and enemies
for company. Ready for action, I’d balance
spread-legged atop a log and flood detritus
to ping them off, one after another,
cocking and swiveling my Red Ryder
BB gun in rapid-fire. But when my ear
caught but once shrill echoes of my own
childish glee mocking back like ricochets
jeering off rock, I flushed in shame
at my childish make believe. Inside a ring
of ledge rock I built a fire, and melted
down in a crushed coffee can I pulled out
of stream trash those old toys an old man
had hoped I’d find a kindred joy in,
just to see the silver pool dissolve a love
of silly play. First Napoleon, then Wellington
sank at attention astride cavorting steeds,
like our souls are presumed to meld into one
democratic eternal glow and therein doze
in timeless peacefulness. Their gaudy red
and blue array crackled into a black crust
right before they poofed away in a gout
of sooty smoke—like Lucretius tells us
souls disappear when we disappear.
Even with a new iambic lilt to my tread,
I had to admit that my soul, whether made
of meat or mystery or whatever,
was ballasted by a dull leaden regret.
Notwithstanding, I could imagine sunup
already infusing milky gray into black
as it defined a horizon with a thin red line
that slowly seeped forth across the sky
like blood unfurls from a purling stream
into a toilet bowl. Or maybe belches up
in a pristine sylvan pool where a sad man,
on the advice of a fervent woman
beloved for quavery cadences in poetry
of reverent love in the face of bigotry
and bravery against various diseases,
has sliced his foot on a busted beer bottle
as he waded toward a crystal cascade
to douse his dour head in its bracing shower
to awaken his soul to a thrush’s sweetly
wistful fluting as a hallowed hush deepens
a soft gloaming in a forest primeval.
Then he could feel afresh thrilling tugs
of longing that the old golden poems
recited at firesides by stolid forefathers
once aroused—how the dead are glad
to come sit beside us to bid us dry our eyes
and rejoice in their souls’ happiness
while baking apples sizzle in the coals.
As I ambled across the second bridge,
one seamless pentameter two-step
at a time, I could presume that when day
broke a blue pewter glow would betray
where sun had crept to behind a sky
of obscuring cloud. No alchemy there.
Lead alloyed with tin is the same lead
that brain-poisoned Rome, that hid
beneath a copper sheen in BBs
crows pecked from cliff talus, and still lurks
in window sill paint poor children gnaw on
in a boredom of poverty when the rats
they pet and cuddle as mistaken kitties
scuttle inside their holes. I thought,
perhaps, I thought back then to redeem
self-conscious shame for airy fantasy
by some act of art, to craft a product
that might please the world to forgive
my errant mind. Propping a slice of shale
pocked with fossil seashells between my feet,
I poured with tremulous hands hot lead
into each ancient scallop. But the soft rock
exploded with a shatter crack, shooting
molten ore into eyelets of my sneakers.
Holygodamighty how my fingers tore shoes!
And thus a banal chant summoned
what free spirit willed and when thrown
into action awakened ruminations
that launched memory. Since old minds
anticipate no future, they turn back
to the past and discover even that unknown .
As I came up on my porchlight, gone dim
in dawn’s leaden light, I thought I must look
to see if three small holes still run down
the ridge of my foot, and I remembered
sitting on wet rocks with a wet bum,
weeping while my raw foot blistered
in the slyly whispering creek that flowed
without rhythm like the single strum
of one string that always begins an epic.
