autumn in oil

 A Small Autumn Still Life

Last evenings walk through a picture of town -

Careful to keep to the harrowed strokes

Mindful of losing our way in unresolved scumble  -

there’d been a brush with skinning paint

How else to explain morning coat sleeves

laden as honey bee legs?

Sixth past Main, a good chunk of Fourth defaced in a leisurely smear

reds and golds woven into the warp and weft

violet night bled into smudged highlights of wet pavement –

Remember you broadcast a hand toward that break in the clouds? –

tatting the hard margins of a full moon

pillow beaded with creamy light

a few luminous grains still clinging to your face.

 

Can't Get It Out Of My Head

Red Rubber Ball

A cure or the way forward

through thorny negotiations

a plan to feed the multitudes bob

in the moat that rings my fortress of sleep. 

I stagger over the drawbridge

to the land where dreams go to die

by a thousand cuts from the first

keen rays of dawn and steal a glimpse

back like Lot’s yearning wife only to see

them all turn to salt before my eyes

save for the pop song Red Rubber Ball

The Cyrkle’s one big hit, summer ‘66. 

I drink my coffee gazing out

on the feeders to a biblical plague

of Farfisa organ under three part

harmony.  A cardinal averts his eyes

while I mouth the words, cursed, helpless:

“now I know you’re not the only starfish

in the sea, if I never see your face

again it’s all the same to me something

something the morning sun is shining

like a red rubber ball.”, a simile

that still holds up after all these years

three minutes and a hook that endure. 

Life's too short

Complaint  

You know how I hate to complain

this weather

my neck

 your habit of

making that dry hinge sound

in the back of your throat.

Knowledge, like the source of the Nile or

          a redwood seed

                   first fallen flake on the slope

                             the offhand flick of a fin

has a way of setting into motion

the next moment followed by another.  

Time, unerring as a perfect game

          rounding on us, contours

revealed beneath a boat

                             that plies a sea of music

slips away, sure as vows exchanged

on a windy beach, but who’s complaining?

                  

         

Alone in the gallery

Picture Window

The living room where I sit silent

ambered deep within the friendly grip

of this easy chair, inhales and exhales

in waltz time, wonders for a moment if

this, this, is really living, entertains

dreams of Versailles, perhaps the Hall of Mirrors

secretly thrills to garish Rococo

abandon but falls into despair

over time’s passing, mocked by the quartet

of corners that won't ever be turned

until the big easy chair pipes up

in a Bing Crosby baritone hung

with Spanish moss, slathered in Tupelo

honey.  “Take a load off B-B-Bub,

enjoy the view”, arms open wide

on the framed picture window, a simple

landscape rendered in evening’s muted

colors, near abstract representation

of houses and yards of neighbors

across the street, a foreground trope of children's

chalk drawing unspooling down the sidewalk.

We sit in awe, a silent trio

until we’re joined by a fourth, the drum

table stitching a soft tattoo of sleep.

Don't Touch My Junk

Bending Light

The junk drawer stacks eye level

where I drink my morning coffee

the stainless pull an easy reach

with my free hand.  Paws shingle

in baleful prayer, brown eyes

shoulder a tented brow, the dog

steeps at my feet in ethnographic studies. 

A Master Lock, indifferent

to a bag of loose keys

freebooter screws and their suitor

tools, a Philips and two flat heads

pair of needle nose rounding out

a handyman’s quartet, all of it shot through

with the unraveled mind of baling twine

I can’t recall never having been entwined

or the reason I bought it in the first place.   

Blame it on the coffee, but with a little rooting

some minor adjustment and twine

encoded with a series of knots

a handy gizmo for the bending of light

sits waiting for trials, ready to extrude

the first molten rays of morning.

A golden light with give, it yields

with a squeak when run through the maze

burning my hand when I heft it to cool

smoking on the table, driving off the dog

a radiant tiara to wear 
with your pilled pink bathrobe.