A View From Anywhere: Assorted Poems
Three Sonnets
Natural Religion
A grizzled angler scans a murky stream
to gauge if it is worth his precious time.
He strokes his beard in thought, then finally deems
the spot a passable one, though not a prime.
His fingers ply, with acolyte finesse,
the liturgy of tacklebox and pole,
and like a true believer, he heeds less
the gestures than what they say to his soul.
Casting his line, he settles in his boots,
awaiting the old communion with all
the shrewd and patient huntsmen of his roots:
that moment when the hunt becomes a haul…
...and so that graying fisherman remained.
The spot was bare; communion never came.
Arguing the Merits of Realism
My inner voice that never stops for breath
groans as she rhetorically inquires,
“But why encourage the culture of death
so many modern artists desire?”
If I allow that inner voice to speak,
I think I'd snap, “The world is dark and light,
a chiaroscuro of the bright and bleak;
you cannot call it day till after night.”
But even though her question pissed me off,
her staring eyes are winsomely sincere,
and sometimes shine so earnestly and soft
I almost think my thinking too severe…
So I don't grant my inner voice his say,
for she might roll those eyes and look away.
Small Talk
I tend to pray and run when Mass is done,
before the crowd congeals to clog the door
and mingle, munching donuts in the sun.
I fear I’m judged — but fear the small talk more.
It might not be so bad, if I could think
of anything to say to married men,
or to their wives; but when I try, they blink
politely, seeming not to comprehend.
Their world is not for single folk, who try
to keep the flame of love alive alone
at night, when existential rivers rise
and gales of lust sigh a gusty moan.
Yet every time I leave, I glance behind
with something like regretting on my mind.
Nine Lyrics
The Garden
A garden grows inside my heart
enclosed within a doorless wall;
and in that garden there’s a well
where dark and bitter water pools.
It’s all I have to drink, and all
that keeps this doorless garden green:
but if that well should drip to dry,
I do not think I’d hate to die.
Absence
“They say absence makes the heart grow fonder.”
Why don't those idiomatic ‘they’ say
that fondness flares briefly, fizzling away
like a struck and used-up match? I wonder.
Perhaps ‘they’ have steeled themselves to heartache.
My matches flare and fizzle; my heart breaks.
Maturity
There are some friends I can’t remember meeting
because they are what it means to remember;
but you, Innocence, left in such a silence
I almost never knew you’d been around.
Gnostic Anti-Gnosticism
You would rather be a bodiless ghost
and haunt the naves of crumbling cathedrals
than let your flesh belong to “modernity”
where skyscrapers loom over steeples.
De Mundi Systemate:
Liber III, Propositio IV
When they were twelve, they danced in love
as planets dance in orbit:
drawn, but never touching,
innocence conducting
the music of their spheres.
But Icarian wonder at
the hidden force of longing
decomposed their motives:
and soon, with Newton’s moon,
they fell — the price of proof.
Provincialism
Although we are native to time,
let’s not become provincial:
for time abuts eternity
in unfamiliar places.
Phoebe and Friends
Monetizing melancholy,
but moaning about mental health;
worth about a million dollars,
but blaming everything on wealth:
these Gen-Z idols are confused.
Am I the only one bemused?
Phone Call
Technology distills you into sound.
The dross of your eyes and smile; the heat
of your proximate presence, drift away
to mingle in vapors of memory.
Your voice alone remains – a sweet liqueur
fragrant with the precious essence of yourself
that calls to mind the rest of you to me,
as the Alps survive in some monastic brews.
But can a dram of such a brew slake
the ache to see the Alps again? And when
I drink your voice, should I be content?
Technology distills you into sound;
but you are more than sound; I want you more
than distillations: come to me again.
Manhood
A man must make a stand
against a monstrous heart.
Even if he dies alone,
it’s still the better part.