the old jones hospital

deep in dry leaves
under flowering magnolias
the old mower sleeps

finesse

From the poets perspective, Americans do not know the meaning of the word finesse.  For them power is everything, the raw sheer confrontation with the other, to whom they do not intend to submit. Their hypertechnical teacher has provided a largesse of domination that encourages its members to press home their material advantage.

                                                                                    -Alturas

            Conversely! the natural life -intent on rapport and reciprocation- makes the most out of what is already offered freely to it.  Always it seeks the threshold where not edge but equivalence can be realised. It does not want to turn the night into day; it wants to find what the night is made of.  Far from a desire to control everything, it invites &  delights in the natural course of things: accordingly finesse is always its preferred m.o.

July 2002

To be brazenly  a  bum
Unapologetic
Answering to no compunction
Of clock or calendar or skedull
Yes to have all the morning to oneself!
And all the slow measure of afternoon
By evening sitting on a rough bluff
Looking over The Big Sandy
Or walking the starry bliss
Of crushed quartz where the road ends
In Wyoming,
Silent lightning far-off--
Flashing in the blue Tetons

My Type

Your keyboard is more efficient
   but I'm fondly reminiscent
Of the chrome-and-black shine
   and the Remington ring
      at the end of the line...

drizzle

   '...drizzle' pretty much gets accorded third-class status in meteorological circles, rain but not really, unrain but not really, yet this AM when I walked up to the street to fetch my Bee I was greeted by a sublime atmosphere that sent a cold fresh spritz across my cheek, misting the town lights before me, and I felt nothing but christened by this new day, & lifted out of my sleepyheadedness into an indefinable euphoria- call it 'drizzle' if you'd like but I call it an unexpected visit from Grace...

far from home...

 Today my baptism came in the form of a driving sleet
 That caught me far from home
 My only shelter a scrawny digger pine
 That clocked me with snow-fragments!

the Cybernetic Revolution

     What to say about the cybernetic revolution that's added so much to our lives?
     Well, it's inevitable I suppose that human beings will continue to tinker, to create & foster 'application' that can do so much for all of us.
       But likewise!  that revolution has also subtracted something from our lives, something called the Solar Plexus.  That is, where in so many places a man had to rely on his own skills honed by experience and learning, now the GPS or a hundred other pods, pads, smartphones & apps can manage nicely, thanks very much.  Where before a man fell back on his own resources, the cybernetic domain has 'liberated' him & left him increasingly where technology's intended- left him with nothing to do.
     Call it progress if you will, but from where I stand a man's instincts, intuitions, resourcefulness- the self-reliance that makes him a man- have been sacrificed on the altar of productivity.