eHarmony

It is the modern day, and so we met
Before we met -- we each of us came in
The network, joined a common node, and set
A trap for someone we would like to win.

But that's not love.

So we agreed to meet -- a restaurant --
Outside, I waited -- up the ramp you walked --
A voice proclaimed you were the one I'd want
 To wed -- from this insight I've never balked.

And that turned into love.

You are my beautiful -- I copied you
Into a daughter and two sons. We wove
A net together that entangled through
The years to pull from from the depths a trove

Of deepest love.

Measure

Line breaks do not a poem make,
But line breaks there must be --
Three second lines make up their time,
And meaning makes each tree.

The pattern is the father, lines
That speak the poem's scales --
The rhythm is the mother, rhyme
A rule that rarely fails.

And syntax, grammar should be law --
Except when they should not.
Your poem ought to be a thought --
Unless it has a plot.

But if free verse is more your style,
You'd better demonstrate
That you know how to write in verse,
For that's the poet's gate.

Node

The place I find myself in is a net
Of works, of words, of poets which converge
On me, on every poet singing yet
More sounds to make reality emerge

Out of the Cantor dust of words and dew
Of nothingness that promises to be.
I mold the mud and make it act. A new
Man made, a poet made, much more than me.

And he will feel the flow, and he will grow
The poetry, a branch to grow, divide
And show, discovering new knowledge, so
The net can live. He wrote; the night, it died.

Day broke across the poet's face, the lace
Of curtain scattered it. He wrote: "The place . . . "

The Bill We Owe

Oh, William Shakespeare, don't you know that you
Are not as wise or relevant because
You are a dead white male -- so what you're due
Is less no matter what your writing does

To raise the soul, no matter who you are.
Perhaps the critics' brain cells have been charred
With cold political correctness: "Bar
The door, do not let in the greatest Bard!"

Are those they wish to raise so bad to read
That they must first destroy the reputation
Of you, the greatest writer, live or dead?
So great some think you must be some creation?

The critics do not pick who will survive --
The artists, readers pick those who will thrive.

A View From the Steps

She sits sideways on the bench, reading,
back bent at the same angle as the fountains
shooting water at each other, bending to a teepee
of foam. Her blonde hair, white shirt, light khaki pants
blend into the white water's triangular frame, the pale gray
concrete bench she sits on cross-legged. I wonder
what she's reading, what she's thinking --
I could go, ask. She stands, looks around, her hair flailing
out around her head, then walks away. The brick base
of the fountain creates sharp relief
between the bench and rising water.

Hover

The sky lies transparent to the sun,
ozone refracting light to blue, scattered
so it's all that's seen. Hovering, a bird,
black, screeches in the sky, looking down,
the ground a haven harboring food, birth,
death. She flies, finding updrafts, currents of air,
used to keep her place, a bent cross pinned in the sky.
Then up, aloft, away from sight, deciding now
against the ground, leaving the sky
empty of sight, break, or sound.

The Dead of Winter

I seem to have lost winter here in Hattiesburg,
camellias blooming, late November, December,
white waxy roses, thick, full, ideal, nestled
among broad evergreen leaves. January,
a tree bursts alone against the gray dead trees
surrounding into hot-pink floral flames. Four-petaled
bluets, almost too tiny to be seen, flowers millimeters
wide, navy-eyed, twin leaves on a hair-width stem --
a February full of lilliputian flowers. a thin vine
winding up a pole, hanging from a handrail, arrow leaves,
tiny orange trumpets -- I never saw it out of bloom
from August until now. I wonder what March
in Mississippi means to bring me -- azaleas,
mountain laurels, wisteria vines, unknown flowers,
white with red stamens on broadleaf evergreen bushes,
scent ascending, alluring, enticing.

Crepe Myrtle

This is the first I've seen crepe myrtle blooming
their crinkled torus blossoms all through summer,
or growing into trees. A tiny bush
grew near my childhood bedroom window wall --
I chose it for the hot pink flowers blooming
for an entire month in summer. May
to hot September here, I've yet to see
them out of bloom. Pink flowers everywhere --
along, between the roads and houses, only
the freshly planted the same size as mine
up in Kentucky, just now five years old.
The five-year-olds have grown to pink-torch trees
in Mississippi's summer heat. While mine
was one, unique and beautiful -- now, they
seem much too much. While through their commonness
I have already grown exhausted of
all the crepe myrtles that I've seen, I know,
when I go up, see mine again, the only
one growing, blooming in White Plains, I will
think it is the most beautiful of flowers.

Gulfport, MS

The gulf is dark, calm, forming pools
in shallow sand as water pulls away --
it's slipping silent from my feet. Sand scampers
across them. I thought the tide would be high
on a full moon. Jellyfish, long and blue, red, oval,
with tiny tentacles caressing water by, move
slow by my feet. I can easily step away.
Black skimmers -- long red bottom bill
that breaks the water's surface, scooping fish
with its black tip -- glide silently across the sea,
unseen until only a few feet away. Everything here
is unexpected, not at all how I thought it would be --
the moon, the birds, the sea -- and me, me most of all.

May Day

If Marx is right, the more I work on this
One poem, as I contemplate it's rhyme
And rhythm, I will see its value kiss
The clouds as labor builds up over time.

But if I simply jot it down, without
Much thought, just following the habits wrought
From practice, then there surely is no doubt
It's worth as little as the effort bought.

And surely longer poems must be worth
More than a couplet, quatrain, or haiku
Since so much time was spent in giving birth --
It's length, not content, that makes value true?

But no one cares if I took days or weeks
Or even minutes for the lines I write --
They only want what every reader seeks:
For wisdom, knowledge, something that delights.

And so I'm not exploited if I can
Not find a reader for my epic verse,
Nor I unfairly profit if a man
Delights in sonnets more -- we can't disperse

The value fairly to the written lines.
No, you must judge alone what lines you like --
The value's only what your taste defines --
It makes no sense for me to go on strike.

On the Hills

Dark pines on low, rolling hills,
hiding those hills so slightly.
What life hides beneath their boughs,
springing up between pine needles?
Little life in such acid soils
produced by pines and oaks and magnolias.
These seem sufficient for the beauty
of these hills, a different beauty from the hills
I'm used to -- towering hills spotted with caves,
covered in oaks and maples, redbuds, dogwoods,
tulip trees in full flower, filling the forests
with whites and purples, a touch of pink. These hills
may seem more plain --
unless . . .
unless you look more closely . . .
then you can see the beauty's just as clear, only
a little different in the dark green needles.

Open

My heart opens --
a book, a rose, the beak of a baby bird
in an old, bent apple tree --
until I know, now, its warmth is not wasted
on your door, cracked open.

The Sandhill

In a swamp along Highway 49,
between Hattiesburg and Gulfport, Mississippi,
I saw standing, still and straight,
a long gray bird, beak jutting out
from under a small red patch
on a small gray head. He didn't seem
to be hunting swimming fish or frogs,
only watching,
watching the road,
the cars going by --
as if he owned everything he saw.
I wasn't one to argue.
I believed him as I drove by.

A New Wal-Mart

"We do not want it here," they chant and cry --
The time, the money spent, the vigor of
Their protest -- fools alone would dare deny
This all is for a neighborhood they love.

The Wal-Mart Corporation wants to build
A store in a dead shopping center -- dead
For years, and killing all who came. Those killed
Will not come back, yet life is viewed with dread.

And when the Wal-Mart does at last renew
The center, making it itself, where will
Those old protestors be? What will they do,
Defeated by a corporate-city shill?

They can be found now, down each good-filled lane --
Convenience and good prices? Why complain?

Brown

I sleep and dream of beautiful brown eyes,
Your long brown curls cascading to your breasts,
Big brown nipples beckoning to me, sighs
Rise to my lips -- a face I bring forward,
Your lovely body I want to embrace
Again -- you are my lovely and adored
I must leave behind for a short time -- you
Are all I think of now. I want to come
Back to see you, never leave you, and view
You in your beautiful browns -- my heart's numb
Without you -- I can't wait to see your brown
Eyes again, dear -- in them I live to drown.

Screech Owl

The screech owl sits, adorable, up in
The open oak, alone and looking out
Upon its prairie that it had to win --
It rules its roost; it sits there with no doubt.

Around the oak are little balls of fur
With girter bones and stomach acid spackle --
The undigested all that's left of her,
The mother mouse. The owl emits its cackle

That terrifies the chimpunks, mice, and shrews,
Then lifts on silent wings. There's no endorphin
Rush -- there's no time to spread the awful news
That crushing claws have made another orphan.

The mouse's skull is crushed by this cold brute,
Who, tufted, colored rust, looks very cute.

Antitrust

The politicians say they only care
About consumer safety -- no debate
When people must be safe -- we would not dare
Deny that government must regulate.

But why do CEOs feast Congressmen
And ask for regulations to be made?
They capture regulations in their den
Of bureaucrats, so everyone is paid.

And when monopoly is made, it's fine
Until the wrong official is made mad --
And then the antitrust laws make it dine
Upon the fact it was a power fad.

The regulations make monopoly,
While competition is what makes us free.

Symmetry and Equilibrium

The coin is standing on its end
In perfect symmetry --
The little time that it will spend
(Potentiality

In quantum fluctuations, air
That's blowing from a vent,
The tiniest vibration) where
There is a small percent

Chance that no equilibrium
Will find this coin a place
Upon the table as a sum
Of our creation's trace.

Nostalgia

Medieval girth
Once showed the worth
of women, wide wastes, hips for birth.
A healthy Venus reigned
From stone age times of ice --
In recent times we've hardly gained --
A rail-thin culture has a price,
For with our wealth
We lost our health
And sensuality has waned.
A look at poverty is what we've earned,
Starvation-sallow cheeks and skin that's burned
From working in the fields
Is what our culture yields,
And so it shields
Us from our natural tastes
For fleshy hips and waists
Like that we see
In ancient pottery,
In totems and in paintings, luxury
In overflow.
But now the women are so lean
We do no grow
In health -- instead, we grow obscene --
Aesthetic judgments turn to rust
When faced with lust
We cannot trust --
We deserve only mirth.

OR-7

Alone, yet tracked, pacifically this wolf

Has wandered through the Cascade’s mountain passes

From Oregon to California –

He hides behind the pines and in tall grasses

In mountain meadows filled with flowers, filled

With game the wolf can eat. Alone, he finds

It’s mostly rabbits, pika, squirrels that he

Can catch and eat. When full, he mostly winds

Down old elk paths. He’s looking for a pack

And cannot know he is alone, the one

Lone wolf in California – he lives

Up to the name. He basks in the warm sun

And drinks from mountain lakes whose sapphire blue

Reflects the thin-aired sky, but when the moon

Is out, his haunting howl crowds out the rounds

Of hooting owls – he hears a calling loon

Instead of what he hopes to hear – another

Gray wolf to join him on his namesake quest,

To journey on with Journey as a mate

And hope across the new Pacific West.