RECOVERY

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A Thought for Today

Until someone offers you something better than your big dream, don't give up on it.

I'm still attempting to recover my hard drive (it went down at the beginning of the week thanks to a virus both Ken and I downloaded last weekend.) Meanwhile here are 3 poems from the 1972 album "Winter.

THREE WINTER POEMS

A Fist Full of Snow

I need familiars
your bowels and brains have to be 
as sure for me as both your eyes.
Passing through the sheets 
and climbing down inside of you -
                               even though 
you give back one for one
                  and maybe more
I sometimes wonder if I haven't 
Traversed or gone climbing down a shaft 
so new that none, not even me 
         had charted it.

Did you take a turn that I missed?
            Did I go somewhere else ?
Was there a curve we didn't
                       go around together? Worse -
has someone else been hiking 
down your highway?
Not to worry, never mind
                        change is change
unaccountable but surprising
          if you like surprises.

It's just that I had hoped
                    all our surprises 
would be together - planned.

There is some silence now
like dead wood in the forest
moving only when it's prodded.

And I stand here waiting
with a fist full of snow.

       -from "Come to me in Silence," 1973 & "Too Many Midnights," 1981


Laughter Through the Crystal

Not so much for safety as for peace
do I retreat into imagination.
Retreat might be the wrong word 
my mind's people take me forward.

Still... imagination's devices
                         do the needed job
when you're not here, 
when no one's here.

Just now I've been awakened
by the screeching of mad bluejays.
The coffee isn't ready
the morning paper 
won't arrive 
for one more hour.
No need to even think.

The Morse code of coffee perking
                                          in this room 
now occupied by only me says it all
like laughter through the crystal.

                        -from "Too Many Midnights," 1981

Snowflakes in the Wine

It rained today, all day
everything was the sound of rain.

Children laughing in the streets
                             police whistles
cars splashing mud at one another
even the music on the radio 
sounded like the rain.

Tonight the storm is nearly over.

I walked down by the railway station
to watch the trains come in
and not once was I asked the time
nor did a stranger stop and want a light.

Sometimes on rainy nights
I forgot I'm in a foreign country.

It's about twelve-thirty now.
Most everyone has gone to bed.
Something is pushing me,
                      making me think.

I miss you.

                              -from "Winter," 1972

All three poems appeared in the 1972 album "Winter," in slightly different form.

NINETEEN FIFTY-NINE: TRUE HOLLY