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1. VOX CLAMANTIS IN VACUO
On the radio today, a physicist bemoaning
our loneliness on this planet,
Fermi's Paradox: "where are all the
others?"
Could the rest just be dead moons and methane
seas?
Donne said no man is an island
yet here I am, dictating into a dumb
computer,
a fox cam: and this, in fact, you
owe
(and spell-check doesn't even get it right).
I seek the tender and lyrical--
elements usually missing from my voice--
and shouldn't the loneliness we all feel
get us to these places?
When an astronomer peers in his telescope
isn't he looking for that grace
that a child feels in the arms of his parent?
Or of two young lovers, first discovering
each other?
Isn't that all the engineer is trying to
build
in his cubicle, his lab: "with this
widget,
someone (maybe even myself)
will love me just a little bit more"
Surely this agape is what the teacher seeks,
the true grade for the obedient student,
(even for the disobedient student,
clowning for his peers).
And you, reader, dear other,
UFO somewhere outside of my isolation,
aren't you after that warmth of another's
presence?
Aren't you here now in search of it?
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2. EXCELLENCE (FOR GK)
The sweet peals and perfect tones
of Wolfgang Bauer playing Hertel
are so perfect, so angelic,
that I would have to be tone-deaf
to think that my 15-year-old,
who only practices a half hour a day
would ever be able to play like that.
Or that I, lumbering buffoon,
could ever play with the clear fluidity
of Gene Watts, founding trombonist
of the Canadian brass.
Not unlike Sean Hannity,
hammy hero for the hoi polloi
comparing himself to real journalists.
Listen to Winford Marsalis play
Flight Of The Bumblebee
Or in his brother Delfeayo's performance of
"What a Wonderful World."
There is a subtlety of tone,
a cleanness of pitch,
a carefulness of attack.
What joy in the intelligence of spirit
forged in years of dedication
by the best craftsmen, the elites!
Allow yourself the warm
lyricism of his improvisations!
You may obtain an intellectual rapture
but only if you skip the cable cabal crap
for the seasoned, reasoned words
of Shields and Brooks.
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3. THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN
After he turned 18, the eldest offspring
asked to meet.
He set a time and place, and said
what he'd be wearing.
Fortuitous, because he didn't look at all
like what one might expect.
One side-effect of reproduction
is discovering some new familiar trait.
He favored his mother's side.
Though, for all that, roughly the same color,
as all whose ancestors had left Ethiopia
for Europe in roughly the same millennia;
one could not say that any connection was
any more evident than that.
And as he stood looking, wondering
if each passing man were his father
scrutinizing each older visage,
catching an echo of his own cheeks here,
his half-brother's crooked smile there,
the brotherhood of man pulled strong;
for even black and Asian men
could have been kin
And from some distant enough perspective,
really, they are.
-----------------
4. MOON
A fingernail moon hangs in the night sky
a solitary brightness
among the urban light-drowned darkness
shining bravely on, little beacon to us
my middle son would point it out,
as a toddler,
would marvel at it
who knows what he thought of it
who knows what ideas form in young minds like that
now, of course, he is 14
and much too cool to look up at the moon
Though not as cool as his friends,
who tease him about marching band,
who didn't go into eighth grade geometry
and for whose sake we may not drive him to school.
And I know how he feels,
solitary beacon of brightness
among a sea of dampened lights
a firmament of mediocrity
trying to be brave
but so alone.
-----------------
5. DAWN
Tuesday morning at 6 AM
the sun has not yet crested the eastern mountains
and there is still a faint chill in the air,
Thule fog, the sky an indeterminant grey
though a few songbirds are already out
I think about my parents-
Mom 86, Dad 91,
who will not be much longer in this world-
inevitable, and yet so hard to imagine,
for I've had them my entire life,
and, though Dad no longer remembers
anything of the previous 20 years
and Mom has trouble walking,
I only know them as the pillars they once were.
We're very lucky we have had them both
so long, they have gotten to know
all three of my children,
though they see little of them.
For good or ill, what memories
they leave behind will be
very different for my boys than me.
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6. DAN KIRKWOOD
Last night I had that dream
that I was back in the Berkeley jazz band
with a man named Dan Kirkwood.
An aimiable fellow, though he and I
haven't seen each other
since the lacerations and scarring over of puberty.
Dan told me his dad had died
and I put my arm around his shoulder
because it seemed like the right thing to do
though Dan didn't seem that down.
Maybe he had been expecting the death?
Still, he seemed to appreciate the gesture.
Dan was a kid I knew in junior high.
We played trombone together,
never particularly close
which may have been what he stood for
in my dream: someone I don't know all that well
whose Dad may be gone (or going).
Someone who went to Berkeley
and played trombone in middle school
and who needs an arm around his shoulder
because he lost his dad.
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7. CAMPUS
On an overcast morning, a chill in the air,
I walk through the campus of Santa Clara U
the first of June, and the students are gone,
the few staff and faculty look a bit dazed
Then all other times I've been on campus
come rushing back like the fog on a breeze
ghosts of ambition that date from my childhood:
The visit to my brother when I was thirteen
And later in high school, i was accepted
a calculus class in that venerable place
Adobe-style buildings, wisteria walkways
surrounding the mission the Franciscans built
I drove there from high school each day after lunch
and for one short year could pretend to afford it
and tried to fit in with the sons of the Brahmans
but without their Izods, Top
Siders, and Ray Bans.
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