A Word Salad for America: post-July 4th

"It does not seem to me ignominious to be a poet, if nature has made one a poet unexpectedly" ( George Santayana)
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Shoulders back, with toes entrenched

  in tidal sands,

the One  rich in shoyu & desert trains--

  America , who is

ever two-lunged patriot and lovable

  oil-pot;

a lucid dead heat to Houston , after

  another storm,

or the grin of the irrepressible kid

  or

the hilarity, the gun or what they call

  the 'hereafter'—

 

 

America , anagram of all these, combined

  with a 'love of Thee'--

 to you, irrepressible One, that can't

  face absences alone,

 then, I give the palm and my dear

  dear heart:

and all at once because I've witched & read

  you to death, 

keeping only the best and then because

  you're number One;
 

or, again, because first in the process

  of cute fervid shucks

you've helped me to slice the choicest side

  and by helping

pulverized me in kindness, done almost

  to death,

and then left me to write alone, alone

  to write 

about storms, guns or whatever you

  call Angels & Saints
 

because after I stormed your poets I kept only

  the best

Thank you, Eugenie!

Eugenie Bouchard

Linda Evangelista

Bella Linda...for ever.

"Well, imagine that"

 

a lone fat snail, still in his grandad's boots, & with a twitch in both his horns
  had been going a mile a minute, pawing away
   at his neighbour's post,

 

greasing his ears with lies, two trusty ears that'd heard the lies before—    
  this snail who'd never leave without a trace,
   a sole proprietary trace

 

Ah! snail's life can be a bad one, at one moment flattening a verandah board,
  a shadow squeezed out from under his hot gut,
   & the next harassed

 

by the pernickety cat after all, after all whose shadow's greater than his gut
  But he thinks it would be great
    —the snail thinks!—

 

to lie flat on a cherry plank or slink along the grain towards a friendly ear of
  his mistress watering the azaleas
    & neighbour who digs alone

 

in his straw hat, behind the fence, content to hear more of his easy streets
  til the rooks, flustered and tail bristling,
    mistake him for a worm,

 

the hump-backed worm, and peck like mad at one then both of his silvery horns,
  snail rapt lifeless to the top of a tree,
   bitten in half

 

(a horn in one claw & another dripping from a beak,still twitching as he rose)
  hardly to be seen in a shadowless sky,
    greasy yelps unheard

 

 

A Face to a Name (5): "Alfred North Whitehead"

"Each creative act is the universe incarnating itself as one, and there is nothing above it by way of final condition." (Alfred North Whitehead)

Some reflections on Whitehead's remarkable insights into the nature of "creative advance", and its application to the poem.
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See,

"each creative act" is  some--and let's say strictly unneutral-- matter of fact,
which is never in the same place twice,

god-oriented at its best (yes, of course) with enjoyment galore
  reserved for those with an eye for concrescent moons,
                                                                                                  
  whose function, at the base of their growing, is to feed on some matter of love,
    at least thrice-halved below,

   the urge towards fullness, i.e., moon's and ours, remaining the same, at the very least,
                   and amounting to love,
                                                                                                                              
     the poet then, i.e., taking hold and seizing it (but never in the same place twice),
         unbounded by the cradling thumbs,

     the poem more gladly appetitive than speculative, in any event
         (a nexus of ants and their endearing fora)

          a sanctity of self rather than dirty remarriage,
                 to be enjoyed more than done 

"Track and field" (or some minimalist surges)

As another Track & Field season ends I reflect back on things that always distract me from my officiating duties (like neighbouring forests, birds & escarpments)
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In adjacent fields (to tantalize me!)  trails bronzing under an exposed breast of sky

A squalling light-tipped tree with chicks in its teeth--
                                                 no disc anywhere to match it for spin
                                             —
Mostly unseen in the forest, look, and lush still even when the winds pick up--
                                                 nests hanging like ribbons

At the fence, the bee's sadly unseeded who's both inside (here with me) and out there,
 ready to die sunless--
    the poor unobservable

For all it coveted was glory by the high jump bed, here with me--poor unobservable bee
  
My head up, reverentially, with both eyes hatched over in the insidious glare--
     at 50 meters geese bend like ripcord!

And just like light, wind & a leaf tossing over evenly (stem subject to resistance!)--
     dragonflies in the water pit

And down some escarpment (excluding the odd hatchling nosed out) is the mole's last jump,
    among millennia of gore

 

"Felicissima"

(for Mocha)

Always dear but curving close to the door,
  cats like this can peel the
    light off a star--

 

slip it slyly under an eye, & still sleep

  Calico cat dreams and moves
     outdoors, 

ears smartly smoothed flat to the head,
  mouth the usual moist pastiche
    of lips & razors

 

If she appears to be a bit too august now,
  after a splendid backyard shunt,
   and sits purring,

 

million to one she's got the dismembered
  jowls, tails to prove it,
    the grip relaxed--  

     

 freeing by degrees the bloody jay beneath
                                                  

  A sated cat's a very odd thing, indeed    

    & lies in odd places:

 on vents, in closets, over tawny pillows
  And even as she lifts herself up
     from my lap,

 

it's to peer stonily in direction of the door--
  sleepy, wild, free & every bit the

            equal of me

    who am just too big to eat