Wild Heart

I have lived my summers
stalking the wild country.
Searching the high lodgings

of the wild ones,
finding the odd
arrowhead

and clay shard
that echo
the days

of warriors
and the freedom
of the alpine hunt.

What pledges could
I offer the wild ones
who were here before me.

My passing stirs
the rusty scree
of their bones

sifting under
my booted
feet

hastening,
blending
easily

on the slanting
mountain trail as
the hasty autumn wind

caring not for
the now and what of
yesterday's consequences

push me homeward.

I worry the snowy wood
seeking them, there high
among the cold jagged peaks,

I see those bold folk of the wilderness.

The wild ones
who have come to brave me,
for I am their only neighbor

and a man of this land.

Proud and invincible
they come not a
stone throw

from my strongly
terraced yard
colored with

the red posy
and the unruly
brown highland grass

that hold my
broken unpainted
lawn chairs captive.

Do not fuss me now,
Let me hold vigil
as the spring

rains course down
the mountain to
the salty seas.

We have worn the seasons
together and have discarded
the easy protocols of life down below.

Only my curious heart remains.
For their bones have left
no censure on me or mine.

Among the noble swirl
of the glacial spring boil.
I have come to understand,

more then the generosity
of my loving caress can revel.
For now I have the peacefulness

to speak softly,
celebrate what has
been and will be again.

For I hold
the wild ones
safe in my heart.

saturday afternoon matinee

we stand together my little bro and i,
on our mom's cheerful porch waiting.
fussing our new dust brushed shoes.

i hold his hand, feeling the little guy's
dashing pulse as it sums the measured
cadence of the well-behaved wait.

saturday here at last,
we've been good all along.
the matinee starts at 1:45.

we are veiled in fantasy,
pop-corn, mars bars and
john wayne's red river.

his round face eyes frame an
easy smile that springs from the
large jesting flowers on his shirt

that tightly gather
into his short baggy pants
investigating his bony knees.

it's 2 o'clock,
it early yet,
he'll come.

the cold measured cadence
the bowsprit of our future.
the restrained man he will be

slumbers,
unacquainted
with the other

cataclysms that
wait for
him.

Old Brown Car

I live apart.
Doing all right for now,
still a tenant at the old place.

I drink alone,
sitting on my porch stoop.
Quietly sifting through the day.

Just sipping a few cold beers.
Passing the time reading stories,
waiting, listening for the winds of dusk

as the light fades to black.

I drive my old brown car selling door to door.
Smiling and talking that sweet sales talk...
Passing through living rooms and kitchens.

Glimpses of what my life used to be.
It all there happening to other people
at different times and in different rooms.

I feel the airs touching my face,
some times I think it is your cool hand.
But, no it is only God urging the cool breeze on.

Later, I marvel at the black heavens,
star spiked,
above me.

^

Biography

I am from Laredo, Texas. Went to Catholic and public schools as a child. Did my first good poem in the fifth grade. The good nun asked me where I had copied the work from. In my third year of high school I was asked to leave, permanently the second time. Some thing about rude remarks to my one arm typing teacher. Some years later I came back as a temporary teacher. At seventeen I left home to see the world as best I could. I did a tour in the USN as a Hospital Corpsman during the start up of the Viet Nam war. I barely missed out on that one. Good planning. Got out went to school, did Political Science and History, got married and unmarried. Had some (now grown) babies, took a short cut to Law school. Didn't like that, left. I am now an aerospace worker and love to watch the de planes, de planes come and go from my office window. I write most days, plays and poems, I read a lot and I am teaching myself Italian from of one of those cassette things.