retriever

Going about your work
in the clothes God gave you,
stepping gingerly from
paw to paw, nose to the
air, you’re surprised only
by the size of it all.

A pheasant starts. Grass parts
where deer lay curled in the
lap of the world last night,
and here’s their trail still fresh
to the waterside where
you pause — you’ve trained for this
— wade foot–deep, take a drink,
leap out again. But what
to bring back from this day?

Decision made, you lead
your heart along with you
and leave it at our feet.

the past

at the Acropolis Museum

As the tip of Neptune’s fishing fork
or sparks off Zeus’s lightning sent,
we surge toward the only marbles that
we know or care enough to battle for:

past reclining blue–beards, past the wide–
lipped smiles of kouroi shrugging off the dust
of years spent standing still beside a bust
of — Aphrodite, probably, they’ve tried

on every head to hand and yet to find
a match — and on up to the main event:
past Centaurs, Giants, Amazons all bent
to Athens’ feared civility, behind

the low plinth bearing plaster casts of what
with classic Attic dignity the sign
insists will rightfully return in time,
Athena sprung from Zeus full–formed, the cuts

of Phidias’s chisel close enough
to touch: and to the balcony, the wind,
the night as warm as the nearby sea, and lit
from everywhere, the Parthenon above.

hercules

I.
How a wondrous foot
arches as he reaches
to catch a frisbee
glancing off streetlight

and bare settles back
into the grass how
his friend arches and

catches the sun in
their game of rain
and chance how he
steps into my path

and catches my glance

II.
We couldn’t imagine
where you found the time to
work out but there you were
doing all the heavy
lifting caring about
everything O so much

III.
Your tank top folds between your shoulders as
you lift my eyes again, again, again

As red as concentration, thin enough
to part from skin with one imagined touch

brier report

Evening silflay. Wind still howling sir
On the drifts but keeping clean as clean
Can be kept. What ice & matted fur
Form the least of worries: morale deep
Down consists in forward motion. Leap

To ’t! is our motto on the ridge.
Scouts report but little movement hide
Whisker twitch or tail of them by which
The enemy would be seen. Our pride
Stands in vigilance regardless. Try

As they might to make advantage of
Dark & snow to cross the field tonight
Time wd come when they wd have to shove
Past us sir: a task that they would find
Difficult to say the least. Your mind

May in confidence return as ours
Do in huddled moments underneath
Shallow makeshift burrows to warm hours
Passed in crowded company & think
Only of the warren — home — the deep

Sheltered place of which your welcome word
Reaches the department of the West.
signed captain j.j. abergine iii,
16th border company. p.s.
To you & yr family all my best

solstice blessing

Here’s to the depths of winter; here’s
to the dark of night! Cold may the north
wind blow, long the snow may fall,
and here we sit as ancient kings
as emperors and czars of old
once sat: all lonely just like us,
all longing for a better home
and longing for the year to turn.

Elsewhere or next door the noise
of worse intentions than our own
catches on a blizzard’s edge;
rising but to settle down
again, first we drink the health
and wealth of everyone we know.

obsessed

A muse came down Parnassus mount,
bent close, and whispered in my ear
that up and down Parnassus street
I was the talk of town.

One observation Yes? you’ve got
to lighten up: you are obsessed
with rhyme and meter. Muse! I said,
obsesséd? Iamb not!