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Preface
1
Cats, supine, must dream a lot.
Dogs and humans do.
Scoshee dream ran over hills
Tethered to her leash.
Mental waif, unhooked, her joy
A speed of purpose knew
As she circled me, ascending
Up the forest path.
Comet
1
Meadowlarks reanimate
The sage and pinon hills.
Singular as comets are
A universe reveals
That the known can never be
Only that before.
Intrusions invigorate
And what was known is more.
2
Any layman can admit
A comet into view.
It takes keen observers
To first see jets renew
From old hibernation
In an Oort Cloud
And careen through planet orbits
By a sun's abode.
This one nearing Jupiter,
Already fanned aflame,
In the languages of current men
Receives a name.
3
Name a bunch of comets
For who sees them first.
The eyes of men are on them
As they groove around the sun.
Eventually a solar surgery
Of heat will burst
Their forms in melting raiments into nothing
As light's done.
4
Get a comet close enough
And all will fathom light
As a cause approaching heat,
Justifying fright.
Near enough should beauty be
To contemplate, and yet
Far enough away to entertain
And then forget.
We will gladly let
four millenia intervene
After this one fans a star
And leaves the local scene.
5
Our iron core is faster than
The mantle; gyres spin.
Luckily alive, we learn
About the origin
Of planetary space, why we
can mentally consist
Of elemental matter with
A choice to save or waste
The forms of life around us,
Their common destiny
That is uncommercial, designated
As "for free."
6
Fragile disposition
Of lights within the sky,
Comets punctuate their veering
Orbit by the sun.
Ellipses foreshorten
As an end is nigh.
There they flame the brightest,
Fragmentarily foregone.
7
Call a comet colored and
Put it through the sky.
Two moons wax and wane
Before all of it goes by.
A cosmos of coicidence
guides it to surcease
When the final rendezvous with sun
Frames light's release.
8
Comet nuclei may seem
The eyes of inner space
As they jet their gases
Going by, before they fade
Into outer orbits that are shut
So won't efface
The remnants of ices mixed
With boulders that are made
to burn again, erode at last,
Fragment into gleams,
Shatter distant glimmers,
Shake loose dust upon starbeams.
9
Age just makes you brighter
Each circuit by the sun -
Worn by steady friction, ice
Gassing jets in space.
We don't need a tour guide
To witness this one.
You elapse sequential sets of pictures
For the race
That stares out from an orbit
Safe upon a stone
Heavier than visitants
Disposed to shear a gown.
10
Comets floresce before the sun,
A quiet process never done
Without a loss of mass, and then
Demise before an orb of men.
Inner-recess where warmth has made
Life's process reality -
Comets brighten as they fade,
Cast largest at their perigree,
And then remove to outer space
An unseen Oort Cloud away,
To other lifetimes light a trace
for cosmic conscious tribes to see.
At last, implosion by a star
will usurp the chevron glow,
but myriad space ices store,
Waiting for their solar show.
11
Humans age from gray to white
But comets disappear,
Having each pass added light
As we feel palsy near.
Immolation is as natural as
Brittle turn bone
(Having lived a little while
On an Earth we've known).
Mineral assemblages, but add
The sparkle, life;
House the mind within the skull
And make language its brief.
12
A bout of time with comet
We share with Babylon.
They must have seen the same
Illuminary in a gown
Sweep on over, leave a trace
Of wonder and relief:
Apotheosis given vent,
Less matter than belief.
13
Solid as a comet come
We saw the light go by.
Comas are invisible but tails
cast the eye
Across a sweep of deeper space
Wherein the quasars dim
Amplify dimensions of a life
We only skim.
14
Somewhat as moonlight, a small blur,
A comet leaving sun,
Has left a new legacy
Upon an ancient one.
Now we see the sky can be
A vault of changing light,
A coma glowing double tails
for numbers of one night.
Consuelo
1
Astronauts may sit and ride
A rocket into space
But it takes more gumption
To orbit Encino Place.
My mother's easy chai is just
Above the common floor
But her principles now guide
That populace to care
For love baked in common breads
And virtue minus rings.
Elevators passing hear the
Lullabies she sings.
Signals are not sent by codes
A ball of metal beams.
For a life replete she hums
Her arias by friends.
2
She cannot court a comet
Or even see it by,
Hobbled by arthritis and
A loosening of eye.
Besides, her side of building
Faces to the south;
No balcony for her to view
Illuminary truth
That ices spend upon the sky
And orbits glow in space,
A golden comet coming nigh,
More time upon her face.
3
Your crown is not apparent -
Subliminal, in hair
Silver white and clean,
You hobble, unaware
That strangers note your passing:
A little girl once called
And ran and gave you flowers.
Now your walks are stalled.
An arthritic shoulder blade
Gives you one chance more
To subdue discomfort while
Emitting love in air.
4
The timbre of your voice, so constant:
Anytime I call
Melody inheres in words
No matter what you say.
I know you never castigate,
Carp, slight, or demean;
Laughter and forgetfulness
Encore remembered dream.
A quest to keep the family whole,
Stay modest, unadorned,
Make homes clean, eventually
Leaves the body worn.
5
Dough escorted through a change
Becomes a glob made sweet.
Formulate a recipe and
Justify with heat.
Evidence of inner life,
A platter left with crumbs.
"Here comes Connie's cookies!"
The Encino host succumbs.
6
Ferdinand smelled flowers,
Too bullish to resist
Passion for the blossoms
That topped the grass he ate.
Consuelo overpowers
With cookies made for free
And serves, waitressless,
Warm mounded on a plate.
7
For Easter they returned the plate
With resultant crumbs.
The coffee people downstairs ate
All the cookies served.
Those enjoy, who sit and wait.
The energy that comes
From a sense of purpose sates
On formulaic sums.
8
When I could not pay my way
You paid it for me.
Now you help Alfredo extricate
From jail, free
To follow your initiative
And care for every life.
Many more than children
Have sensed, serene and safe,
A satisfaction near you
Maturing into joy,
Your energy - immaculate, clear -
Beside me since a boy.
9
The accoutrements of movement
- a walker, a cane -
Now indispensable, were once
Irrelevant as brace.
Memories become recurrent,
Forgetfulness between.
Joy's, moreover, omnipresent,
A moving release
Of tunes hummed in the kitchen
And smiles to the few
Who age upon the fifth floor and
By glass a city view.
10
The lights make life look magic
Arranged from up above.
A fifth floor window frames the scene,
A mother's heightened love.
The man she married did not last
The vows that made the ring.
She singly raised the family then.
Awakened now, she'll sing
As she cleans the bathroom
And keeps an inner space
Clutter free, arranged within
Her habitude of peace.
11
Great grandmother to be,
Generational the flow,
Time the largest river in which
Worlds, too, will go.
Hobble on your walker
And recount the memory
When you alley-ambled miles
And ran to be free
Of the grade school bully.
Bones decant of strength,
Life a single unit's still
Abbreviating length.
Each of us a story
In the borrowed blood of race,
A choice of spoken language
On a planet's moving place.
Afterword
The dog wags dreams away in air,
The cat is out and in.
The heater keeps on starting up.
A comet veers, as thin
As light can cast a veil
Toward an eastern dawn
Where rounds in orbit by a moon
The planet that we're on.