For The Phoenix (You Know Who You Are)

                              

                                                    

As I look out

over the tidal salt marshes

that separate the rocky beaches of southern Maine

and the frigid Atlantic

from the old New England

fishing village of Wells

and the farming towns beyond

I can barely discern

the familiar cry of the catbird

desperately calling my name

amidst the cacophony of frenetic

morning bird bitching

or celebratory avian accolade

even the pensive owl

mostly mute

proffered once his perennial question

prompting a brief moment of tensile

if not hysterical

silence

before the unanimous response

rose out of the beaks of the masses

from the reeds and rushes of the salty swampland

from the birches and briars the fog bank 

and invisible whorls of sea smoke beyond

from the growing mud flats where the stoic crane

is usually standing stiff and silent

to the wuthering heights where raptors circle

slowly and methodically 

They shouted the answer

again and again

some yelling as angrily as fowl can

others frustrated or tired of telling him

many sympathetically

closer to him and aware

of the sadness and deep sorrow

of a perpetual philosophical quagmire

from which he will never be extracted

But only one was silent

only one

uttered no sound at all

not on this particular morning

or any morning

for thousands of mornings before

quietly listening in her subterranean grotto

to the ridiculous pandemonium overhead

biting her tongue

waiting

counting eons in the dark preparing

for her eventual and final ascent

the Phoenix opened her eyes

the Phoenix listened

to her name as it was shouted

in the crowded

tidal salt marshes above.

   So, as I was working on this poem, listening to the myriad of birds shouting and bellowing in the cool Maine morning of the salt marsh, I kept thinking of this wonderful painting I had seen last Fall. My memory is questionable at times, but I'm pretty sure it was a Dahlov Ipcar painting and I am almost certain it hangs on the wall of the Rockport Public Library--one of the best little libraries I have ever seen--and the piece shows a whole multicolored array of fantastic feathered flying wonderbirds. It's called something like "Bird Festival" or "Bird Party in the Morning" or something along those lines. I was totally taken by the thing and have thought about it many times since. Particularly the morning I wrote the lines above. For those of you who aren't familiar with the Maine artist and children's book author, Dahlov Ipcar, I encourage you to look into her body of work.

Radon "Radon"

http://youtu.be/rCH8hLcv7u8

From the "Snowmen in Various Stages of Decomposition" Collection

I had been kicking around this idea for a few years and had taken a couple of shots that I really liked, when a photographer friend of mine showed me his new David Lynch Book. It was called something like, "Melting Snowmen". I couldn't believe it. Now David Lynch was ripping me off, too. At first, I thought I would give up the whole snowman thing altogether, but I keep seeing all these great deteriorating snowmen and I can't help it and, oh to hell with it. I was doing it first.

"Until We Are Victorious!"

 

Wayfarer

Bad Hair

Sometimes I wake up at night
and my hair is gone
and I think
it is out there getting into trouble
getting into another fight
and sometimes in the morning
my hair is covered with mysterious cuts and bruises
I say “where have you been”
and my hair says,  “piss off.
you don’t own me”
It is completely uncontrollable
and likes to roam the neighborhood at night
with short lengths of lead pipe
smoking cigarettes
It swears a lot
and when I walk down the street
other people’s hair
gets very quiet
They don’t say a word
when my hair comes around.

Anthropoleukophobia

Fear of white people.