Though they cover my eyes with the fold, spin me around, and drop me where up is down and here is there, I still find my way back home Michael 2022
Tag Archive: principles
You who mess with my mind, there in gray, leave my archetypes alone, those are inviolate cc: Chagall 2022
Please know that I will always click through
to your original post and will not feign having read it.
Thank you to those who do the same. I consider these folks
to be true readers. I don’t see how you can like a reblog
if you haven’t yet read the remaining half of the post that lies
there beyond the link that says “View Original Post – 300 more words.”
Thoughts?
© Chagall ∞
Morning atop a large rock, a stone lily pad
in the middle of the stream a team-span wide
while cold waters lap at the edges, one can ride dry
at the high round rump. I’m here in perfectly old,
tattered blue-wool pullover weighted right against the vigor
of this new day; how wonderful so much morning remains
to while away.
Dense clusters of small gnatty flyers dance in ancient patterns
in the rays of early sun, radiant light, pervasive heat
waves in mirage, they flutter there bursting from vernal pools.
Rainbows used to dance here, leave small wakes, glide on eddies,
do backstrokes, with no one watching; masterful puppeteer of lightweight test,
set dry flies still, perfectly still, with but the slightest tremor, concentric break of the surface, from the rainbow’s vantage, just enough to stir curiosity,
a sniff, a poke, enough to spring the snap.
Nothing sadder than a rainbow in mid-air, regretting prior impulse,
the change is sudden, inevitable, decisive.
Snow on Battenkill falls in crunches, bunches in feet to yards
high, the wisteria that bough low to the banks, shaggy warm under cold,
lilac tongues out panting, with winter body heat home to dead butterfly larvae;
dome holds the sound in, the sound out; you can walk anywhere,
the terrain is level, white and wet.
Though not witnessed by anyone or anything, I left footprints in November
in the carry along the north rise, that held their shape and depth,
through March.
I look forward to final frost, to clear and distinct birthing,
of all that is, there ever was; the future is merely supposition,
isn’t it? The ice, the same as the dew.
I would rather choke on the freezing waters filled with silt from the moving
running bottom, than trapped in the upper layers locked frozen in time.
Chagall 2016
Please see here for the original Battenkill
Awash in a a wail of church bells slurring blue
hog call whistle stops blowing the rattle
of rails amid home-bound ruckus
these trains keep on chugging chugging
across the country so wide and so green and so lovely
once free how I need to be free once more till
the end of all time I’ll be free despite all
who are crazy to believe they’ll curtail
me be free without fight flight or fancy
I will die for the same lands my daddy died for
on the sands at the foot of some mountain
Chagall 2015
My meaning shifts along side those
whom I am juxtaposed.
© Chagall 2015
My father dropped lines for a living,
distinguished foul from fair,
white chalk on the greenest of grass,
bounded baseball diamonds, tapered
to a fine point at home, tracing
divergent infinities, right and left field,
I’d join him Saturday mornings, in chilly spring
in early mist, before mid-day suns
would warm and laughter ring,
the pop of ball on leather mitts
rising above the hurrah, higher than towering
flies in golden sky that shine no more
except in the glimmer of my mind’s eye.
© Chagall 2014
Alphabet City 