Punctuation

Is it true that some poets
prefer free verse because it negates
the constraints of punctuation,
or is it simply preferred
by the punctuation challenged?

Three periods in a row, AKA the ellipsis,
is my personal favorite.
I cheerfully admit to not only overuse,
but to improper use as well;
whereas I use it to denote a hanging thought,
properly, it indicates
the omission of material in a quote…

And let us address exclamation points!
F. Scott Fitzgerald said
that the use thereof was like
laughing at your own joke:
What then are we to make of those
who employ several in the same sentence!!!
Death by spear point is the only fit end.

Semi-colons are meant, of course,
to separate independent clauses
in compound sentences, however I question
whether most users know
what either the former or latter are...

Colons shall only be employed
between an independent clause and a list;
blah, blah, blah
etc, etc…

And dashes, what is to made of them?
In days of old, when knights were bold,
no spaces around them existed - But now,
they do, and either way, cutting a strong interruption
from the rest of a sentence is their only civil use.

Ah, last but not least, commas were born
to separate the elements of a series;
as such, would blah, blah, blah be allowable?
Probably not, says the Panda, who eats, shoots, and leaves…

A Good Walk Spoiled

To some it is lunacy,
whacking a tiny ball with a club,
ruining a perfectly good lawn.

To others it is religion
the high cathedrals in Scotland
the auld course at St. Andrews,
Carnoustie, Royal Troon, Prestwick.

I am Eben Monroe Atwater
of the Clan Munro
and this game is in my blood.
At five years of age I began,
with cut down clubs fashioned by my pop.

On a New England course built
over glacial moraines I learned the game.
To this day, I can hear my pop saying
“Keep your head down kid, you’re jumping all over it.”

I learned that “Aim for the brook” does not
necessarily involve actually
hitting the ball into the stream:
Drive for show, putt for dough.
Sandies, polies, and short putts
left in the leather.

Later in life, it was our chance to catch up,
with a flask of scotch, cigars
and trash talking thrown in for good measure.

Mom told me that dad always came back happy
from playing, telling her about the flowers
he had seen along the holes.

Pop is gone, so now it is chess on grass,
just me against the course
a bright Texas morning with a good friend.
Of course when I hit a truly good or bad shot
I glance skyward and smile.

Serendipity

In my cop days, on a Sunday evening, my bride
came down with a case of gotta haves for ice cream
so off we go to the tiny local market
at the north end of the lake.
We enter and no one else is there until
a scruffy young man arrives out front on a bicycle.

My sixth sense goes off, catching me off guard
as he enters; my wife sidles up and whispers
“Do you know that guy, ‘cause he sure is staring at you.”
Indeed, in the reflection of the ice cream freezer I feel
his eyes boring into my back.
I fish a couple pints out of cold slumber.

Walking to the till, he approaches,
cop sense tells me ‘interested, but not dangerous,’
so now I am curious. He says,
“Your name’s Atwater, you’re a cop.”
I say, “Yup, to both, who the fuck are you?”

Crooked smile, eyes crinkling he says,
“You don’t remember me do you?”
“No,” I agree, “But I should, shouldn’t I?”
“Probably” he nods, “Key Bank, on Lakeway, back in ’90?”
On goes the light and I step back, grinning,
“Okay, you’re the guy I caught, did the holdup with a hand grenade.”
“That’s me” he agrees, looking sheepish, “Just got out last week.”

“I’ll be damned,” I say, looking into his skull
past his eyes, “How are you doing?”
“Oh, I’m getting by” he offers, “Day to day you know…”
“I do,” I say, “I sure do. And I live around here, so…”

“Oh, don’t worry,” he smiles “That shit is long behind me.”
“Good,” I agree “And listen, take care of yourself, OK?”
“I will,” he nods, “Like I said,
that crazy shit is long behind me.”

Back When I Had Hair

Back When I Had Hair

In the valley east of Spokane, on what was once
the main drag, a gangly strand of aging strip malls
and burned out hotels, one place stands out.

A life size sasquatch at roadside,
the red, white and blue concrete block building
the hand scrawled signs stating opinions on
politics and the state of the nation.
Look closely and you’ll see that this is a barber shop.

My style at the time was a number one guard
with an electric razor which, kinda like eggs,
is fairly hard to screw up, so I stopped.

Inside were bloated vinyl chairs,
ragged Playboy magazines,
combs in glass jars of mysterious blue liquid,
one proprietor and a one eyed orange tabby
with a place of his own in the corner.

I sat in the circa fifties astro chair
and ordered up my number one.
Like all good barbers he was a producer of stories
by virtue of the questions he asked.
From head to eye brows, moustache
to sideburns, he moved with an efficiency
from many years of practice.

I went back again and found him
funny, smart, and congenial.
At the time, I wrote op/ed pieces for the
local paper, so I wrote one on him.

A couple days later, I received an anonymous
letter from a woman who berated me for making
“That man look like a good guy.” After all, she noted,
he was a bank robber and a convicted felon.
He was in fact, “One of the Gentleman Bandits”
from California in the nineteen sixties; so shame on me.

During my next cut I remembered this and
mentioned it, my tone light and joking
as I though it should be.
My barber was silent for a long moment.
“Actually,” he finally said, “They called us The
Polite Bandits. Our guns were never loaded.”

He and a partner had conducted a half dozen
bank robberies in central California,
always well dressed, unfailingly polite,
never threatening or angry. The seventh attempt
went bad and the local police were waiting outside.

He served five of a twelve year sentence
with time off for good behavior.
Then, he moved north, and had been cutting hair ever since.

He spoke his piece about the government and his country,
without a care in the world.

Felix The Cat

Feed and Seed basks in the heat of summer
hay bales and barbeques outside
inside the smell of fertilizer cool in
the dim light of a sixties era strip mall.

Genuinely there for seed and feed, we divert,
because no trip is complete without cruising the critter section.
Past the ferrets and bunnies and the wall o’ pooches
stands a plexiglass tube four feet around
and six feet high, chock full o’ kittens.

Most of the citizens of this feline condo are perfect
So Cal examples of kittiness; tiny, ridiculously fluffy,
huge green eyes, like pictures of waifs
on the back cover of Readers Digest.
Tan and brown and white, they mew demurely and
bat their long kitty lashes at passersby.
Their magic is strong, they slay the adoring crowd
and fly out the door at forty five bucks a pop.

In the penthouse level of the condo lies a black and white form
easily four times the size of his comrades. Ungainly,
the antithesis of cute, when he sees Monica approach
he rises like an over the hill circus clown,
takes a surreptitious hit from his kitty hip flask
and prepares for one more go.

He locks eyes with her and she is done; he had her at hello.
He stretches gangly front paws towards her, ducks his head
and does the secret kitty dance of the many veils; she is smitten.
He poses, twists and fawns, his eyes never leaving hers,
look into my eyes pretty lady, for you are taking me hooooome.

“That one?” says the clerk with a tone bordering on
a sneer, “Really? You can have him for ten bucks”
and we do and before the trip home is half over
he is named Felix for obvious reasons.

Any owner of cats knows the jokes;
you are a can opener with legs,
dogs have owners, cats have staff…
Feline arrogance has earned this label
and no cat worth its fur will deny it.

But this was no ordinary cat.
With a new lease on life he grew fat and sassy
but never took it for granted.
If you were human and entered the living room,
no matter your standing in the pack,
his head rose from his favorite spot
under the coffee table and he locked eyes with you,
and in his best telepathic voice, said “Thank You.”

This he did for all of his days.

Bonding

In the morning I take our tiny dog out
to the backyard, with a cup of coffee.
I sit in river rock as he plays;
legs splayed out, I am his touchstone.
His explorations radiate out from me
in ever widening loops of investigation.

Meanwhile I admire the rocks
thinking back to college geology classes.
Mostly sedimentary and metamorphic
I hold in my hand a tiny vignette;
silts deposited in some ancient river, lake or sea.
The next one has tiny fossils, confirming the thought.

Meanwhile Bandit growls and tugs at
a Pampas grass many times his height
then an instant later, focuses on tiny sugar ants
weaving a cryptic path across the patio.
Anything and everything that he can bite or
chew is fair game; sticks tremble before him.

I sit in a multitude of colors like a paint display
at the hardware store, shades of browns, reds,
whites and pale yellows, occasional jet black and,
surprisingly, soft edged sea glass in bottle green,
morning sky blue, and rarer yet, orange and red.

Bandit returns to base camp, looks up at me
eyes as black as rock, then settles between my legs,
safe for a rest and perhaps a nap.
We both look out, content at our surroundings
and wonder where it all came from.

Memorial Day 2009

My parents were the last generation
of my family to go to war.
As a cop I experienced combat and death
and this is where I learned
what it feels like to lose friends
in the line of duty.
This is nothing compared to war.

Perhaps you have a touchstone for this day or
as it has become for many
Memorial Day is just a three day weekend.

In this morning’s paper, there was a photo
of a young mom with her two small children,
planting flags and flowers in a cemetery.
The caption said she knew no one resting there.

When she was a little girl, her family took this day
as a time to honor those lost to war.
She wanted to teach this custom and hope
it would be remembered and passed on.

Amputation

Apotemnophilia sounds terribly serious
and the word is in fact quite twisted.
One might think it means great love for a pharaoh
but the reality is far more pernicious.

It’s a word quite crude, twisted and strange
which is why I hesitate to state it;
it means that for sexual gratification
you wish your limbs amputated.

Now that is the case if it applies to you
there’s another if the subject’s your sweetie
if it’s them you want severed then what you got
is a case of acrotomophilia.

Memorial Day, Price, Utah

Down 191, between the Castle Gate and
Willow Creek Mines, passing
endless ore cars, air thick with
the sweet reek of coal, we are southbound
into the heart of castle country.

Crenellated high ground gives way
to broad valley, alluvial fans in tan and brown
like the delta of some great lost river
offering the gift of soil.

It is Monday and everything is closed.
Our car, alien Washington State plates,
the only one moving, our hopes for breakfast fade.
But Kokopeli’s Diner is open and friendly;
we ask, over omelets and pancakes
where everyone is. The waitress smiles
“It’s Memorial Day;” telling us all we need to know.

We tour the town through quiet streets
heading northeast where the map shows city parks,
and on E 400 Street we find the people.

The cemetery has a freshly painted fence.
Trees, a study in shape and swaying greens
against grays and blues of cloud and sky
frame stone, marker and monument.
Here are hundreds of flags, thousands of flowers
and most of the citizens, living and dead.

It is ghostly quiet; only wind and bird break it.
In the distance a dog barks once and stops
as if embarrassed. There are picnics and blankets
but conversation is too quiet for our distant ears.
We think about taking a walk but this
is an invitation-only party.

Change

If you think about it, it’s pretty great
the ability to transubstantiate,
it’s not just about wafer and wine,
any ol’ transmution is fine!

Take Star Trek, for example, and Scottie’s transporter
scrambling the molecules of Vulcan and Doctor,
you needn’t be the son of God there to go,
as any loyal Trek fan would certainly know.

While Eucharist is by far the most famous
there are plenty of other ways to explain it;
Mix Bosco and milk and really quite suddenly,
you got you a transmutation most lovely.

Be it anger to mirth or batter to cake,
there’s dozens of avenues that one can take.
You don’t need fancy words or religion to discover
that it’s all about changing one thing to another.

North Fork, Coeur D’Alene River

I visit the campground host in the morning
a nice old boy who sells flies and knows the river.
I bring coffee and donuts. I ask about a pool
upstream where it looks like big trout might live.
He allows that there just might be an 18” plus
cutthroat there and if a guy tied a hair wing Caddis in
cream he might just get a shot at him.

Sun slanting toward late afternoon I walk the road upstream,
rod in hand, vest on back. Air dry, hot, smelling of pine and fir,
gravel crunches under sandals, Steller’s Jays quarrel in the trees,
a flit of bright blue against deep evergreen. Small clouds
hug the mountain tops.

At the bridge, a solitary fisherman works the tailwater of
a small pool. A tattoo of a flicking line with a bright fly
graces his left shoulder. I ask quietly if he’s working downstream.
He smiles, shakes his head and says, “Nope, it’s all yours.”

I wade in, water cold and crystal clear over river rock,
set like tile mosaic. Weeds tug and wave, straining to go
downstream. The first pools are slender, undercut banks and
brush above make casting tricky. A roll cast flicks a Wooly Bugger
to the top of the lead, rod tip follows it down.

Approaching the pool the brush is heavy. The ground around it
is elevated and grassy; one cannot just walk in and cast, as trout
are not stupid and will see you. So I kneel and stalk in slowly
and quietly on my knees stopping half way to change flies to the Caddis. I rise slowly, head at grass top level and watch the pool for a time.

Several trout are feeding but when the big one joins in you can hear
the ‘glup!’ as he sucks in some unlucky bug. I watch him, ignoring
the rest, log his pattern and his timing. There will be only one shot
at him and if it is not just right he will be gone; he and I both know this.

The time comes and it is magic; a light wind ruffles the grass somewhere above a hawk screams. Time slows; I rise and flick the line, shadow casting twice to get where I need to be and then let it go and it shoots out, falling straight at the spot. Leader hits water and five feet further on, the Caddis lands perfectly, a juicy bug without a clue.

‘Glup!’ goes the water and I set the hook and he and I are now connected. The slow motion time has ended. Without hesitation he streaks for the tailwater which is held back by a rock ledge. Over he goes and is in to the next pool while I stand transfixed, line stripping out fast. I palm the reel and stumble to the rock ledge;
he is already at the tail of that pool and my line is into the backing.

I stumble down the ledge into the next pool but he is already below that and I am running out of line. I find purchase with my feet and begin to reel him in. He is coming back up slowly but surely, fighting the whole way. When I have moved to the tail of the next pool, he is half way down the one below that. He jumps and slow motion returns, a brilliant flash of silver, green and gold, droplets of water suspended like diamonds falling back to the creek and just like that, he is gone.

Just like that.

Freudian Slip

I dreamed of Monica and
I at a five star hotel
eating a sublime desert.

‘When You’re Smiling’
was playing and we sang
along with the other guests.

I was wearing
a red silk slip
with matching gloves.

Suddenly, George C. Scott
was beside me, saying quietly
“That’s quite a look.”

I explained to him that my wife said
I would make an ugly woman and
I was out to prove her wrong.

Now what do you suppose that means?

Skunk Works

Area 51, Dreamland, Paradise Ranch, Groom Lake, The Box.
It is not on any official map. It is barely officially acknowledged:

It is there.

In ’82, a wildfire brought us to the Nevada Test Site.
Out of Las Vegas on 95, skirting the North edge of Death Valley.
At the end of a long dirt road, a small guard shack
stands in the middle of endless desert. All cameras and binoculars are confiscated. IDs must be shown, information is recorded. “Personnel Checks” are conducted. We wait impatiently for hours in the desert heat.

We are issued radiations badges and an escort is provided, two serious young men in black BDUs; no insignias or name plates, carrying H & Ks. The only answer to any question was, “I’m sorry, that’s classified.”

Long dusty roads across Frenchman and Yucca flats, miles and miles of barbed wire, warning signs guarding baked desert scrub, grass and dirt, landscape a palette of contoured mountain and ridge in brown and tan,
blasted by nature and man alike.

At the northeast corner of the Site, a base camp in the middle of nowhere.
Desert sun pounds everything. Camo netting over tables and tents,
a field kitchen, a silent and surly camp staff. It is all commanded by a man who looks like Lt. Hunter from Hill Street Blues. In the blinding heat, he wears a camo poncho over spotless nomex pants and shirt. He does not have a name. He smokes a pipe dramatically and incessantly. He is cordial in a hale-fellow-well-met Ivy League way, but says nothing of substance. His one cogent offering is an aside that, once we get to the fire, we “Might not want to breath too much of the dust.”

Our helicopter arrives, piloted by a cocky Viet Nam vet;
I luck out and sit beside the pilot with an excellent view.
On route to the fire, we come over a ridge, and suddenly
there are long runways and a large complex of buildings.
At the same moment, in my headphones I hear a voice calling us and identifying themselves as “Dreamland Base.” The pilot grins at me, his expression clearly dubious. He is given an alternative heading and told
to go there without delay. He is amused and hesitates in complying.
He is told a second time, with an added caveat to “Follow your escort”
As he asks, “What escort?” Two black, unmarked Cobra attack helicopters appear on either side of us, close enough for me to see
a front seat gunner gesturing angrily at where we are to go.

We land and offload with our omnipresent and armed escort and the chopper departs. Our escort paraphrases Lt. Hunter’s warning that we “Might not want to dig around too much,” so we sit and watch the desert burn for ten hours.
When our chopper returns, our pilot is cocky no more; he is quiet and angry and scared.

For three days, we watch the desert burn by day and return to camp by night. Our last night, we are given trailers at the Test Site. Huge doors in the side of a mountain, huge tunnels retreat into darkness. Each trailer has
instructions for response in the event of nuclear attack; on the pavement outside, glow-in-the-dark footprints lead to the tunnels. We are allowed into the rec center; no one speaks to us or looks our way and no one recreates.

The next morning, we turn in our radiation badges, retrieve our cameras, and leave confused.

Twenty five years later, I refinance a retired Lockheed Martin engineer. Conversation leads to the Skunk Works. I tell this story and answer some questions about what I saw. The engineer stares at me, fascinated, and says.
“My God, you were there.”

Rain Dove

Zenaida macroura,
Carolina Turtledove,
Mourning Dove.

Feathers shimmering
cream, fawn, gray and black
earth-toned stained glass.

The Oh woo–woo–woo–woo
a call to sleep,
or to wake.

Eye black as coal,
little black accent stripes
casually applied beneath.

Mammasita sits in a hanging planter
dark flecked tan pottery with a brown rim
a perfect compliment.

A patch of dusty rose on the neck
is the only way I can tell
male from female.

Seventy million killed annually for sport or food.
She sits on her second brood,
they will raise up to six a year.

Ten days ago, she hatched two squab,
perfectly camouflaged, ruffled feathers
the color of dirt and dry grass.
they flew off Friday
and have not returned.

North Texas Rain

In Western Washington rain falls
like grass grows;
inevitably and often.

On the south rim of Grand Canyon
it rained so hard the road was a river
and a thousand waterfalls tumbled over the rim.

In the Mogollon range
a single storm snuffed
a thousand acre fire.

At three this morning the storm arrived
now rain beats a tattoo on a new roof,
a gift from last year’s hail storm.

The back yard is under water
lettuces and garlic submerged in their beds
river rock returned to its native state.

Our street has become a river
storm drains turned into waterfalls
just like that day at Grand Canyon.

A Nod To B. Kliban

The word of the day is brachiate
which isn’t what it sounds like.
It really means to swing a thing
and change the arm you swing by.

now certainly some of y’all
are gonna tend to reason
that a word that sounds like this one does
has somethin’ to do with breathin.’

When it's a verb, it means to swing
but there’s an adjective as well
yet contrary to common thought
it still won't make your lungs swell.

No, when used in its second form
it’s got serendipitous charm
‘cause when we say the word that way
it means you got two arms.

Edwin v. 2.0

Born in the Show Me state
the son of an insurance man.
As a youth, his interests
were entirely terrestrial;
jock, fly fisherman, boxer.

In college, the first hints of calling;
a frat boy studying math,
astronomy and philosophy.
One of the first Rhodes scholars,
British dress and manners
stuck with him all his life.

Mount Wilson was his laboratory;
the faint glow of his omnipresent pipe
reflecting the nebulae he studied.

In his day, scholars saw only one galaxy,
but he saw many.
From the Milky Way
to dozens of spirals and ellipticals,
he expanded the universe
galaxy by galaxy.

The Hubble Constant showed us
that all those silent stars
rushing away at terrible speed
expanding the universe ever farther.

He left us the Redshift Distance Law;
that caused Einstein
to declare his galactic fudge factor
the biggest blunder of his life.

His life star burned bright and fast
he was gone at sixty three.
There was no funeral.
His wife never revealed
what became of the body.

Edwin

Born in the Show Me state
a jock,
a fly fisherman,
a boxer.

Frat boy,
Rhodes scholar
studying jurisprudence
then a Masters in Spanish.

A Major in the
war to end all wars.
And finally,
a doctoral dissertation
on faint nebulae.

Mount Wilson
was his lab and classroom,
his omnipresent pipe
a glowing beacon in the night.

The two hundred inch Hale reflector
allowed him to see farther
than anyone ever had before.

He died quite young,
but left us much,
not the least
the Redshift Distance Law;
it caused Einstein
to rescind his “galactic fudge factor”
and declare it
“the biggest blunder of his life.”

North Texas Wind

Flowing palette of green,
a flash of red Oleander,
swirl and tuck
like a flamenco dancer
fanning her skirt.

Early sky
worn denim
drying on river rock.

Scudding cloud,
hurried, distracted,
needing to be
somewhere else.

Everyone joins.
Grasses baroque, formal
Trees uninhibited,
a joyful paso doble.

Small birds make
lightning corrections,
countering each gust
to stay on course.

Rushing through
leaf and branch
sound like the speed
of a downhill run.

Chimes like
Russian bells
calling the faithful
to prayer.

Dissimulation

I’ve always called it
subterfuge,
or a ruse
if used in the legal sense;
“bullshit”
is more accurate.

Perhaps disguising
our real agenda
is just
human camouflage.
Perhaps we’re childish,
standing beside
the broken vase
saying
“I didn’t do it”

Nonetheless,
I am still dismayed
that this
sneaky little word
has become
the modus operandi
for church
and state.