Sauna Songs nos 2 and 3

A beauty and a seemingly irremediable sadness

There was a blow-up, apparently, at the rehearsal

From which almost by chance I was absent

Another exercise in powerlessness

(Even had I been there, of course)

All the bruised feelings, and now,

The unforced professional calm vying with hurried efforts

At damage control

All the bruised feelings, and why?

Sigh no more

We most of us might feel the impulse to ask, why?

So seldom do we properly learn, learn why,

Not any negation, but a way forward, I think,

To grow a little cool to the need to ask, why?

In almost comic contrast

The bus this morning (it would be, wouldn’t it?) was early

I saw it drive through the light hard by the graciously spired church

Yes, I ran

Not yet at the age to genuinely say, I shouldn’t run,

But running has never been my thing

Nor did I learn any love for it today

A single sentence wherein

The entire history of his family’s

By turns pathetic and tragic dysfunction

Was eloquently illustrated

A single sentence of beauty and

Of a sadness seemingly not

To be remedied

He cannot

He cannot speak the sentence

The bruised feelings too fresh

And he is not yet free from the impulse of why?

Sigh not so, but let them go

The distances

The baffling, impenetrable distances

The hourglass, the sand, the powerlessness

To my ear (sure, I speak figuratively, who wouldn’t?)

Came rumor of the drama

Immediately knew I would not wish to review the script

The theme of sadness were almost mocked

By pointless, tawdry detail

The clock which I set 20 minutes fast

The sight of whose face gave my wife such a start yesterday

The password I never remember and always need to reset

The reed I need to break in tomorrow

Since summer first was leafy

At the next stop

The bus driver did indeed stay for me

My running was not for nothing

Call it a small success and not a triumph

Down near the ground

The pointless detail looms large (not to say threatening)

The soul which has not yet learnt not to bother

Longs sweetly for ascent

The reed I need to break in tomorrow

Piecing together my shredded realization

Just how ephemeral it all (probably) is

Beauty and tears for the undiscoverable remedy

To the recurring implacable sadness

A gross unnatural rock to weigh down the breast of Hope itself

Dumps so dull and heavy

It respects no boundaries

Unlike us mortals

It suffers no limit

Nor shall I ask

(. . . pavan)

18 May 2018

He’s not saying it hasn’t all been fun

To the untrained eye, those laces look untied

The sun beat down and because most of April

Had been absurdly cold, the warmth of the May sun

Made my spirit giddy

Though I nevertheless doubt the need to run

The air conditioning on the bus

To the untrained eye, the bus looks bound for Swampscott

But nothing doing

At lunch we discussed a highly successful film composer

It isn’t that we scoffed at his work

We only questioned the comparison to

A certain composer of the century before

Fall River, where a certain ax murder remains

Forever befogged in uncertainty

I may never play cribbage there again

I’m all for letting the next guy wear what he please

But the bright orange T-shirt gives him

All the appearance of The Human Tennis Ball

I found myself quietly grateful that no one

Had brought a racquet onto the bus

Not sure why I now remember the puddingstone

She was keen that Paul should bring home

For the garden

Such dramatic topography

I wonder that no one has thought to christen

Fall River “the San Francisco of the East”

Love – 40
Not sure either why I now remember the great tortoise

Walking on the roadside near the Wenham pond

We almost could not believe our eyes

Carefully backed the car and sure enough

A lumbering solemn tortoise

Sagacious in its determined patience

Or maybe just moving because

She felt she must

The door to the church was open

So he went on in, sat quietly in a pew

And listened as the organist (another organist) practiced

They talked later and so many

Were the similarities that my friend

Wondered if the experience had been real

Or if he had somehow tumbled into his own past

To meet and to be pranked by his younger self

He contained his sorrow or at least

Blunted it

As he said (what I knew without his saying it)

How he wished he had his old job

To the untrained eye, the old job always appears

Desperately attractive

Wanted:  sex workers willing to urinate on foreign

Dignitary during his stay in Pyongyang

Red baseball caps a plus

But really, why is any of us suddenly

Faced with a long-forgotten bookmark recollection,

For no apparent reason, at this peculiar moment?

But I suppose that all moments

Are genuinely peculiar

There’s no real knowing

I’m sure there were actual recycle bins

When we first moved here

But it’s years since I saw them

And you make do my heart almost aches,

The sight of the green grass in sunlight

Joys it so

To the untrained eye, the green grass looks

Like grass

I still wonder at times

Which is the older

That patient, restless, highly successful tortoise

Or I

(... migratory reptiles)

9 May 2018