I read somewhere
Thomas Edison had
a thinking bench
upstairs alone in
that room he
just sat and
thought and thought
and sat, sometimes
he would find
ideas and sometimes
they found him
because he was
waiting and not
really doing much
of anything, kind
of praying to
silence that something
would arrive and
if he sat
long enough and
was very quiet
something always did
Month: July 2019
Playing Left Field
Standing as if a sundial, my hand, a glove shadowing time.
Waiting for the ball I blink, wink, chew gum, itch my rear,
because nobody is watching me out in the wilderness where
gnats and sun, smell of cut grass envelop me, make me
a tall insect wearing stripes, socks hiked up high. I pace, shuffle
cleats, shout “Hey Batter, Batter,” as if my distant voice matters.
Take away white lines, the small crowd, he’s just a bushy haired
boy in a quiet meadow, looks like he might be talking to himself.
Or god knows who he is or what he is doing out there alone, a
quiet king with monarchs that flutter by. Until wooden bat breaks
daydreams, interrupts his nature, baseball soars over his head.
My Dad Makes A Walking Stick
Sometimes he will just stare
into layered forest, like a
surfer watching waves. Look
closely, poison ivy, ferns, dogwood
flowers. Walk with him, see
downed limbs, branches sprouting
green, but soon to die. Notice
these things, the fallen are
hiking companions. Fractured
Virginia wilderness, hickory, oak,
walnut, redbud, wood that he studies
to know. Even before death some are
stronger than others. Always has
a serrated folding saw, he holds it
steady, cuts five or six feet, bits of
tree dust drift with dragonflies. He
carries these pieces like shouldered
fishing rods. In the basement, whittling
knife separates outer bark from cambium,
sanded before brushed with lacquer to
dry, then shine, touch the earth again,
reflect the gleaming sun.
Seeing the Mountain Lion
please let me
tell the truth
that I saw
it, the mountain
lion, lithe, yes
springy, legs, twitching
tail, like at
the zoo but
free on golden
hillside, in California
I had just
eaten a banana
morning at camp
counselor for kids
with HIV, beautiful
sun peeking through
fog and me
and the young
lion, that I’d
wanted to see
for hundreds of
miles hiking, camping
hours of night
and nothing, but
longing for wild
but nothing, maybe
a rattlesnake or
coyote, but then
the moment passed
and it moved
down the hill
toward the road
the next day
saw it dead
on the asphalt
I wanted to
take some of
its teeth, save
something, after so
much time waiting
but I let
it rest, sad
it was gone
Of Time and the Kite
when my daughter was young we flew a kite
from her wooden deck, bedroom balcony
she held the string, I watched wind
invisible thing
nearby leaves rustling, flapping
nylon snapping, waiting for release
to soar or sink, ever the question
on a day such as this
the two of us standing there wondering
what does it mean to fly away?
I let go, her twine wriggled through fingers
up and up it went
sun stopped for seconds
our fabric patch covering time
Moroccan Sahara
In the backseat, we must be going 80 mph, reverberating Berber music like Salat, ritualistic Islamic prayer with drums, voices, sintir strings plucked, boom from the old Peugeot’s speakers, permanent Sahara hair dryer heat fills my nostrils. We left Merzouga earlier in the morning, before that, the Atlas Mountains, Azrou, Fez, Tangier. The road is gone, only sand, like after the first inches of snow have fallen. We stop at the edge, no billboards, no little tourist kiosk, nothing, only a thousand miles of granular fragments, beaten down quartz, dolomite, calcite, sand pixels. I touch its wildness, primitive, uncontainable, not a Tonka truck home, not the domesticated box from my childhood backyard, it looms, immense with dry waves of undulating silence. We walk into it alone, like swimming past the ocean breakers, together, apart. Speechless, it has absorbed our words, sun pulsating, the desert almost asking us to quietly join it, forever. Human shadows elongate, planet rotates, heat ebbs, darkness, then stars. They appear first one by one, little white births, souls of the night sky. Then a torrent, a blanket of speckled light, countless orbs above, total blackness below. I think of Yad Vashem, the Holocaust, children who died. Never thought much about heaven before, alone, surrounded.
April Again?
first thought of Simon and
Garfunkel, angst, new love like
uncertainty, showers, flowers
and better months ahead
sun stays, longer days of
green grass, eggs, hidden
chocolate resurrection, rebirth
believers, earth day dreamers
ecology’s return to the beginning
before we lost our ozone layer
still unknown, how it ends
whether April begins again
Buddhist Dog
She squirms, arches belly up,
scratch me, love me, don’t forget me.
Eyes and eyelashes, wise and long,
this one-year old furry seer, knows
if you are kind. Sometimes I ignore her
paws clawing at the sky, asking important
questions. How can you focus on
anything more than me, than this
moment, do you see me, really see me?
Here I am, I love you. Where’d you go?
Did you forget?
You are me too.
Evening Prayer
I don’t pray every night, but I probably should. After baths, books, conversation with wife, I usually drift into writing, creating, rearranging words on a screen. Mind a whir, could journey depths until dawn, but the clock of calculation, of sanity, of sacred sleep, tells me to stop. I go into my daughter’s room, turn down her light, I love you, I say to her curled up slumber. I meditate in my son’s room, the sound of his breathing, my pew, my stained glass, my sanctuary. Seated, darkness, air in, carbon dioxide out, first minutes filled with brain bouncing from thought to thought, the earlier, the tomorrow, the could happen. Then sometimes the indescribable now, when I’m nowhere, everywhere, witness to all time, and no time at all. Emerge a short life span later, pray for my colleague, that her malignant tumor retreats, allows life, hers to continue. It feels like I could stay forever, talking to God, to no one, to everyone.
Writing in Bed
exhaling visible emotion
ink onto page
alive each night if
only for these moments
toes touch sheets happy
the hours before are done
no more plodding through city
streets in laced up leather
free naked now
words moving across the page
composition notebook
indenting with cursive letters
pressing down, scribbled lines
fragments of thought
searching for truth night after night
sometimes finding things
like an old Hot Wheels car in
the sandbox, pull it out
examine chipped paint
try to recall when it was lost
describe what it looks like
loose front tire, red Camaro
“this is it,” I think
to reclaim, touch memory
unearth myself, the buried parts
Daniel W. Polk 