The temptations of light and roses blooming in the morning
Giving some snow on the garden another name, another
Harmony of cycles and contribution from our mother, Nature.

Her indenture was never to us,
Traveling so widely like the river of the milky way,
Spilled and known and changed as by a great storm
Or flood or election.

The chosen few sit with us in their spirit silences,
Numb and immune.
It’s the economy now doing the talking
Both personally and professionally leading us somehow
Down the wrong path.

The Itsy-Bitsy spider and the Ionosphere
Wherein we laid childhood at a stranger’s window.
Looking in and looking back or
With the telescope and hot air balloon
Drifting above our land, instruments in hand and
Like a good job, full of leisure like a noon meal,
An early release day.
The chains of the sky way Unknowable,
Rotating, shifting by each perception and tilt of language.
The dance fire and the little brown dog,
Rolling in the grass, feet up with animal joy,
Perhaps preoccupied like ourselves.

Something else on mind as a day dream or “concern”
Even as the curtain rises to take us away
If only we can be willing participants.
Part of the whole.
A new movement in an old song
And the dance responses also, naturally, are varied.

I was angry.
I started talking about Mayakovski and his suicide,
All stature be damned,
We were not formed to lay low and be content
With the form of ourselves and our state.
Whose rebellion is this?
And against what or who, how or why, art and lie,
Approximation and the necessary details for truth.

Who is the pass
And how, where, why do we rise and fall singly,
Together as unison of air breathed in,
Sung out and strung along like feet over the bridge.
Dear Maureen is not the one
For to love her language may suffice a few beats longer,
A few more inches on the old man’s beard.
It is time for the women.
Time to change the Euripides of the game-
Re-wilding the land and mind together,
Dashing, free as the water to fall, the mist to rise,
The suns to shine on all of their worlds
In a long play,
A temperature gradient,
A chance occurrence,
Awareness naming in her heart of bountiful ease,
Compassion, contemplation.

Not likely on the border to carry the day,
Even with a new novel or play on the trends,
The upside of our time together, held out,
Offering fantastic and simple rolled into one
Like a good burrito, an enchilada plate
Smothered in cheese and green chili or
Riding the side of red beans and rice.
Feed the people.
Mayakovski,
Son of a flaming bitch.
Dead yet, never dead
With red sauce or green?

By Rolf Stavig

6/09/2024