Parabolic Curves

How I love telephone poles and wires in the fall. The mellowing browns and blacks are extraordinary. The looping, parabolic curves bring me to my knees. The cross bars, insulators, joint-boxes and transformers -- all natural -- share my rapt attention. I barely see the no parking signs and streets of asphalt and cement. Somehow they represent life eternal while the trees and flowers discolor, die and fall behind them, barely noticed.

Lillian

In memory my home is not home without Lillian.

A Vision

We lie naked face to face in semidarkness,
your body's profile an exquisite, timeless curve ...

We touch, explore each other gently, somehow not erotic,
looking, seeing, exposing to each other
a wonder that is eternal, yes, erotic, yes, ours alone.

I don't know

Once I asked a new friend, "How old are you?"
She answered appropriately, "I don't know."

At a 50th anniversary reunion,
I fell in love with a bunch of old people
with whom I had fallen in love many times before,
each time a wonder, each time anew,
each one unique, each a surprise,
each one so deep I never knew.
I'm astonished, in awe, in a stew:
how can I love, how renew,
how can I thank, how can I be in love so much
with you and you and you?
Brothers and sisters, lovers and friends,
I love you ... it never ends.

Mom

And now wacky am I, I thank you, mother, for 

the days I take no pill;

the oak table that folds upon itself,

a hinge, a turn, a hidden box 

containing nothing, a silence left to me alone;

the vaporous song echoing here from the 

dusty floor of a small house

in a village like so many.

I thank you that I somehow sing 

though rhythmns and their verses 

keep note and meaning but to me, 

through the doubt that song to my self 

in silence be song at all.

Vackra Svenska Flickor

Observing you, two beautiful Swedish girls called Ingrid and a friend at the Deutches Museum,
we engaged in human physics,
two college friends denying the existence of god
and senseless domestic inhibitions on a mission abroad.

We studied history, science, art and Svenska tullar,
and vackra Svenskar flickor won.

We later bought and unabashedly named an old Volksbug, 'Ingrid',
fondled her brazenly, drove our passions reckless
through luscious Europa's unquenchable body by day,
slept with the Ingrid who carried us and dreamed of embracing you.

Sue

Made explicit still, her wide brimmed hat and lovely dress
one afternoon in May,
captured in a mutual, unexpected wave goodbye,
never never understood, never sans regret.