Winter Thoughts

1.
I'm not the man I was.  The words are foreign
I would have heard and loved
a lifetime past.

The fur-lined gloves I kept to keep off cold
are lost.
I sit and wait for time to pass.

I should be doing something,
something bold,
take charge of work or wooing.

All the same, I'm careless of ambition.

Any wish that goes beyond coition
leaves me cold,
a permanent condition,
so I'm told,
that goes along with age.

2.
I scrimp and save for nothing.  What I have,
the only thing worth keeping
is my past
and it's becoming hazy.

Like a hill worn down to round,
my tongue has worn
the life that I remember to a phrase

or two short lines repeated;
still my tongue
grows sharper every day.

I am become a scarecrow of myself
and so may choose
to shout and wave arms freely,
play the fool
that I am thought to be by cows
and crows.

3.
Words I know and even my own name,
I can forget
and do so in the talking.

Wind wraps my clothes about,
outlines how thin
my shin bones have become.

I walk on splints.
There are no words to catch me: cane or crutch.

If that were not enough, lost words like sin
are ghosts
come back to haunt me;

God and soul,
old words I used to know, if rarely said,
are echoes now.
                                                And  truth?
Here now in bed, doubt rises up to lash me
like the wind
that hammers house and pane.

What truth remains is dark beyond the glass.

4.
When I was young and fair
I used to go
to church three times on Sunday,
                                                     even then
attending Wednesday prayers
and Thursday choir.

It was a high taut wire.

What does it mean
that now I go on dreaming hate and kill?
The violence appalls me.
                                           Even so,
I see what eyes can see when eyes are closed.

Each night I watch TV.
I make the bed with fresh sheets every Friday,
do the wash;
(It's what my first wife taught me.)
fold with care my underwear and socks
and stack them there
by kind
inside the drawers.

They are my prayers for yet another day.

My laundry sets an order to my weeks
and measures trips
in shirts picked up to wash
or clean to wear.

Sometimes, though, I remember:
picture you
when you were young as daisies, wet with dew,
as naked as a fish and slick as two.

5.
Words die for want of practice.
Like a song, the tune keeps coming back in bits
and snatches,

The wind is constant here.
It sighs and moans and rattles leaves and latches.

Let me in, the rattles seems to say,
then go away
a while to come again like some bad dream.

Or words vie for new meaning
like the friends I used to have in high school,
then who went
their ways as I did mine.

I entertain sometimes on rare occasions.
We swear we haven't changed:
old words, old rites.

But words become indifferent,
get dug in
like soldiers in a trench.
It takes a wrench,
sometimes a bomb’s explosion,
to set them right.

They arrive in bits and pieces in the night
to reassemble themselves again,
not always right.

6.
And what about failed words?
What can they say?

Can good words change their meaning?
Or brain go numb?

Am I so changed beyond my own cognition,
sight and smell,
that I’m now somebody different?
Not a call
most friends would want to make.

It's all a game.

We called it hide-and-seek, heard hunters call
the Ollie-all-in-free
and so recall
the parental voice that evenings
called us in.

I back up to beginnings,
lay a claim
to what I am and was and shall remain,
whatever I become
or mean to be.

7. 
                                                Anyone
who can define a man can write a poem,
The opposite's not true.

Precision comes
to him who wakes at morning to Molly's ass,
the smoothness of her skin,
her hair amassed
and curves that fill the hand the way that mush
or oatmeal fill the mouth.

The eye has much, reporting to the brain,
to say of love,
but words, at best, describe
and love is lost not just for lack of praise.

To say and, thus, commit to word the sight
makes right the thought arriving from experience,
made or found,
that causes sweat to rise and heart to pound.

8.
And so I do my wash.

It is my prayer, as are all things I do,
and so makes clear
my wish to care for mind
as care I do,
not always for my body.

Summer light that shines on me in kindness
is a song
I have tried all my life to hear and sing.

The words are not perfected
and the strings
too often bear the weight.

I need more brass.

The words like fish escape me,
still the tune
laps back and back to haunt me,

lulls fear that I might feel
or joy that fills me,
joy so fierce
that words again elude.

I take the chance of feeling real regret,
attend the dance
knowing there will be no girl to take me home.