sw00041usabys-15.may.sonnets.10of25

10 of 25                                             

 1976 Today
                353 bicentennial year sonnets (137-152)

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May: Year-day 137

Their burial mounds: Bones scattered with bones:
strata of them.  Many by white men's plows
made flatter and wider.  Bones under stones
under much earth, bones, stones, earth.  When the boughs
still arched over them, a sacredness swept
the airs they rounded toward.  Indians since
have come, respectful, sad; short vigils kept--
where axes, plows, and excavations mince

for space, food, knowledge--knowing who has broken
the aura there and there, or, if not, changed
that aura, corn planted where trees once were,
we not caring what skulls beneath have spoken--
crumbling when touched--or, if caring, deranged
anyway, scratching for more than lands bear.

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May: Year-day 138

Cashing in the chips.  It's time to go, take
a long walk through new territory, watching
for signs of contentment, watching the lake
breathe, the swallows flow, the winds crest, while crossing,
with each move, millions of lives.  The hours,
seconds, years my life's been given I've yet
to appreciate.  And these lives, these powers?
I barely know them in the burning wet.

Forgive me, forgive me not, I am cashing
in.  This pace is much too fast.  It is time
to kiss the turtle.  So, adieu, good-bye.
Look for me, if you must, ambling, not dashing--
a change of heart on entering my prime,
wondering where I'd care to die, and why.

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May: Year-day 139
(#6 of 15 I removed earlier this year)

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May: Year-day 140

Oh forget it, man, your life is not here
nor there nor there; yet, you have stuck yourself
with your overspending on the wrong gear,
making it difficult to move.  Fool elf,
if you had sat down seriously; but,
you didn't, and even if you could do
it over again, wouldn't.  In your gut
you know: only from now can you change you.

Only from now--complaints, regrets, behind.
Likely turn.  I could fair as well entreating
the evergreen to be everpink.  Find
a way I must though, or go on repeating.
If I cannot somehow make myself fit,
I pray I'll pass, bearing/ the hope of it.

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May: Year-day 141

Wake-up calls.  Wake up!  Wake up!  Wake-up calls.
First night in a long while I've stayed awake
with any ease auditing to the walls
a day's accounts at this Inn.  One mistake
I made, though, and then another, forgetting
to phone two guests, my thoughts wound with the tangles
of imbalances, those here and those netting
my weakened defenses from my well-set angles.

Oh, yes, mistakes are made by anyone 
human, and are not necessarily
sins, acts that jolt a self from where it spins;
yet a man shrinks seeing a rising sun
when no corresponding sun seems to be
brightening his spirit.  We treasure wins.

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May: Year-day 142

Let those of us who can, do: marry, love,
increase each other, children blessed and blessing/
while those of us who can't, do otherwise
yet rise supportive for the health of all;
and all of us explore below/above/
& on the level, confident in stressing
the primacy of life; and each surprise
tomorrow today/ with care, catch each fall.

You like me, if you do, for who you think
I am; so also I like you.  Yet who
I truly am as who you truly are
only God knows.  So do & be: dream / link.
Wizards of circuitry / fools of a zoo,
we hide to live.  Pray/ someday/ truth can star.

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May: Year-day 143

It's amazing how sometimes everything
works out right for an act that has gone wrong,
as this morning when I stepped outside:  Zing,
six junior high boys hurrying along
on their bikes; then, the last one yelling, "Mike,
slow down, you're going to have to pull me.
My chain fell off."  Then, the one on the bike
ahead/ slowing, his beltless jeans bulged free

so the trailer could clamp his hand on them
and turn a sure failure into a gem
of a small victory, the two guys easing
to the school grounds, snuffing anyone's teasing,
knowing that as a whole leaf has a stem
their action was: both functional/ and pleasing.

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May: Year-day 144

Peace, amid frustrations: nine days behind.
Metaphoric brilliance, or none at all,
genius will shine not only in the rinds
but also in the pulps of its penned call
and also in the seeds, and, in the leaves
and wood/ look forward to/ and back upon
fruition, and, in the blossoms believe,
for everyone, perfection's lights are on.

Is it summer?  Is it fall?  Is it spring?
Is it winter?  We can anytime sing
and sing, trace the palpitations of sorrow
and joy; can anytime begin or end,
continue, revise the moments we spend
recording moments/ for moments tomorrow.

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May: Year-day 145

You have your crossto shoulder; I have mine.
Yet this is not to say don't bother me
withpleas, complaints, and groans.  No one's divine
who knows he knows but dimly, that the sea
could never let him walk across its waves
without his Lord's provision, without faith:
no human looms divine.  And so what/ caves
your spirit/ must cave mine.  I share your wraith.

Imperfect, often I'll be mean to you
and you to me, or another of us
be mean to you or me, or you or I
mean to another being passing through.
No bomb surpasses human hatred.  Thus
"Thou".  We need Life, each other/ to be, sky.

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May: Year-day 146

Death comes in puzzling pieces; also life.
Our enigmatic universe spins out.
You move with a loved husband, a loved wife
in fantasies where neither of you shout,
or weep, throw things at each other, or beat
flesh black-and-blue, and red.  A willow touches
the weedy yard, the scummy pond.  The heat
prostrates the house.  People/ swing by on crutches.

That is the top and bottom of it, hard
as steel.  There is no sense complaining or
trying to tie this minute in knots so
it can't get away.  Whether green or charred,
it will second by second show its door
opened then closed, moved by/ the on-the-go.

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May: Year-day 147

The level of my caring sinks and sinks
till I see the rugged stones through the muck;
be they winks, be they drinks, be they jailed inks:
I view them askance and decry my luck.

My hands in my pockets, eyes in my thoughts,
the teeth of a dragon sprouting cold men,
I come like Jason and the Argonauts/
then fall off the plank into could-have-been.

It's just no use/ trying to rise, the air
isn't there for my soot-lined lungs; the words
I need have all wandered on, gone to seed,
hit dead drums.  It's just no use farming care
on the waters of my life; ranging herds
of circumstance/ scare it down, think it feed.

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May: Year-day 148

Friend, do not talk to me of love and death;
I've eaten so much I'm sick & afraid.
When the leaves have gone, I wish they had stayed.
When the phlegm comes thick, I pray for a breath.

Do not speak to me of beauty and right;
I've drunk so much I'm wobbly & pale.
When a blossom wilts, I wish it weren't frail.
When a day's too hot, I welcome the night.

Talk to me rather, if you have to talk,
of the eye of the storm, which cannot see;
where not even breezes have learned to walk.

Speak to me likewise, if it lets you be,
of a game whose structure dances from chalk,
and tests the balances in each bent knee.

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May: Year-day 149

Status?  You gullible--.  Gems.  Gold.  Sit down.
And you needn't flap your hands around like
some dame in a snit either.  Put that spike
on the floor.  Maybe you should be a clown.

The trees all hazy with heat; a tired cat:
halfin shade, half in sun; yellow bug juice
in a glass pitcher on the lawn/ near loose
flagstone; purple alyssum puffing fat.

What'samatter, that glitter/ turns you on!?
Such a false space: rainbow sherbet!: all me!
Glow with your hot/ in-fashion elegance
to hell.  We are all sick who cannot don
a wisdom-sewn concern, a sympathy
shining with knowledge, a shared permanence.

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May: Year-day 150

Overcast skies, and from those to earth, fog--
Wisconsin, one hundred and twenty-nine--
here in West Bend where a few things are fine
but many are not, and this is my log
on a couple of them.  What does it say?
Hear.  Brian's log.  Sun date five/twenty-nine/
nineteen seventy-six.  Have let the wine
of the auto-erotic haze my way.

Nobody saw me but me and my Rune.
I'd been building this daydream about who
I am; it carried me/ into the Inn,
a confrontation with a Beechwood tune,
a ride to the edge of a rumble.  "You,
be true," I hupped me, "though they pull the pin."

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May: Year-day 151

"Poetry is for the intelligent."
So?  Seeds in the rich ground of who you are,
in the right weathers, enter the airs, sent
explorers/ ringing your/ medium star.
A robber, armed, may accost your wee life.
An emotion, pure, will disjoint your mind.
Are not these post modern days?  Won't the knife,
the gun, the vial of acid each serve, bind?

Well, too bad!  Think that I am; think I'm not.
Love me; learn from me.  What is is, and stays
so/ even if I have/ had enough/ and
want a different future.  I have got
to/ recall the past, alive in the plays
made, whatever the truths/ dealt to my hands.

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May: Year-day 152

In the heart of the artichoke, no blood;
in the cone of the storm, no dreamy sight.
If while I'm writing, my pen is in bud,
and pushes leaves and blossoms out of night,
thank desire and environment.  Stand free.
We will walk the spaces in molecules,
examine an atomic galaxy
in its spinning electron light.  No mules.

Remember when stopped at the end of May
to look at the days the daffodils danced,
to bow to the irises kingly old,
think Arthur Miller now gone from our play
and the parts he so outspokenly chanced.
Be glad for each wisdom, shining and bold.
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10 of 25


Brian A. J. Salchert