sw00280v-5.poem3

Venturings



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 Though the following 41-part work
 is neither about nor for a someone
 bearing the name revealed in its title,
 it was inspired by a conspicuously-placed
 note/ from the co-worker who was so named.
 She was keeping track of her remaining
 days of employment at Holiday Inn-UC.
 She was a University of Florida student
 who was about to graduate; and--as to me--
 I was born in 1941.

 3-21--02 and 8-13-06   Brian Salchert

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"The Forty-One Days of Kim"


1.  
And when the winds
slit the dawn,
gulls cried.

2.  
There was a once once,
      wasn't there?

3.  
A leaf so large,
parched as it was,
I dreamt it had
from Atlantis come.

4.  
Tell me--
if you care to--
the directions you were given 
for releasing the past.

5.  
Such a maplenut heart,
such a bittersweet soul
continuance has!

6.  
On the trim of your scarf
a ladybug waits
for a reason to fly.

7.  
And, as I turned my head,
an ivory full moon
peered at me
between the shade's curled edge
and the window frame.

8.  
Be thou imperious
as the live oaks;
be thou conceding
as the fireflies.

9.  
Sand breaking
against my face,
I am made to be still,
to contemplate
a scintillant white
behind my/  shuttered eyes.

10.  
And where he walked,
cattails stood.

11.  
And she
who remembered everything
broke from
following him.

12.  
Silly, is it?
Laugh then.
Breezes do.

13.  
A feather?
What is that
to a chicken with its/  head
chapped off?

14.  
Please,
do not touch me.

15.  
Words/
scattered:
colors,
sounds,         
odors,      
tastes,
the corked bottle         
bobs  eternal.

16.  
Think not/
lest thou be
tormented
by termites.

17.  
Under that rock?!
  Yes.
But--.
  Git!

18.  
Oh yah, you're sorry.
  Forget it.
  I'm not sorry
  about anything.
  I'm damn glad.
I thought so.

19.  
Then,
the proud one,
seeing
on the mowed lawn
the song sparrow,
dead,
kept,
being
not so proud
as some--
forever 
in his heart--
his error,
his regret.

20.  
Walk softly
where the troll
sleeps.

21.  
Do you ever wonder
why happening upon
a miniscule
yellow blossom
made you smile?

22.  
Are you pleasedGod
sometimes streaks
your dungeon presents
with cardinals?

23.  
So tired am I
of hearing:
"You can be
whatever you
want to be."
So tired am I
of hearing:
"Find your passion."
Follow your dream."
Where the heart is,
success is.
So tired am I.
---
Forget
untethered optimism.
Forget
fame.
Forget
fortune.
---
Out of
who you are;
out of 
 what you've been given,
deepen your
self-understanding;
reveal a self
of maturing worth.
That do.

24.  
Rancid remembrances?
Only as hope
does the future exist.
Inspirit the now,
the unending now.

25.  
Fate?
Destiny?
Supreme Love.

26.  
His wife,
some while ago shocked
to an unfamiliar consciousness,
began, and continued, to see
the slender sunlight mirages
outside the window
across the space
from her recliner
as icicles.

27.  
He who
cannot be humble
cannot be/  anything.

28.  
So, because of his jitters,
he was totally in the wrong season
on a homophone test;           
and so, because    
he/  is/  an INFP,          
his bleeding ego                   
will not cease   
troubling his psyche
with its sticky red.
But does God care
how well he didn't?
Not a poop in a scoop.

29.  
Tell Dad
I remember
the smoke rings
and the Graf Zeppelin stamps,
and stretching the strings
to keep the seed rows straight,
and mixing the cement,
and digging the postholes,
and the weekly injections
that kept me alive,
and going to church,
and the birds in the trees,
especially the Baltimore Oriole.
Tell Dad
I remember love.

30.  
Entering his Metro,
he heard a bzzzz
coursing toward the passenger side.
It!  A bee?  Likely, yet--.
Stretching, he jarred the door,
but the creature was ticking
the window's top;
so, one crank,
& it flew/  free.
Thank You, Lord.

31.  
Heading back to his vehicle
at another place,
a small grey animal
like a mouse--he thought
it was a mouse until he
got close enough--
held his attention.
Huh!  It's a mole!*
Not wanting to kill it
or let it get killed,
trapped as it was
in this parking lot
with concrete edges;
still, not wanting to
touch it either, he
coaxed it around
with his walking stick,
taking/  extra time with it--
the rolly critter, often
on its back, its feet flailing--
when it got up against
a car wheel bumper
it didn't seem
to want to get away from.
Finally, with the help of
a couple broken pine twigs,
he catapulted
the estranged mole
onto the pine-needled
ground above/  where
immediately/  its sharp-
clawed feet/  dug in.

32.  
Where the circle ends,
the circle begins.

33.  
Today I cleaned
her glasses.
---
It had been a while,
and it took me a while.
I had to use
streams more
water than usual,
and wipes of
several textures.
---        
They are back in the drawer
where she keeps them at night.    

34.  
On the Classical station--
out of ever again
the goodness of God--
Ferde Grofe's
"Grand Canyon Suite"
reaching into my childhood,
infused as it was
with limited but strong music
and comprehensive books:
birds, wild animals, words, worlds.

35.  
Just as the Gevanthaus Orchestra of Leipzig
conducted by Paavo Jarvi began playing
Dmitry Shostakovich's "Fifth Symphony"
I began praying the first decade of the
The Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary:
The Agony in the Garden, The Scourging at
the Pillar, The Crowning with Thorns, The
Carrying of the Cross, The Crucifixion
and Death.
                 Finishing somewhat ahead
of the symphony's end,  I filled that
time/  both listening to the music/  and
meditating on: the conditions of Man
and the expressions of God.
                                       It was
illuminating to know/  that that concert lived
in 2001 on the eleventh of May, and that
it was from the 13-concert series:
"Pure Joy is a Serious Matter".

36.  
Rain/
with assurances of rain;
and she/  gone:
to the ever-after/
as the maple leaves:
yellow, red, brown,
drenched.

37.  
Early that night,
his attention diverted
by several kids,
he strode from
whatever it was
he was
doing/  and wrote:
~

"To Kids at Night"

I don't care
if you peek 'n' poke
with your tat-a-tat smoke;
but really, no joke,
like the wondrous heart
of an artichoke,
go and enjoy;
do not annoy,
do not remind me
of my young days
and knocked-window ways;
go jive and juke,
sweet ghost, sweet spook,                                    
your improvised part                                           
where peace canstart:         
with     I do care.

38.  
And then  one midday
the cat
(unaware to him)
was on the TV
and about to jump--
as she liked to do
but had long been
prevented from doing--
onto/  the top of the door
he had open    too long
because he was involved
with his wife
in a discussion concerning
getting the mail and
going to McDonald's;
but which discussion,
having concluded,
he closed the door; and
the cat,
in a streak of anger,
attacked & bloodied
his right leg.
So, now, she--
so often pleasant,
but never to be trusted--
is in a ten-day quarantine,
and will not be
coming back.
His wife?
Deeptears.    Deep disgust.
It wasn't enough he had long been
agrand disappointment;
he now had to take/   take away
that being
she most loved.
Would she now finish
what the cat began?   Or/
the cat?

39.  
Memories.
The University of Iowa:
1965, '66,'67.
There I was:
in the Poetry Section of the Writers' Workshop;
yet that day I was in
the Math Library/
seeking a geometric proof
of Fermat's Last Theorem;
reading about Georg Cantor,
and dreaming up/
Axioms on Infinity.

40.  
Somehow, it seems,
I always live in a somewhere
that does not exist.

41.  
Everyone went to Hell;

but at the tolling of a bell
everybody went back out/

to have a cup of sauerkraut.




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 * 12.24.05  ~  See line 8 of 31.
                   (Possibly was a shrew
                      but more likely was
                      a deleterious vole.)


 Information before me reads:
 © 4-15-02 Brian Salchert --
 around 3 months before 
               my companion wife passed. 

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Brian A. J. Salchert