If all the world were playing holidays

To sport would be as tedious as to work!
(Shakespeare from Henry IV part one if memory serves)

Tomorrow

Your best friend is gone,
your other friend, too.
Now the dream that used to turn in your sleep
sails into the earth's coldest night

What did you say?
Or was it something you did?
It makes no difference---the house of breath collapsing
around your voice, your voice burning, are nothing to worry about.

Tomorrow your friends will come back;
your moist mouth will bloom in the glass of storefronts.
Yes. Yes. Tomorrow they will come back and you
will invent an ending that comes out right.

Mark Strand

Smetena "The Moldau"

You paint on my canvas
swirls in water and air
using violas and cellos.

You hug me warmly
with triangles where
the sun glints.

You jam my senses
like a radio signal
satiating pleasure

WRM

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

(Robert Frost)

Skagway Respite

Hurrying freezing streets,
between uninteresting gift shops,
I am sucked into a large,
warm, bookshop.

Canned music fades,
the air fills with something
instantly recognizable.
The smell and feel of live music.

Searching for it among narrow,
rickety bookshelves, a hole
in the wall leads to a coffee bar
overcrowded with silent listeners.

The musical epicenter is the drum -
a table - serving as, instrument, stage
and music rest, tightly bound by
singers and guitar players.

Standing at the entrance
I am drawn in by the music,
excitement and warmth
held back by an invisible wall

Endemic people's gazes
and feelings burn
as they shine on me
snooping on their worship

(WRM in Scagway Alaska)

Slow Children at Play

All the quick children have gone inside, called
by their mothers to hurry-up-wash-your-hands
honey-diner's-getting-cold, just-wait-till-your-father-gets-home---
and only the slow children out on the lawns, marking off
paths between fireflies, making soft little sounds with their
mouths, ohs
that glow and go out and glow. and their slow mothers
flickering,
pale in the dusk, watching them turn in the gentle air, watching
them
twirling, their arms spread wide, thinking, these are my children,
thinking
Where is their dinner? Where has their father gone

Cecilia Woloch


Suicide Soldier

I'm a civilized soldier not
a suicide bomber
I don't have killing equipment
round my waist
no gun, no bullets, no grenades.

My family won't get paid
when I die
I don't ask God to bless me
or America


(WRM)