Drake’s drum, by Henry Newbolt

Poetic lineages: in honor of the D-Day landing, for all those 10,000 mile stares since time immemorial.

Drake he’s in his hammock an’ a thousand mile away,
(Capten, art tha sleepin’ there below?)
Slung atween the round shot in Nombre Dios Bay,
An’ dreamin’ arl the time o’ Plymouth Hoe.
Yarnder lumes the island, yarnder lie the ships,
Wi’ sailor lads a-dancin’ heel-an’-toe,
An’ the shore-lights flashin’, an’ the night-tide dashin’
He sees et arl so plainly as he saw et long ago.

Drake he was a Devon man, an’ ruled the Devon seas,
(Capten, art tha sleepin’ there below?),
Rovin’ tho’ his death fell, he went wi’ heart at ease,
An’ dreamin’ arl the time o’ Plymouth Hoe,
“Take my drum to England, hang et by the shore,
Strike et when your powder’s runnin’ low;
If the Dons sight Devon, I’ll quit the port o’ Heaven,
An’ drum them up the Channel as we drummed them long ago.”

Drake he’s in his hammock till the great Armadas come,
(Capten, art tha sleepin’ there below?),
Slung atween the round shot, listenin’ for the drum,
An’ dreamin’ arl the time o’ Plymouth Hoe.
Call him on the deep sea, call him up the Sound,
Call him when ye sail to meet the foe;
Where the old trade’s plyin’ an’ the old flag flyin’,
They shall find him, ware an’ wakin’, as they found him long ago.

So long

…and the sad gypsy sang for his bottle of wine, and I sang along for mine.
-Jose Feliciano

Those days, we were dangerously close to dying,
To the end of all the longing we mistook
For grand poesie.
Lost on the road to anywhere,
We stepped toward no paradise,
Discarded all loving touch
But for human companionship,
Asking too much of the world, unable to grasp
The small treasures.

If there’s something missed, something lost,
It’s only the wide-open sky we saw
Through vinegar eyes,
Our salted wounds as yet unburied.

Come back to me, my own true self,
Come back, and we’ll slip away
To some long, true corner
And watch the setting sun.

Father’s day

I no longer imagine speaking to him
Explaining what I see of life, alert for the slight
Tremor of the eyelid
Some signal, some connection

Once, in a dream, he called me to join him
Held out a crumbling hand
I kicked him away, catching his chest
Exploding with the dust of dying
Hollow as the years of living

I look at an old photograph,
A young officer, impish gleaming eyes,
A girl on either arm

I think we might have come to terms,
The two of us,
But he died somewhere in the old country
Long before his wraith gave me life

A tanka for the changing season

Change comes
And the wind looms
In the late winter sky
How suddenly small and low
The walls around us

Snow, again

Unbidden, it comes all the same
Without malice, unaware and uninterested
In our dreams or desires

Without even innocence
Its promise of sweet seclusion
Sequestered beneath the pale sameness

Dissolving in the salty mired streets
White and gray in a death spiral
A love embrace unlike any

Seen since the last snowfall
What may be, what could be
Belong to the feckless air

Oh, I can dream, all right
But only until recalled
By bickering gulls

Geese barking orders,
Or the shrill outrage of the
Woodpecker’s call

A field mouse trips nervously
Across an ice dam
Vultures patrol the freeway

Food from top to bottom
Interested only in replication
The slaughter of millions

But a byproduct of procreation
So long as enough survive to breed
Or not, and even then,

Some beast waits anxiously in the wings
For just enough change
Just enough opportunity

And still, falls the snow.