GARBO PASSES
She didn’t really want to be alone
she just didn’t want to be
with most of the people who wanted
to be with her
She
just didn’t have
anything more to give
to those who only wanted to take
She didn’t really want to be alone
The last thing she really wanted was
to be alone
THE WORDS
(played to the beat of a big sad drum)
The words / and a touch /
would have meant /
so much /
But it’s gone / and it’s gone
and you know / it’s gone
Yet sometimes, / in the night /
it still throbs /
Like a phantom / limb
SHEEP IN THE NIGHT
It was in the old Taos Hotel in New Mexico. I had just spent
the night there on my way back from the Light Institute in
Santa Fe, and picked up a book in their little reading room.
It contained this wonderful description.
A poet is something strange and apart, a favourite of the gods, who have bestowed on him an extreme sensitiveness and sensibility,
like open doors and windows, to subtle and delicate impressions that but bruise themselves against other men’s walls; these he captures ad coaxes to sing to him, and intoxicated by the beauty of their melodies builds for them a golden cage and feeds them on honey from the sweetest flowers in his garden: till they in their happiness become so musical, fancying themselves in heaven , that Jove confers immortality on them, and swinging in their golden cages they sing sweetly forever, lifting up the hearts of men in every clime and generation.
As I read in the lobby a lady sat down opposite me in a comfortable old sofa, about four feet away across a gently rugged coffee table.
I had heard the desk clerk greet her as she entered and ask her how the writing was going. We smiled at each other as she sat down. There was a warmth and a recognition in the smile and a knowing that we would each have liked to say something, but we didn’t.
I really would have liked to share the paragraph with her,
but I didn’t.
Later I passed her and a companion having lunch and we again shared the , “Hi, old friend I’ve know forever,” smiles, but didn’t speak
A couple of hours later I was sprinting across the street on the way back to the hotel when a car stopped to let me cross in front of it. It was her again. This time we both laughed and smiled and went our separate ways.
Maybe we were laughing at fate and it’s three good tries, and
our ability to ignore them all, or the lack of courage that had
allowed us to pass – like two sheeps in the night
SOLO
It was first solo cross country night
with all the fears of those new at flight
But the full winter moon lit a chess-board
of snow covered stubble and black fallow fields
and small creeks, winding east, from the mountains
All of the fears into the liquid moonlight melted
while flared nerves stayed open to the beauty
And the Cessna ran smooth at five thousand feet
I couldn’t have been higher, at fifty
TOO CROWDED
My folks took some time off in the sixties
from their Saskatchewan ranching and
traveled down through South Texas
One day they stopped to talk to an
old cowboy sittin and a wittlin
on a rickety ranch porch
When he found out where they were from he said
“Say – do you know a man up there
by the name of Bill Prior?”
They said “Yes, he’s an old bachelor who lives up
past our north pasture, why do you ask?”
“Well” he said, “About 1928 Bill and I are out lookin
for some strays when we see another rider
coming over the furthest hill.”
Bill said to me, “It’s getting too damn crowded
down here, I’m heading for Canada”
“He turned his horse North and I haven’t
seen him since”
THE LONELY MEN
Their little dark houses still dotted the prairie
when I was growing up
They all seemed to cling to the soil as if their
life force had all been used up in the long and
difficult transplanting, and they could hang on
but no longer grow
Or they stood alone and surrounded by sadness
and the small and smaller markers of what had
fallen to the reaper’s scythe
Their roots, loosened year after year
by the hot winds and the deep frosts
became more and more brittle
Until one by one they broke off
like tumbleweeds
and were gone