RodWords

Selections From 

BOTTLE OF WATER 

BOX OF LIGHT 

April 1995 to April 2001

BRUSH

Saw a paper poster

on a telephone pole:

BRUSH WANTED

Paint-happy Lord,

use me.

I supervised the church bulletin, printed on a press like this one.

         BIRTHED IN INK

This machine of heavy metal --

Silver, dark grey, black:

Spinning, whirring, slamming

     with a clank-bump

     to sudden stop:

The Printing Press.

Wheels, rollers, handles,

red knobs on shiny columns,

A small metal window -- with numbers

on tumblers behind the glass.

It retires, here, ink-dry,

Cold. Cleaned. Silent.

No pages flip and travel

over/under spinning drums

clapping in the catch-bin.

No train-track symphony of

clattering, pock-pocketing,

rattle-tack thumpeting.

Silent. Here. Now.

An air fan labors in the ceiling.

The print room.

Millions and millions of

words were here,

birthed in ink.

         I See You

THOUGHTS IN FLIGHT

         Jeri

You grow more and

more amazing to me.

More and more

beautiful. I see you

in the Windhaven entryway,

stenciling a painted pattern on the wall.

Or in the kitchen, cooking

a scrumptious surprise.

Or intently looking at the

prints of your photographs 

I just brought back

from a trip to

San Antonio Photolab.

I see us hugging in the kitchen.

I see you with our children.

I hear you at the piano

or see you sitting there

like a diamond, as your

young piano students perform,

one by one.

Your sparkling eyes.

Your voice when you say my name.

Your laugh when I am funny.

The very air I long to breathe.

         Benjamin

(two years old in two months)

I see you in your high chair

with a big smile on your face,

along with spaghetti smeared

around your lips,

on your cheeks,

maybe in your hair,

then, "Down, down!"

and how you toddle

importantly off to

your next destination.

You really hug me sometimes,

around my neck.

We do big strong bear-hugs.

We make grunting sounds

like

big strong bears.

I see

your sweet sandy hair

and rosy cheeks. 

You like to carry things around, watch puddits.*

"Up, up!" you say, commanding me

to put on the puddits for you.

I say, "Is that you?" and

you look down at my face, smiling,

as I carry you on my shoulders.

*puppets

         Julian

     (six years old)

I see you asleep in your bed,

when I come to get you up for school.

You're hugging your doggie,

maybe a Beanie Baby.

Maybe a Barbie. Later,

you ask me,

"Toys at the table?"

"Toys in the car?"

You finish your cereal and

bring your bowl and

spoon to the counter.

You get excited when

you read in your reader.

I see you in Mrs. Welch's 

Kindergarten class, with

navy jumper, white top

and red bow in your hair.

Maybe you have a pony-tail.

I see your pastel-blue blanket.

And a very nice drawing on a

paper with 100 written over it.

Often, I find you in your 

closet, quietly playing.

         Jonathan

      (eight years old)

These are the Gameboy days.

you love soccer and basketball

and I see us, when we went

to the Galaxy movie theater

to see "Star Kid" together.

But right now you like

the Gameboy you got 

for Christmas, with a 

Star Wars cartridge.

I can see you holding

the Gameboy in your hands. 

Once you turned the peg 

on your cello and told Mama

it was out of tune.

Often we set up the bright yellow cones

in the backyard, and try to

kick goals past each other

across the green grass.

We always used to play

"Where's my blanket?"

and sometimes, 

only sometimes,

we play it once again.

Sometimes you sleep

in your 

black and white soccer pajamas.

Muslin and Tinsel and Sand

Of Ruins and Rockets

and tin-rubber robots

of muslin and tinsel

and sand.

Of cupboard and castle

of timepiece and tool box

of echoing clocks

in the hall.

Of ferns and fairies

of wizard and rhyme

of flame and fog and

futures,

Of wind and feather

of orchard and squid

of pebbles and pockets

and syrup.

Of dirt-rock and diamonds

and darkening depth

of molecule and 

great swirling stars,

Of window to London

of door into night

Through keyhole and 

mouse-hole

I quietly climb,

arriving

in deep worlds 

of fantasy.

Beautiful Ghost

I trace You

in Summery lines,

Find You, connecting

the evening stars into

your shape, I

Read You: The Dove:

Robed in Earth-feathers,

The Fire:

a-dance over human breath,

The Wisp of Whisper:

Impossibly soft and close.

Or I dream,

sensing You,

Robed in a glistening gown

waltzing the galaxies.

I hear the swish of

Your dance upon the glassy floors:

You, Beautiful Ghost,

Graceful over the abyss,

Sweeping through time and dimension,

Around sound and 

entwined with creation.

Amazingly, You answer

my every call, and arrive

invisibly to mingle with

my poetic intention.

You cascade 

as Down-Pour Fountain,

Living Water,

spash-smashing

crush-crashing past

all of my failures.

I can only pass my kiss

through the air,

Beautiful Holy

Ghost.

         IN THE KICKING OF A STONE

I remember you in the kicking of a stone.

From your sleek lady-shoe, the stone shot forward,

a perfect straight, skipping as if pulled by invisible string

popping like popcorn on the pavement

in clean Olympic bounces.

Ahead, there, it came to a stop.

'Till I kicked the stone,

then from the blunt rubber of my tennis shoe

the stone would careen off, in angled ricochets,

flailing toward the opposite curb or

flung up into a sunny square of lawn and white-picket bordering

...if I ever struck the stone at all.

Mostly. I missed.

Mostly, I miss you Mutti.

Always, I remember you, in the kicking of a stone.

Key

The universe reflected

in the eye of a fly

A single drop of water

equals oceans everywhere

A cell within my body

sings the music of my past

the song of generations before me.

Ahead there shines a city

in the realms of evermore

And the doorknob looks

exactly

like the stone that

rolled away

from the tomb.

And the key:

A baby in

 a manger.

 A collection of multi-track music originally on cassette.
Hear tracks at rodsounds on Sound Cloud.

         SILENT DIVER

The banana is:

An old-fashioned silent-movie diver,

with striped bathing suit, mustache and yellow hair-cap,

Gracefully caught mid-dive, arched,

hands palm-to-palm over her his head as he

springs from a diving board, a second

before the splash foams out of a pool

in the garden of an old hotel

in Los Angeles.

Comical, the banana, especially when peeled, eaten

and the flopsy peel-shapes flung through the air.

A slip, trip and ka-POW for the slapstick Vaudevillian.

Or, before peeling, a telephone for the circus clown,

An old West pistol for the kindergarten cowboy,

A soft, ridiculous food for the monkey to rip open and devour.

Silent, the banana.

A porpoise in a snap-shot, drenched in sea-air sunlight, leaping into clouds

over ocean, yellowed from salt-spray and centuries,

framed in a seashell frame, on

the mantle, over the fire place, on a Winter's night

in Maine.

         MUSIC IN THE ORANGE

The rind of the orange has ripples,

A leathery, smooth, pock-marked plastic skin.

So that room-light dapples and dances

across the orange orb, ripples of white.

The rind of the orange gathers at the bottom

into wrinkles, darted by a single stump,

very small, a button inserted into gathered folds.

There is a music in the orange, the splash of

Summer rains, a cooling nectar, symphonic like

the burst of Spring.

         WHISPERS THE LEMON

Cousin to the orange,

the lemon sports a dull and shiny skin.

Like a shaven chin, dimples where whiskers used to be.

Ripening from green to yellow, lemons

turn their tree-home into a carnival

of golden sun-balls, picked with a snap from the twig.

The lemon, cut through skin and tissue, glistens proudly

at the severed halves.

The lemon slice, squeezed by fingers, drips juice and whispers,

"I am the flavor you will never forget."