Slippers

Our host in St. Petersburg asked us to wear slippers inside his apartment.  I hadn't worn slippers in years and began to think about them. 

  Slippers

Soft-soled stepping stones
between barefoot and leatherbound.
Loungewear lovechild
of sock and of shoe.
Backless, strapless, breathless
silken hushed bedroom sound.
The something more comfortable
we can all slip into.
Foot friendly shuffle board;
full boot’s first sketch.
The lightweight toewarmer
even Fido can fetch.
Fuzzy pink or classic cordovan,
bunny-eared or elegantly spare –
they’re one thing that toddler,
scholar, dancer, daughter, grandfather,
and even Hugh Hefner can all proudly wear.


Note:  Hugh Hefner started Playboy magazine and is known for lounging around his mansion in robe and slippers. 

Rewinding the Russian Museum

After working our way through the Russian Museum of art in St. Petersburg, we had to hurry back past everything we had seen to get to the exit.

    Rewinding the Russian Museum

The 20th century comes to a dead end
just beyond Soviet realism
after we have spent the morning
walking through the previous eight.
Some rooms are closed for refurbishing,
so we have to go back the way we came.

As we quickly reverse chronology
and hurry to lunch, patterns emerge
in what we speed past. Portraits mostly climb
the social ladder – beggar to artist
to merchant to nobles – then also scale
the walls salon style, piles of plump princesses
and dashing dukes. The heroes also change:
Communist infantry give way to charging
cavalry then medieval knights midst
landscapes that gain and lose detail, becoming
more then less then more then less like photographs.

The saints march in and out as well, disguised
as workers and soldiers under Stalin,
cloaked in irony with the avant-garde
then bathed in glorious light until we get
to the 12th century again and golden-haired
angel Gabriel gazing wide-eyed with wonder
and sadness toward all the ages yet to come.

Painting Poems

After going to several art museums, I began thinking of the connections between painting and writing poems.

    Painting Poems

Sometimes I work with watercolors.
A few fresh strokes and a line is done;
any more would only muddy the meter
and lose whatever had once been won.

Other times I work in oils:
Layer upon layer, word upon word,
writing and rewriting each line or verse
tying to better what had once been worse.

I’ll let you decide which type this is,
whether these wandering rhymes are art or chance –
the random stumblings of a blind man
or the choreography of a dance.

Playing at the Palace

I wrote this after visiting Peterhof and seeing the trick fountains.

      Playing at the Palace

Peter the Great was a practical
joker. First he had his people
build his city on a swamp.
Next he had trick fountains
soak his guests at Peterhof.
Then he promised his son a
pardon if he returned to Russia
where he tortured him to death.
Only a monarch makes such jests,
mocking all until his final breath.

Watching Russian TV

This one is a sequel of sorts to the end of the last poem.

                           Watching Russian TV

I tune in on the middle of an American
movie, which would be confusing enough
since I haven’t seen it before
and since John Cusack and Morgan Freeman
both seem to be bad guys this time,
but what is worse is each time they speak
there is a Slavonic echo –
not quite dubbing,
more like spoken subtitles
so that, since I don’t speak Russian
and the English is half-obliterated,
I can’t sort out the double and triple
crossing plot – plus with the Russian added
it now makes it sound like the KGB
is somehow involved.

I can make out the occasional pazhalsta
or spaseeba, two of my four Russian words,
in the dialogue, but since there is a lot
of shooting going on, not many people
are being polite. Eventually, John saves
Morgan, and Morgan shoots some other
bad guy. Then John Cusack is at a picnic
with what seem to be his family
but formerly appeared to be
his hostages.

They are all looking happy
until something comes on
the radio, John’s brow furrows
with concern and
the movie ends
and I’m left wondering:
Why do all the plot twists
come in languages
I don’t understand?

The Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul

This cathedral has an incredibly tall spire.

                                          The Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul

                                                                                   Saint Petersburg, Russia
                                   It took two saints to inspire such a tall steeple
                                   to reach nearly half-way to heaven with its own
                                   impressive, ungainly elegance – like the awkward
                                   grace of a giraffe or the absurd dignity of lofty Russian
                                   army hats that make the soldiers on the street look so
                                   large and official – and so much like kids playing at war.

                                  The golden spire has been hit and singed by lightning, but
                                   escaped the German bombs during the nine hundred day
                                   blockade of what was then Leningrad, despite being
                                   at the bull’s eye center of a fortress and a prison.

                                   Now the city is saintly again since Communism has fallen
                                   or has put on a different mask. Saint Petersburg once more,
                                   as its namesake founder had intended – but, then again, not quite
                                   the same: McDonald’s, cafes, and sex shops interspersed among
                                   the palaces, churches and museums. A TV tower now stands
                                   taller than Saints Peter and Paul, making the unseen
                                   even more visible.

Time and the Teacher

This is the first post from my travels in Europe.  I did not have time or consistent Internet access to post things then, but I did write a few that I will post the next several days.

                                                     Time and the Teacher

                                         He mostly measured his days in periods
                                         or question marks and seldom in exclamation
                                         points. 8:10 and classes commenced,
                                         11:40 lunch, 2:20 sports-
                                         all with the regularity of bells
                                         that would make Pavlov proud.

                                         Then his sabbatical came along
                                         with travel through eight time zones.
                                         His watch band broke in London,
                                         so he carries time in his pocket
                                         where he can’t see it and stops
                                         calculating when he should be tired.

                                         For a while, he rises with the sun,
                                         first in England, then Denmark,
                                         but here in Saint Petersburg, the early
                                         summer sun never sets at all. Now he
                                         sleeps without darkness and awakes only
                                         when he wants to write a poem.