Set Strike

I just took down the set for my last production as a high school director.

     Set Strike               

First, we remove what makes things

other than they are: the burlap bark,

the styrofoam stone, the painted canvas

cover – all that we pretend is real.

Next, we break down the basics,

the bones that held it all together

with wood and sweat and steel.

Last, comes the masking tape

marking where things were

and where they would be,

leaving nothing but an empty

space where it all begins

again by feel. 

Hasenpfeffer

Mostly a true story.  (I thought I posted this last Monday but just found it saved as a draft.)

                                               Hasenpfeffer

                               The night of the big game, I ascended

                               to the P.A. booth, chosen to spot

                               the rival players for Mr. Sosebee

                               on that wet and rainy Friday.

                               Time after time, I couldn’t pick out

                               a number from the muddy pile, but

                               Mr. Sosebee would still confidently announce,

      “Hasenpfeffer in on the tackle….Hasenpfeffer

       on that catch…four more yards for Hasenpfeffer.”

       It was the last time I was asked to be a spotter.

                               After the game, I found my friend Steve

                               still in pads and cleats in the locker room,

                               staring at the cracked concrete floor.

                               “That Hasenpfeffer killed us,” he muttered.

                               “Don’t take it so hard,” I said.

       “He does that to everyone.”

                               

Climate Change

Just a brief thought about meteorology - and other things. (This is not a reflection on the current state of any relationships.)

            Climate Change

Something hangs in the space between us

and traps what little heat we have,

making our storms more fierce and frequent

without clearing the air for good or bad.  

The Secret Annex

There's one secret we all keep from ourselves- or try to.

                    The Secret Annex

           

            When I took my then teenage son to see

            The Diary of Anne Frank, I assumed

            he knew her story, but found him near

            tears at the end as he asked in disbelief,

            “After all that, she died?  She died?”

            And although we know that’s the ending

            of every tale, still we cry incredulously,

           “After all this, we die?  We die?”

A Hazy Shade of Spring

This began with the light haze of new leaves in the trees and the old Simon and Garfunkel song about winter.

       A Hazy Shade of Spring

The leaves start as the lightest green

fog, caught in the trees’ bare branches

then condense into darker clouds

summoning spring’s perfect storm –  

the sudden shower of birdsong,

bright lightning of the newborn sun,

then the comic thunder of the frogs.

Fourth and Inches

  For foreign readers, you should know that in American football, teams try to advance the ball ten yards (a little less than ten meters) in four tries (or downs).  Most of the game is a tangled chaos of arms, and legs, and bodies - and the ball is placed after each play by pure guesswork.  But if a team is close to the ten yards, suddenly the game becomes an exact science, and the officials bring out a ten yard long chain to see if the team has made it far enough.
   "Fourth and Inches" would mean that the team came up just a little short after three tries. They would need to decide to either kick the ball to the other team or try one more time to get those last few inches. (If they fail, the other team would get the ball closer to where they want to be.)
   As I hope you can tell, though, this poem comes to be about more than football.

    Fourth and Inches

After all those approximations,

we pretend to be precise

and bring out the chains,

buy the ring, write the will

then replay every thing

until we think

we’ve got it right 

and come to accept

as absolute

the purely arbitrary. 

On the Slopes of Mount Olympus

      On the Slopes of Mount Olympus

     

       it is hard to tell the difference

       between what is being built

       and what has been abandoned:

       both stand empty, waiting 

       for the earth to move again.