Art Night at St. John’s Church: May 3, 2025
Without a Thought
without a thought,
the neighbor’s backyard
turns green~ William Higginson
Without a thought
the sea-green rhododendron
suddenly sprouts pink blossoms
in the emeraldness of May.
Hot pink fronts the green
until the gardener snips
the summer-roasted buds.
It’s a show for the higher brain.
Plants don’t know
the meaning of words
like pink and green
or note the nanosecond
when spring arrives
or understand the importance
of timely pruning.
The rhody does its thing
without a thought.
Without a thought,
the sweltering sun ambles across
Seattle’s cloudless sky
like a super slow-mo
flame-encircled dragster
popping wheelies
on the silent strip overhead.
Our clueless star
does its daily thing
without a thought.
Without a thought,
the uncarved block reveals itself
to the carver.
The carver, a thinker,
is keen to see
into the true nature
of the uncarved block,
though truth can only be known
without a thought.
That annoying pedagogue consciousness
is chased away
and carver and wood are one.
Carving starts when thinking stops;
thinking stops when carving starts.
All this
and only this
without a thought.
Skywaves
After living with roommate Jim
and his country music for three months,
I was ready to go home to Top-40 L.A.
To my surprise, I liked the music
on KSNN radio, the market leader
for youth in southern Idaho.
The most popular disk jockey
was afternoon host Tumbleweed Tom,
an Englishman from County Durham.
Relentlessly up-beat country rhythms
accompanied the so-sad stories:
I lost my job, my girlfriend moved out,
the dog died, and my truck broke down—
all before lunch!
But I reached my 90-day limit.
Time for a change.
I loaded my ’52 Olds and headed south,
passing the glorious Wasatch Range
snow-glinting in the afternoon sun,
and entered the teal-tinted sagebrush
and red-rock country of southern Utah.
Another three hours to St. George.
Dusk. Spinning the dial on the car radio,
searching for something—anything—
that might be interesting,
I landed on 1520, a rock & roll station
in Oklahoma City. Oklahoma City?
How is that possible?
It was a mix of Top-40 tunes and oldies,
a new term at the time.
I recall “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,”
and “Runaway” by Del Shannon.
Tunes by Gene Pitney and Elvis, too.
But the oldies were the best part.
I sang along with the doo-wop classics
never heard in Idaho or Utah.
Danny and the Juniors. The Drifters,
The Penguins. The Platters.
The best moments of middle school
and high school flooded back
in a three-hour concert,
a fabulous rock & roll Götterdämmerung.
Bus Poem: Hard Times
Her long and pallid fingers
grip tight an impish pair
of toddler boys
as she climbs onto the bus.
I lift my eyes to a stretched-long face
as white as chalk—
a face evocative of the Great Depression
when hard times were black and white.
Her photo-flash whiteness indicates
the final stage of terminal fatigue.
Translucent skin,
sanded smooth from toddler work,
is the thinnest possible film
over a blue vein near the collarbone.
Thin lips are drained of color.
Fatigue’s garment is the absence of color.
Her large protective hands
caress the boys.
The three of them form
a triangle of touching and soft murmuring.
The boys are rested,
well-behaved and full of color,
but she is black and white,
a bright dust-bowl face of exhaustion.
My Son Keeps Getting Fired
Chuck retired after a long career
in sales and marketing.
He understood the world
of contract work,
but Mother never did.
Chuck died in 2001
and Mother moved into the Chateau.
Meanwhile, I drifted
from job to job as a writer,
continuously employed,
and making good money.
Mother did not know
about the good-money part.
She told her new friends
at the Chateau
her son could not hold a job
for more than a year.
She said, “My son keeps getting fired.”
I tried to explain
what it’s like to be a free-lancer,
but she was stuck in the past
where a man turned himself in
at the local plant.
They put the cuffs on him
and he stayed for the next 30 years.
“That’s how your father and Chuck did it.
Why can’t you?”
Beyond the Narrowing
for Mother
The narrowing of life from health and wealth,
from one blessing to another,
from years of privilege and steadfast friends,
to loss and loneliness,
to hourly pills and daily shots,
to weekly transfusions of platelets,
to pain and weariness, and now to this.
Life narrows, narrows to nothing,
and with your death I am forced to see
how the narrowing worked for you.
I thought of you when death came for me.
Confined to bed unable to breathe
surrounded by faceless forms in masks and shields
(strangers who knew I had no chance),
I passed through a wormhole of confinement
to a faraway alabaster beach
where I saw a sun bridge over wine-red waters
spreading to a timeless immeasurable darkness
in the whirling cosmos.
NOTE: The first half of this poem was written after Mary died. The second half was written during the COVID-19 pandemic.