Dragonflies And Mayflies On The River

Below is a work-in-progress, which keeps changing whether or not it works!

That's no longer true. Endless revisions have led close to a finished effort now. I'm very pleased wiith this poem now that began as one of my most casual "blog" poems. Sometimes, strange things happen.

Last update: 08/07/08

Wings And Wages On The River

I been down to the river With my headphones on, I was listening to the blessed nothing I was deep into the rhythm of the bleeding in my soul! Oh, it was coming in so clear, It was coming in so clean— It was like I wasn't there, It was like there was no I, Only the part that listens or mistens When the breezes come so strong That we all believe in the river at last and nothing else, The river that flows so fast beneath us even while we dream! If life doesn't fester while we sleep, If the corpse of your or my gone sister in the twilight doesn't weep While the rest of us jive smartasses Have ripened on the bough and jeered at death, But still we nearly fall to ground and rot While we await the next hard leap and dodge the cops! All the darkness in this designated box just smells at first Like some lost lady's purse imbued with the toxic smell Of black perfume and used kleenex and stale cough drops— But before the careless undertaker Lights the incense or the candles, Before the well-dressed ladies turn away and shrug And go out together to light up another smoke, Even the drunk old doctor snorts And says he thinks the whole thing stinks! Now it's been coming on so heedlessly, all could see, All pigment blue entombed like gross tattoos In all the softish folds of flesh On all the boys and girls these days Who have fattened so they have such veins, Who say they don't like to read, And indeed no one here does read, Not even with the gilding added to these heavy hieroglyphs and Not where this expensive deep-cloaked velvet lining shines From every corner of this slightly damaged royal bier! That same gold-leaved brass-adorned wooden casket We imagine for each other in these days, It shows just like a cold despair in here Except it's rather pretty and it costs much more! Though there is no mention of the worms, There's a fell and musky fume inside our heads That pulls the pure blind air right out of me And out of you, And the hairs on our arms and in our ears And in our nostrils stand straight out now As if electrified or stung by acrid house-fire smoke! Oh, if I could have always only heard you say That we will wed and wed again And never ever part, the winged catbirds And the sparrows that stayed might not just play, And the angels who some said were standing by And counting coup amid the timid varicolored turtledoves Then could rise and float away from all these ashen aches, And all but I could sail into the heavens high above and far away, Further than a Fender guitar tune a gypsy plays for strangers That is so loud it almost makes the angels sing, Further than a lover’s best-known song he plays as if His own soft heart-beat on hard piano keys in his living room. I guess I'd be left outdoors to rise within myself as if in song, As high as ever need could be on mortal earth, While those aloft knew suddenly what Beauty was And blushed as if it mattered and then they called my name, Daring all that ever dared in one of us on earth— Now all took heart, And all was well in paradise, And I content to please them all— You know we'll never fly again like this, Like straight-vaned arrows that soared so true (We never knew!) And pierced both heaven and the nothing all at once— For after that, my nerves assert, we will all be sent back down! We'll be okay, but the flood will come And we'll be low, locked down, Viewing first the dragonflies that search And then the mayflies that never can escape, never sleep, And all are mixed like fog just flitting on the river. They seem to joust at times, Jiving through their tiny lives, akin to ours, Never moaning, never mourning as we do, Or so it seems— There's just their lightly veined exquisite double pairs of vanes Falling and accumulating as they surf Near the shaded bushes at the still water's edge While a child must watch in wonder. It is almost like a whispering at some ghostly wake, But the child will never know it— For him, it's just a river going on for now, Purely water full of life That moves the wind that powers wings And sings now softly, with you, with me, And with that small blonde child, How the wings that shall remain they still must rise one time more, But here seem still and are as ready for the restless living And beyond as it is possible to be, Those wings that only go so far, And dart about so fast, and only last a while. THE END