THE NEXT DIMENSION

                 When one’s last breath is fatefully expired,
                 Is there a spirit still that then remains
                 To prove a living body’s not required,
                 And many odd phenomena explains?

                 Suppose the soul’s then in another zone,
                 A spiritual dimension we can’t see,
                 No longer tethered to one’s flesh and bone,
                 Experiencing a new reality,
      
                 Which some have keenly seen while briefly dead,
                 Before resuscitation brought them back
                 To claim that angels, spirits gently led
                 Them toward a light that suddenly went black—

                      When they returned to Earthly consciousness,
                      Which then seemed not advancement but regress.

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TRIAL AND ERROR

                    The spirit, soul or essence that is life,
                    The breath we breathe as long as we’re alive,
                    The power that makes such animation rife
                    Is something more than accidents contrive.

                   That life originates from more than chance
                   Implies the presence of a guiding hand,
                   A providential gardener who plants
                   The seeds of life for reasons he has planned.

                   It seems that we especially are made
                   To ponder this essential mystery
                   Discovering how the game of life is played
                   And why it is that we have come to be.

                       The universe arrived at consciousness
                       In us, who’ve yet to prove that spells success.

*

LILY

                    To watch poor Lily die and be released
                    From all her chronic, painful maladies,
                    Which had from month to weary month increased,
                    Brought her and those who loved her final peace.

                   We saw how her last breath gently transpired
                   As she fell to the deepest sleep of all,
                   What we for ourselves hopefully desired
                   When captor Death arrests us as his thrall.

                   Yet now in all our lives a vacancy
                   Resounds with memories of growls and barks
                   No longer to be heard with empathy
                   By someone who to such beseeching harks,

                       Whose house is not the home it was before
                       When Lily was its Westie to adore.

*

THE MYSTERY

                     The deepest mystery we recognize
                     Is how the Universe has come to be,
                     And yet for all our science it defies
                     Our fruitless probes into Reality.

                    Yes, science has revealed some of its laws
                    That chemistry and physics have explained,
                    But still we have no knowledge what first cause
                    Brought it all forth, and how it is sustained.

                    Good Orderly Direction, nicknamed GOD,
                    Has given rise to our mythology
                    That postulates we have been made from sod,
                    The artifact of a grand deity,

                          For it seems simple logic to suppose
                          That ultimately like from like arose.

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THANKSGIVING

INSPIRED

                    When I’m inclined to ponder all there is—
                    The wonder, joy and marvel of it all,
                    An occupation that will make you diz-
                    zy as you view all things both great and small,

                   Then I am overwhelmed with ecstasy,
                   An exaltation mystically induced,
                   A glimpse into a new Reality
                  That makes me feel from human bondage loosed.

                  Once only did such exaltation lift
                  Me utterly beyond my normal state
                  And seemed to be a supernatural gift,
                  A source to motivate what I create,

                       Though ever after, when I’ve most desired,
                       I can access that source and be inspired.

*

G. O. D.

                    Good Orderly Direction, God’s own mind,
                    Pervades the Cosmos—the Akashic Field
                    By which what’s manifest has been designed,
                    Where all potentiality’s concealed.

                   Now here we are who fathom such intents,
                   A kind of matter risen to consciousness
                   And learning better to make sense
                   By science of what before was but a guess,

                  A superstitious fantasy or myth
                  Now giving way to cosmic theories,
                  A keener means to make discoveries with
                  And finally what’s ultimate may seize—

                       At which point we’ll have read the mind of God,
                       We progeny of Adam, once a clod.

*

DOGGEREL

                    The weather’s cool and Gyp would rather be
                    Outside in the back yard than here with me
                    And Tig, or so she thinks, but soon her bark
                    Proclaims she’s grown weary of her lark
                    And wants back in.  Perhaps the chirring squirrels
                    And chittering birds who all upbraid our girls
                    Have gotten on her nerves and changed her mind
                    And now for warmth and quiet she’s inclined.
                    “All right, old girl, then come on back inside,
                    Or stay there on the porch—as you decide.”
                    She came right in and took my handed treat,
                    A Greenie nub, which she plopped down to eat,
                         Which meant that Tiggy too got her reward
                         For doing nothing—just for being adored.

*

WALKABOUT COUPLET

                                           If you fall in a bush,
                                                 Then an azalea
                                           Is better than a briar,
                                                  Which will impale ya.

*

TRUE BELIEVERS

                    What matters more than what you may believe
                         Is how you have decided to behave,
                    For ideologies often deceive
                         And many a True Believer can deprave.

*

A LEGACY

                    For writing all these poems, I suffer from
                    Dissociated sensibility
                    As waiting for some apt ideas to come,
                    My mind explores its inner galaxy.
                    Were this free verse, I’d feel no such constraint,
                    My mind allowed to rove in any way;
                    I would not need the patience of a saint
                    With no such regulations to obey.
                    Yet, even so, I would not change my style
                    Because this kind of versing is a game
                    More entertaining, fashioned to beguile,
                    Which is, for poetry, its foremost aim.
                         By craft and subtle art, we poets strive
                         To leave behind some wonders that survive.

*

CALIBAN

                    “F**k your dogs!” he shouted from his car,
                    Idling in the dark across the street,
                    While Gyp and Tig, each twinkling like a star
                    With blinking safety lights stood near my feet,

                    And then he roared off, having no reply
                    From me, aghast at his discourtesy
                    And scorn, and for no reason I could spy—
                    It must have been long-festering misery.

                    “Who knows what evil lurks within the hearts
                    Of men?” the Shadow said on radio
                    When I was young, or how such illness starts,
                    But likely it arises from deep woe.

                       I’m sorry for the pain that shadowy man
                       Must suffer from, a modern Caliban.

*

A VEHICLE OF EXPRESSION

*

A LEGACY

                    For writing all these poems, I suffer from
                    Dissociated sensibility
                    As waiting for some apt ideas to come,
                    My mind explores its inner galaxy.
                    Were this free verse, I’d feel no such constraint,
                    My mind allowed to rove in any way;
                    I would not need the patience of a saint
                    With no such regulations to obey.
                    Yet, even so, I would not change my style
                    Because this kind of versing is a game
                    More entertaining, fashioned to beguile,
                    Which is, for poetry, its foremost aim.
                         By craft and subtle art, we poets strive
                         To leave behind some wonders that survive.

*

OFF

                    Our little Tiggy pup is loath to eat,
                    Although I’ve tempted her with every treat
                    She typically would gobble from my hand;
                    The way she acts, it might as well be sand.

                    We say dismissively, “She’s off her feed,”
                    Hoping that in a while we will succeed,
                    That with a walk perhaps and some fresh air,
                    She’ll eat again, responding to our care.

                    Meanwhile, we empathize.  She’s not herself—
                    A spritely, frolicsome and impish elf
                    Delighting us with all her sportive play,
                    Though now it seems her sunny sky’s gone gray.

                         She’ll rally soon, I’m sure, and this will pass,
                         Then she’ll be giving us her usual sass.

*

EVER CLEVER

                              Though bolder once and a great vaunter,
                              He’s older now and grown gaunter;

                              While formerly he’d tease and taunt her,
                              Now normally he doesn’t want her;

                              He’d rather take a stroll and saunter
                              Than bother her and be her haunter.

*

BOUND VERSE IV

                    It’s paradoxical that verse that’s bound
                    Gives better access to what is profound
                    Than unconstructed verse that rambles free
                    Though can’t induce enlightening ecstasy,
                    And yet this tight restraint of beat and rhyme
                    Entices entry to someplace sublime
                    Revealing to imagination’s eye
                    What otherwise one would not easily spy.
                    There’s magic in the web of such a scheme
                    That gives one entry to the realm of dream
                     Provoking visions never seen before
                     Perhaps to revel in, perhaps deplore,
                         Yet all these virtues happily belong
                         To poetry enchanting with its song.

*

A SPRITELY DELIGHT

                    In fourteen lines a sonnet weaves its spell
                    Iambically deployed across the page,
                    A little song where many subjects dwell
                    All governed by a puckish kind of mage,
                    For where it tends is unpredictable
                    As metrical exigencies decree,
                    With subjects serious or fantastical
                    Revealed along the way spontaneously,
                    Which is a reason to indulge in such
                    A baffling but exciting exercise
                    Where what you would pursue eludes your clutch
                    Till suddenly your knavish sprite supplies
                         Just what you need to end what you’ve begun
                         And all of your frustration turns to fun.

*

THIRSTY SQUIRREL

BEREFT

                    Two hours on Saturdays with Garrison
                    On radio, his Prairie Home Companion,
                    Completes your week, feeds your humanity
                    By ringing in the spirit of sanity.

                    With songs and skits and stories to engage
                    You and regale you from Fitzgerald’s stage,
                    He’ll take you thence to his Lake Wobegon
                    Whose weekly news will never make you yawn
                    But rather wish, and wistfully, that you
                    Had come from such a place and it were true.

                    That he’ll be soon retiring is more
                    Than sad, a situation to deplore—
                    When Wobegon is gone, our prairie home,
                    Where then will our imaginations roam?

*

WATER CLOUD

NIGHT BOAT

FLORADORA

MUSING III

                    Again I sit to meditate and muse,
                    Cocked back in my soft chair, awaiting news,
                    Some motivating notion to pursue,
                    Of which, until I sit, I have no clue,
                    For poetry proceeds from such repose,
                    Releasing what subconscious thinking knows
                    In its own time and of its own accord
                    As patient contemplation’s choice reward.
                    But should I try to urge this process on,
                    My Muse refuses to be put upon,
                    And my mental momentum sputters, stalls
                    Till what had gaily bound along, then crawls.
                         My poems rarely reach to the sublime,
                         But if they do, they do in their good time.

*

PRETTY ROOMS

                    Before beginning a new verse, I brood
                    While waiting for a good idea to hatch;
                    Until the song begins, this interlude
                    Allows apt words and images to match,
                    Determining the course I’m set upon,
                    Defining the unique parameters
                    Of this new music, waving my baton
                   To keep the beat as sound with sense concurs.
                   If it's a sonnet, then it takes a turn
                   Just past the midway point and heads for home
                   With no space left for any new concern:
                   A sonnet after all’s no epic poem.
                       While sprawling epics make half-acre tombs,
                       It’s said in sonnets we build pretty rooms.

*

OF SIR FRANCIS BACON

                    Of this, of that, of almost anything—
                    I never tired of inquiring;
                    I once was England’s foremost essayist,
                    My curiosity the busiest
                    Of anyone I knew, insatiable,
                    And of my scribblings I had cartons full:
                    Of fame, of honor, and of glory I
                    Aspired by always asking what and why
                    And who and how and wherefore endlessly,
                    Urgent to fathom all reality.
                        And though I’d never be definitive,
                        I prayed that my attempts to know might live.

*

SOLICITUDE

                    
                    A weeping woman in the Walgreen’s lot
                    Accosted me and said her family
                    Was homeless, and she put me on the spot:
                    “Twenty, forty dollars, a motel’s fee?”

                   Near fifty, maybe, portly, poorly dressed,
                   And by herself, as far as I could tell,
                   She genuinely seemed to me distressed,
                   And something in my chest began to swell.

                   I took my wallet out and opened it:
                   There were two twenties, which I gave to her,
                   Enough, I hoped, to be a benefit,
                   To which she softly said, “I thank you, sir.”

                       She walked away, and I went to my car,
                       Happy to have listened to my heart. 

*

THE FLAUNTER’S DECLINE

                              Though bolder once, and a great vaunter,
                              He’s older now and grown gaunter;
                              He’ll molder soon, this erstwhile taunter,
                              His shoulders slumped, his gait a saunter.

*