StarPoet Newsletter Vol. X, No. XXXIX

It seldom rains
In the morning in Arlington,
Preferring to catch us
On our way home,
A good drenching thunderstorm
With electrical garnish
To heighten the excitement
Of an August afternoon.

We divide our time equally
Between sidestepping cloud bursts
And gawking at images 
Of distant cloud formations
That may or may not ever reach us
But keep the jokeful weather guy
Gainfully employed.

Cop cars at the four corners,
Chopper circling overhead,
A man with a macheté
Somewhere on the streets:
Poet waits innocently
 For the bus to rescue her,
Listening to the cop
 Question the shirtless victim,
Trying to deciper the Spanish
 As she searches three-sixty
  For a sign of the predator,
Wishing her bus would arrive
 Before she becomes
  A photograph in a crime scene.

A birthday must be celebrated
To mark our passing
Through this lush and violent world;
Our birth and death are the least of it,
But how we live provides meaning
To that which may have none
But what we give it.

At 3 A. M. the lightning flashes,
Thunder rolls in the distance,
The dog is restless, joins us in bed,
Hoping his humans can calm things.

A sudden explosion directly overhead
Shatters any pretense of quiet,
The whole house shakes, the heavens rumble,
The hiss and pop of electricity strikes close.

We can no more control the skies
Than our border collie, the waves of the ocean,
But that doesn't mean he doesn't try and would like us
To do something about all the boom-booms.

One of my earliest memories as a little girl
Is of a neighbor man two homes down,
He and his wife would stop to talk to me
When I walked past their house
On my way back from school:

One day he was gone
And his wife lived there alone.
He is the first emptiness
I remember in my life.

On August Fourth in Nineteen Eleven
German Schaefer stole SECOND BASE,
An unremarkable occurence even for Schaefer;
But on the next pitch he stole FIRST BASE,
Something that was never done before or since,
But something that the rules did not prohibit.

He said that he liked so much stealing second
He thought he'd like to try it again;
That's just the way it is
'Cause that's the way German was,
In August, in Griffith Park,
In Nineteen Eleven with the Senators.

Note:
in 1911 Herman A. "Germany" Schaefer hit .334
in 128 games for the Washington Senators

I rose from the chill ground ... And buried him where he fell.
-- Walt Whitman  Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night

The current edition of the American People
Prefer to win wars without working to win,
No sweat, no blood, no stumbles or setbacks,
Just one glorious march to victory and the sea.

We so love a parade and expect them to come quickly
So we can greet them with loud cheering from the sidelines,
But don't ask us to sacrifice or stay true to our commitment
If the war takes longer than the summer television season.

There's too much violence, too much pain and conscience,
Even though we now send all volunteers,
We don't want to be reminded of our lack of involvement
While we watch our articulate, young American President.

As we would not die ourselves, we would not ask
Others to do our dirty work, preferring to defend
Our democracy with words and good intentions,
And would leave the Republic to survive on its own.

... let us die to make men free.
-- Julia Ward Howe, Battle Hymn of the Republic,
    February 1862 in the Atlantic Monthly.

Have you not killed before,
Have you ever drawn blood?
Questions never asked,
Answers never offered,
No matter how close
Two lovers are.

I am the philosopher,
The analyzer, the poet;
She the combateer,
The multi-weaponed destroyer
Of worlds and enemies:
Yet I would sanction each kill
Without doubt or hesitation.

Our souls are intertwined
Without guile or reservation,
To heaven or to hell,
If one goes, so do we both:
I would not leave her alone
Even if all of heaven
Were to rise up against me.

The ocean shall shroud us, star by star,
Until the earth is but a memory
Fleeing into myth, her rivers grown dry
With time and distance.

When the world is the world
Around a dozen yellow suns,
No single planet lays claim to humanity,
Neither sea nor shoreline fences us
In singular quarantine.

The gulf between galaxies
May one day approach us,
Dare us to leap once more;
But not before ten million worlds
Are o'erbrimming with our blood.

In fields of poppies, do memories lie
Of bullet wounds and dying friends,
Where bodies lie scattered
Across the bloody grounds.

Great ships may not return,
Mountains may wash to the sea,
Our friends may live on only
In the lines a poet writes
And the memories of their comrades,
Survivors of the night.