A WEEK AFTER  9-ll

Yesterday I saw an eft in the yard,
And today I saw another out back by the wood pile. 
Such beautiful creatures, an almost iridescent pinkish-orange.   
So delicate!

I just read an article in the Chronicle on the intellectualization of the Holocaust. 
The bane of the scholar is the tendency of disengagement from the world. 
Holocaust scholars, who once upon a time entered the field
Out of a passion
To document the crime in order to make one small contribution
To the hope that it not happen again,
Now feel like archeologists, who have struggled 
Digging at a remote but important site with the most delicate of tools. 
After devoting years to the task on a shoe string budget and in almost total obscurity,
One casts a glance over one’s shoulder and horrified, spots an entirely new generation
Of archeologists, each with a week’s training in the field,
With huge earth-moving machines and funded by massive government grants. 
They descend on the project, obliterating the outer edges of the important site
As they come. 

Meanwhile, more and more cases of genocide occur,
Accounting for the creation of an entirely new academic field—forensic archeology. 
Little did I know when I first became acquainted with the term “body count”
Created by the Pentagon as a way of calculating the score in the game against the       
Nationalist  and anti-colonialist, Ho Chi Minh,
That it would become the subject of a new academic field as a way of calculating the size
Of yet another crime against humanity.

The morning news reminds me of life in the waning days of the Roman Empire,
When it had spread its influence so far throughout the known world that terrorists were 
Constantly attacking the outer borders,
A signal that only now can be seen so clearly as a sign of the decline
And inevitable fall of the Roman Empire.  The Dark Ages would follow.

Maybe I’ll go fishing.

SUMMER’S END

Jogging the gentle slope of Minister Brook Road,
Deep in the process of composing
That eloquent speech I should have given
At last night’s contentious town meeting,  

I suddenly realize I am expending extra energy
Trying to keep an apple rolling down the road ahead of me
By kicking it, 
But the convex shape of the pavement keeps
The small wild apple from rolling straight,
Forcing me to zigzag across the center line, kicking frantically
Trying unsuccessfully to keep my stride.

Returning from my reverie to find my body
In this crazy kick, turn, and run mode,
I notice how almost uncannily natural it feels, 
The apple suddenly veering across the road,
Wounded by a poorly aimed kick, and I,
Unable to pursue it because of an oncoming pickup. 

At the very moment the pickup rattles past,
It hits me—today is the first day of school. 
I was a little boy again in Fort Scott, Kansas,
Kicking apples, rocks, or green fragrant walnuts
Along the cracked sidewalk past the church—anything
To slow my inevitable progress
Toward the school and into the building,

When I was so unfinished
With summer.

EQUINOX

Walking in the evening up the trail
To the bald spot at the crest of the hill
With its view to the south
Down through the valley
Of the North Branch below.

My feet hit the trail well after 6:00 pm.
Darkness now comes so early.
After two days of rain, the sky is still dripping.
I can feel the air itself dripping,
The now spent dark grey clouds spilling off the peaks
Of the Worcester Mountains, leaving them
Comfortably naked in the darkening sauna.

Yet, as I enter the canopy of green
There is still an eerie glow among the ferns.
Growing lighter with the receding of the chlorophyll,
They capture the faint light of dusk and seem to amplify it,
Giving the moss and the fall grasses a kind of magic glow
From within.

Not a sound but the drip, drip, drip of the fog.
No, not quite fog but simply droplets of wet, sinking
Out of the sky, catching on the pine needles,
Pausing for a few moments,
To collect with other like-minded beads
Into larger drops, weightier now,
Rolling off onto the moss and ferns and onto my
Bobbing and swaying hat.

No animals cross my path in the growing darkness
Save the hippity-hopping tiger frog,
Pausing only for a moment for a split second
Of eye contact.
“All is well,” she murmurs and disappears into the ferns
With one great leap.

Uncannily warm for late September,
The dampness makes the quiet quieter.
The quiet makes the dampness damper.
The two join hands and dance playfully in the fading glow
Of the ferns and mosses
In the tiny fairy clearings along the darkening forest floor. 

The old stone walls seem greener
Since I last passed this way,
Their great bosoms settling into each other
Ever more comfortably
With the passing years.