Sunday, July 27, 2014

Press Release Launching My New Book: "GENESIS: A Social Vision."

Social Visionary Foresees Pending Shift in Political, Economic Climate

Eugene, OR, -- Social visionary and philosopher Troy Cochran, author of “Genesis:  A Social Vision.  Forensic Essays on the Psyche, the World Mind, and the Body Politic,” foresees significant shifts pending for world governments, economies, and their societies.  Citing the anomalies of heightened solar activity in recent years, which Cochran believes is responsible for driving climate changes and human neurology, the author forecasts significant societal changes to occur over the next few generations.

“The biggest change,” said Cochran, “will be a shift in power from centralized governments to much smaller, specialized groups of citizens looking after the interests of their own communities.”  These specialized groups he calls “stewardship guilds,” foreseeing what he calls the “recolonization of America,” with a similar metamorphosis occurring in other countries. “Governments are not designed,” he said, “to resolve the fundamental problems of their societies, such as greed in the marketplace, or servility in the population; that is the burden of the citizens themselves.  But they first have to assume a political and economic might of their own, instead of delegating it away, and simply carrying on in a work-a-day routine locked into a chronic anxiety about their own survival.  As I say in my last book, a society can only look after itself by looking after each other.”

These prognostications suggest enormous challenges for present and future legal entities, including courts and governments, at all levels, if Cochran’s social vision proves to be even marginally accurate.  Current legal actions, for example, are designed to identify and penalize culprits, to pin full responsibility in a dispute upon one party only.  Non-responsibility, or the “victim mentality,” says Cochran, “is rewarded in the present legal system. But this does not sit well at all with a sovereign-based citizenship, where 100 percent responsibility is claimed.”  It is the sovereignty of the individual, he believes, not of the federal or national governments, that foreshadows the most dramatic political and social changes that lie ahead.

“Sovereign immunity,” Cochran claims, “will be the catchword of the day as more and more people realize that the old laws, written in another day, cannot be made to apply equally, like a blanket, upon all heads.  Many people today have given up their rights in exchange for state-granted privileges.  They are not the same thing.”  He gives as examples the widespread use of driver’s and business licences.  All this will phase out, he claims, as societies gradually mature and reclaim their eroding rights.  Advocating a more direct form of democracy, with more citizen-involvement, less delegation to representatives, he writes:  “A privilege is not a right.  A vote is not self-governance.”

And what about the effect of “public stewardship,” on world economies?

Reminiscent of Michael Tellinger’s “contributionism,” in the jargon of the Ubuntu Party in South Africa,  “Stewardship,” Cochran explains, “basically refers to the prevalence of public service motives over, or alongside, the profit-motive of modern enterprise.  As the concept of sovereignty expands, political apathy and servility in the workplace will come under even greater strain and transformation as people seek for more meaningful ways to employ themselves and make a difference.”  The repercussions this may have on profit-driven industries and financial markets are dizzying to contemplate.  ”There will evolve a totally new kind of business model and marketry, and it will not be built on the backs of a complicit workforce.  That mentality is phasing out, and it’s business model is already collapsing.  It’s dehumanizing and debt-riddled.  It’s not a sustainable economic model,” says Cochran.

In his book, “Genesis:  A Social Vision,” Cochran strongly advocates the separation, yet coordination, between the political, economic, and cultural sectors -- or what he calls a “threefold social order.”  Many social problems today, he explains, stem from the confusion and overlap between the economic and political spheres, which should be kept as distinctly separate as Church and State.  “The cultural interests of a people,” he argues, “are no less vital to the interests of a society on the whole than are their economic and political interests.”

“Ultimately,” Cochran writes, “a society is better served when its people can hold their own against economic leaders who basically just want to use them, and political leaders who feel it their responsibility to protect them as if they had no other kin.”

When it comes to defending the rights of the individual, Cochran nearly waxes poetic -- no surprise, as he is also a noted poet, and author of several books of verse.  His penchant for turning a phrase is evident throughout his prose as well:

“A conscious mind is a nation’s best and most abundant natural resource.”

“There is but one legitimate government, and it is not a ‘mediocracy.’  It is a conscience.”

“Truly, a civilization is built on human dignity, to say the least.  The fall of civilizations can always be traced back to primal causes in the demoralization of individuals by their own beliefs.”

And it is this theme of changing beliefs that underscores Cochran’s social vision of a new genesis.  The social mindset, he claims, is gradually giving way to an upsurging “spirituality”; and the chief problems of modern societies -- servility in the people, greed in the marketplace, and presumption in government -- will eventually and inevitably have to come to terms with this underlying metamorphosis.

But, in his characteristic fashion, he quips:  “It’s not that we are shipwrecked.  It’s that we are fundamentally spiritual.  We just don’t know the difference.”

Troy Cochran is currently elaborating on a model of cooperative economics in his forthcoming book, “The Secret Commonwealth.”  His books are available through Amazon.com.

###

Sunday, July 13, 2014

My Father's Day Surprise and "Valedictorian Speech"


This is a letter I wrote to our poet, for both Father's Day, and as my "Valedictorian Speech".  I thought you all might like to hear it!

 * I attached a copy of his poem "Square Wheel" at the end.


To Dad, for Father's Day and Graduation....

During my life, so far, you've helped me to extract a sensitivity to poetry; a comprehensive philosophy of ethics along with an idea of how I want to influence this world; and my individuality!  You did it partially from homeschooling me and partially from your writings and spiritual teachings... but most of all, you helped me through your unforgettably courageous and awe-inspiring example in life!!!  Thank you so, so much for all of this!  I am so privileged to be going out into the world with these things!


I get to start out with a poem; to go into my adult life with the wisdom of 'Square Wheel', and also, January: in the House of Nods!  You wrote this book for fun!  Nothing serious!  Yet with limitless and meaningful spirituality!!!  That's what I want to do with my life!  That's the ultimate goal of existence!  And you did it (and are also still doing it, of course)! ~ both through your books and your life.  Thank you for sharing that with the world and thank you for sharing it with me.

'Square Wheel' really illustrates it in a nutshell: the limitless ideas that a life can hold (like states of being, things we dream in our sleep, visions, concepts, realizations...) ~ ideas that can't be organized into a physical life!!!  But they are what life really is.  They are what we live for.


I know that only how we feel matters and that we really know all we need to know; we just haven't put it all together yet.

I learned from you, as we were walking one night, that our lives really do progress through our thoughts and that our accomplishments in life ~ even our influences on the world ~ are also, really, achieved through our thoughts.  I'll remember that.

You made me see how fluid these thoughts are: so fluid that we don't realize how we change.  But if we look it over, we'll see how they all built on each other and brought us to this place where we now feel we always were.

And you said that every thought ripples out around us, out to others.  You really opened my eyes to just how much influence each and every person must have on... not just the world, but ALL-THAT-IS, in this way!!!

Thank you so much for showing me these things!  It is such a gift to be able to live the rest of my life with this foundation!  Thank you!!!


You have shown me what a beautiful journey it can be to live your life as a part of the process of bringing out Earth's natural harmony and magnificence!  You have shown me, through this life, how I can 'go out on a ledge', like you, because we are all a part of something greater than ourselves!

Because of this, I am already content in my expectations for the rest of my life (and in my life, so far, of course)!  It is also because of your enlightenment of the extraordinary (the spiritual), such as

  • your sensitivity to a natural caring for others;
  • a pure sense of virtue; applying it simply because you can feel it in yourself!;
  • and your sense of fun! and imagination! and openness to intellectual and spiritual realms!
I am content in the substance of life because of this; content that this life will have been worth living as long as I am having fun and doing my best to live up to my ideals in this world; content that every other human being is also FULL at his core and capable of transcendent grace, and so, also has my deepest respect and admiration on that level.  I have this view of human nature because YOU have SHOWN it to me!!!


It's because you raised me with so much wisdom, sharing with me your thoughts and desires; your poetry and your visions; your care and attention; your time and your life with me ~ it's because you've given me a home ~ that I feel... safe... going out into this world on my own.  Safe, and inspired!  Because of you, I am also ready to have a fun life!  Ready, with gratitude, reverence, and an open heart.


I wanted you to know what an extraordinary influence you've had on me and on my life.  I will always be grateful to you for that.

~ with all my love ~ your daughter, Sarah




Square Wheel

It doesn't really matter how many hours are assigned 
To a given day;
Any jobber can make a clock stand still, or move at will;
And time is relative to its romance.
The length of a day is relative to its guiding Moon:
No inspiration ever came from a calendar.
(Mine still reads nineteen-eighty-two!
I only keep it for its picture.)
Some days come at noon and leave me twenty years younger.
Some still hang around at 3 a.m.
Until I give 'em up for dead
And try to lose them;
Turn a corner in my head
To confuse them.
And I never keep a clock beside the bed:
I like to pick the numbers of my choosing.
It makes me feel like I'm chipping away
At a square wheel.

~January: in the House of Nods

Saturday, September 7, 2013

Let My Words Be Food For Gods



us

There is a glow about you
I have meant to see sometimes
from the corner of my face

looking at you on the sly.
What is it exactly
that you have compressed into a thing so small

as I?

We are well trod and practiced at being uniformly
nothing; and less: an us;

shod like horses; trained to excuses;
steered by the bits of iron in our mouths.

Our biblical truths disgust
and digest us.

Our every nod is a lie; says
"Of course; of course."  Damn our "of courses."

Look at my eye,
its reflection
of You

as big as a huntress moon
still floating by day of a June or July.

I will see you always surrounded
by a summer haze

of blue-white sky
resting atop the backs of horses.

(from Uncollected Poems)



Let My Words Be Food For Gods

Let my words be food for gods.

Let them be for apples in the cracked hands
of succulence after thirst;
for the dripping tongues of dogs
in dreams of labor in the shade
beneath the warbling birds.

Let them bring platter on platter from the brown hands of maids
in suggestion of immortality gained
by the sting and the blood of long slender blades,
followed by feathers and palm fronds fanning
a drowsy eyelid squawking at the sun.

Let them sing where all have trod;
through what laborious fields
and long ordeals
through barbed-wire runs
beyond the tongues of stuttering guns;
let them say
where all have gone, and slipped their chains,
and come up angry out of graves.

And if I
have sometimes sat through sermons unafraid;
amused myself where others knelt and prayed,
ashamed;
and if I have sometimes raged against them all,
fist and elbows to a wall,
insisting upon my own significance;
if I have sometimes lived in basements, small;
and again have towered over cloudy Judgements
many heavens tall:

Let my words be grain for all;
bare images
sprouting from the plains where heads have lain
and cattle call
and grasses grow up straight without a name.

(from Uncollected Poems)



Imagine

Imagine heaven as a state of mind,
and the arrow of time is irrelevant.

Who points here and there
in avoidance of keeping a promise
is an idiot:

The eyes tell their own story.
Lips are vagrant.
The tongue hides
like a turtle's tail.
And the warrior sun circles
round and round
in the dust of its own chariot.

Between you and me
and the rest of the world,
the secret to keeping a moment alive
is to see the kingdom of
possibilities in it.

Leave nothing outside.
Start with Pride.

Stride.
Stride.
Stride.

And always remember:
A sentence begins and ends
with the same period.

(from Uncollected Poems)




And A Cloud Brings Rain

Love is such a puny word
for so much praise.

It hardly leaves my tongue,
my face;
falls like a lugnut in the mud;
and I feel ashamed.

Water on the highway splutters and dumps
buckets until my hair dies hanging
crucified on the hillside
of my divine disgrace.

Every passing motorist is an eyeball witness
gazing long; windshield wipers
hang their tongues like tired dogs;
and love is standing there with folded arms.

How curious,
having thought to save a stranded tourist
standing so dejected in the rain:
and such a pretty little image to a passing sponge
of a brain; but I confess:

I am only so-so mechanically inclined,
and the rain

can be relentless.

(from Uncollected Poems)



Pretending to Be a Fly

Every spider is an artist,
more or less.
It takes a Mind
to spin a web,
with no help from a scientist

And I confess,
it would take a bird
to teach me
how to build a nest.

A beaver,
knowing nothing of its university,
comprehends an architecture
nonetheless.

And I,
a beastly creature
and a delicate thinker,
with pen poised over my own designs,
pretending to be a fly,
must get about my business
with the rest.

Let come what fortune
or what disaster,
it takes some kind of start
to be a master.

(from Uncollected Poems)




Undiminished

Tonight is for fire
and blackened stones.

For the bringing on of stars by campfire light,
and the anger of sparks let go like crazy bees
into the beards of hemlock trees.

A weakening moon will be here soon,
is trying to stand up straight, still
fat with child:
an effulgent light, undiminished,
like a lantern flung in the trees igniting
a slap in the face of night.

Cold chills milling in the air from the lake steeping
deeping into ancient evening
wrap around the arms and breathe out drunken treaties,
and cedar kindling burns the face,
fierce and friendly.

A frenzy of war-thoughts,
mean and stingy, are suddenly
standing up too tall between bundling blankets
of old mens' bones wrapped in mumbling
that meant to speak up loud for peace,
but sit there chewing on strips of beef.

Let the young thoughts have their say,
like thin sticks crackling and burning
where orange embers of old logs lay:
old mens' thoughts are for old men's keeping.
They build on one another like stones making;
but smoke is twisting, and in your eyes:
Go away!

Tonight is for the unafraid;
for looking to shadows cast by leaping flames,
and fingers of pharaohs aimed like arrows
teaching the children to remember
that stars have names;
are distant relations.

And now the night is a crazy horse,
and the headlights of a car with a gruff engine
are throwing the shadows of trees all around
in coming out late from the city
to a campsite reservation.

Tomorrow will be nothing left
but the ash of reason;
 shafts
of mountain sunlight dusting
the very tops of trees without a season.

(from Uncollected Poems)



Rendering to Caesar

My gilded estate
has no porticoes and pillows;
no nameplate
clasped in the claws of lions;
no marble or bronze,
or sprawling lawns;
no sprinklers timed to wake up late.

My estate is but a breadth of golden light
on sudden intake
when I am falling backward into faith
in arms
strong as promise
given
by unblinking eyes
and lips of slate.

My estate is granite.

It is the realm of some god whose gaze
I equate with the rush of a river
and I
am standing half-way in it,
divine in my own right,
wet with fright,
and crossed by the current.

Sovereignty,
after all these hard and trying years,
is just a word:

My estate is senate.

(from Uncollected Poems)

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Something Wet as Borneo (a vignette)


      "Historically, the leading edge of thought has always moved around a bit.  A new idea takes hold of inquisitive minds, and suddenly semi-naked natives are mapping the heavens and building pyramids in the middle of a jungle or a desert; hackers of heads are building empires out of brick and bone and blood and mortar; knights and troubadours are gallivanting around the countryside in noble quest of higher order; monks and rabbis at their chemistry are counting bumps on heads, or clumps of angels or elements or lumps and beads and threads of anything that adds up to a quantifiable intelligence. Civilizations come and go like stubborn fads.  The divine right of kings and queens and popes and all robes laureate are basically a fashion show:  they went out with a 'told you so.'  Peasants basically run the show now, or just now figuring out they always did.  Once upon a time, long, long ago, I think we must have lived upon the world as in a dream, and history is the fleshing-out of painted strokes, for we are still world-making, and this morning's episode still has the ancient scent of something wet as Borneo or Mesopotamia; something Chinese even here in Idaho; there are fingerprints on everything:  the dream itself is biting at is fingernails and thinking, thinking...."

(from an unpublished manuscript:  "Genesis:  A Social Vision") 

Sunday, July 21, 2013

Open Road and other poems


Open Road

What if God was only a tall, tall man
who gave us a first idea of ourselves

And left the scene with another man
a very long time ago;

Just another George, or another Sam?
Or, heaven knows,

A Judy?

And the only overarching Plan there ever was
came down to you and me:

An open road
and a many-headed journey?

Who am I
at three a.m.

I'd like to know, breathing mist
upon a cold and unreflecting window?

Looking out at nothing.

I am my own religion now;
my own confusion and philosophy.

I live for making poems,
and would hear a heart sing.

Maybe my own, God forbid.
(So selfish of me.)

As far as I can tell,
this is the barest truth of things:

We speculate around the bend
what no one really knows.

And if we cannot make ourselves believe
one or another very important thing,

We pretend,
and put ourselves to bed unnecessarily guilty.

Ah, my boys and girls,
don't you see:

There are only straight and narrow Rules.
Why,

Even the very wind must curl
itself around a tree.

(from Uncollected Poems)



The Chapel

The kindness of the chapel's grin
almost invites a curious traveler in.

The stained-glass eye on verge of tears
says, "Amen, amen," at passers-near

Like passing off a kind hello
that busy people never hear.

A friend to everyone, I hear; and still
a singer of hymns, a prayer of prayers.

A kind old uncle with a hat:
that's the kind of chapel I like looking at.

A sidewalk wide enough for all to talk
and disagree, the way a parson parts his hair.

I like that.

But the organ groans too much of sin
as if it's leaning in the wind.

The paint is cracked and white-washed thin,
but a lived-in house with a welcome mat

Rolled out flat for stomping-in
of every stray cat, tramp, and next-of-kin,

Cannot be all bad now, can it, Jim?
No, not all bad.  Not all bad.

But don't tell that to them.


(from Uncollected Poems)



The Air is Full of Memory

I have been one
to contemplate a thing made
brighter than any sun.

Just there,
between the molecular cracks
of someone else's oxygen.

You see,
I have already lately fathomed
what these two precious blue
eyes lost in years of graying after
someone else's heaven.

I am almost certain
this must say something charming about me
no one will yet dare to deny
or to confirm:

That where one day's effort
faltered,
you could say I stumbled once

Upon.

And now the Road holds open promise
where my Roman feet have wandered;

turning West

where every New World word is pregnant as an egg
and my tongue is thick with dust
of yellow European yesterdays
and marrow on marrow of tomorrow's African
cinnamon dawns and saffron dusks; it burns

in contemplation of a simple moment's
contribution made Immortal.

It IS.

My body but yearns for a home and a bed.
But sleeping blinks away the poem

...lived.

(from Uncollected Poems)



This Moment Also

In putting wings upon the air
I am convinced and well pleased
with these Creations
of My Mind Also;

That if what lives, lives on
then so, too, the earnest prayer
of This too-dazzling-to-believe-is-real and rare
rosy gem of Time, This
Moment Also.

Even dead
the falling bud of every memory tipped and spilt
is equally red:
it burns itself into the ground
like any seed.
It makes a bed.

I like to look inside and down upon
wherever I have bled and laid one, just to say:
I lived there.
Me!
And there,

There,
I Live On.


(from Uncollected Poems)



Delirious

One by one, the days
like dominoes
lean upon the sweating shoulders of those
still standing;
 clones

almost to a man of them;
a thin brigade of toppled bones
and what is left of a march of dots
against uncertain endings;
comrades

left behind to follow after,
some uncertain line of them ahead;
diary pages blowing in the wind;
and poor planning
is the lame excuse of every man.

How curious,
 the way a shouldered rifle
seems to bend;
the driving design of falling forward;
the dead weight of an only friend.

Ah, but this is not the end,
for we have made ourselves a promise:
Defend, we said, the dreams of fathers
and of prophets.
If I could,

I would drink straight from their faucets.

(from Uncollected Poems)


Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Accidentally Conscious


Anything Electrical

There is a place in dreams
where men get out at night
and walk as lightning.

Morning comes,
they hover over steering wheels
looking up wide-eyed at Nothing.

They search through static on their radios,
feeling frayed along the edges, frantic
for anything electrical....

(from "Pan!  On being a nature-god with cloven hooves
and a fondness for woodland nymphs.")


Accidentally Conscious...

      "Anyone can mind a stream of thought, collapse it into quantum particles, perceive it as moments of environment, and interact with their own redundancies made tangible in a 24-hour cubicle.  In fact, we are all doing just exactly that.  We are so good at it by now, we run our minds on automatic; we are knocking about in our own rinse cycle. Permanently pressed.  But most of us are so caught up in the Stream, living in circles, it seldom occurs to us to step back a bit to observe ourselves in the act of making conscious what is just a trickle.  We are rather semi-conscious most of the time, more doodlers than actual artists; or accidentally conscious more often than on purpose:  we always surprise and delight ourselves when we get a bright idea thunked out several lifetimes after it was started; or when a fortuitous event unfolds straight out of the blue, after so much time has elapsed we plumb forgot that that was where we threw it.  We tend to think of life as something that 'just happens.'  But nothing sticks until we glue it:  we get exactly what we concentrate on... we just have a short attention span.  And, forgive me for saying it, but we're rather addicted to our points of view....

      "But one who has learned the value of concentration upon an ideal is a pioneer on the only frontier there ever was:  a meaningful moment.  Anything less -- an 'act of God,' a 'random occurrence' -- is a self-defecating affront to logic.  It cleaves a mental kingdom in half to deny one's Source; and then there is only a concentration on habit.  Religion as a club-foot, and amputated science, will never pave the way for we who walk as giants."

(from an unpublished manuscript:  "Genesis:  A Social Vision")


Monday, July 15, 2013

Earth Prime and other poems



The Four Seasons

Said one leaf to another:
"So...
this is autumn."

Said the snowflake to the icicle:
"Dang!"

Said the radish seed to the onion seed
planted in the garden:
"Race you to the top!"

Said the sunflower
to the flowers in the shade:
"Hey."

Said the body to the grave:
"We'll talk about it
in the morning, babe."

(from Uncollected Poems)



Earth Prime

The bullfrog
 makes a space around him
with his bulbous talk.
No one enters through the gate
without a password.

He sits upon his one
Gibraltar of a rock.
The Moon illuminates
all round
a whole platoon of monstrous
shapes,
pays them all in gold
doubloons,
but no one ever finds him out.

No shape was ever made
that matches, pound for pound,
his one hypnotic thought.
He sits
upon the whole world
as an Egg
that incubates
but never hatches.

Mosquitoes seek to take
the truth out with their long syringes;
but people nowadays 
stay barricaded indoors
when black-clad crickets try to lure them out
into the portal
where the bullfrog's serenade
initiates the startled
trippers in the dark into the hole
of sound
where the world was started.

(from Uncollected Poems)



A Nation of Foragers

I feel the coming on
of a glorious temper.

I see the Capitol dome in flames.

The Monopoly board is two boards now
and sailing across the Thames.

Paris is a shit hole
and nurse to a plague.

It's a new world now.
Sweep away

The dead horse piles:
the marriage vows, the marriage miles.

We were very good
as liars.

Now we are caught with our pants
down.

A twist of the knife
and the Senate is dead.

And no one will take your money now.

(from Uncollected Poems)



A Strange Attractive Power

It is the cocktail hour.

Too late
for sneaking up the chimney, bounding
out of the bubbly, over the alley,
over the rooftops
of the human
race.

I am not one for saying grace.
I am not one for saying much of anything.

But I will Stand My Place.

I will hammer four stout nails
into the corners of my face.
I will call everyone Bob, and shake
each hand like an ape, and nod
at everyone and everything
to keep myself awake.

I will stay calm.

I will prop an elbow on the mantle,
and stand as if I wore a pistol.
I will allot myself one glass
and sip it all night long,
and no one will be the wiser.
I will say I am a poet
when they ask.
(They always do.)
My eyes will drive home, one by one,
a volley of wooden stakes.
I will be a lone white
poodle.

I will grow smaller
as the evening wears on,
until I disappear
out on the balcony,
where stars, I hear, are strewn for the take
like shimmering diamonds on blue velvet,
and thoughts achieve a strange attractive power;
where higher noon is upside down;
and the Moon...

the Moon is a silver dollar.

(from Uncollected Poems)



Electrum

A flower is a pretty thing,
a fine and dandy weed; why,
there is not anything more dazzling to the eye
(within the range of a devic being)
for a devious being to be.

But I,
being a right stout fellow
and a walker over these,
I prefer the bee
and all things too electrical to a mind
to merely standing in a crooked line.

Things that sit well with their own image
tend to agitate me just a little.
I have a mind for black
and a fist for yellow.

I would have the sound of these 
so loud I could not think
without it causing trouble.
I would have swarms of these, and double!
Triple!
Air so thick with thieves
the very molecules would be honey!
Why, I would live and breathe in Nature's
amniotic tummy!

Breasts are disappointing
when you're down to just a nipple.
Love is disappointing
were it that simple.

Me, I would eat bugs
and sell my belly for a hive.
Damn all grand things, and big
beautiful lies.
I think I will not believe anything
that does not crawl in me alive!

(from Uncollected Poems)



Sunbather

I will go out into the garden
and fill a bowl of bright green peas;
and fondle every ripe tomato
till I ought to be embarrassed.
I'll walk right through the sprinkler
on my way to check the carrots;
thump each chest of melon
to see which ones are honest.

I'll check for lice in every
little green-haired head of lettuce;
and walk the ditch a mile or more
to clean the grates, and learn the frogs
back into water (they'll be walking upright
any day now
at the rate they're getting smarter).

And should I chance to startle
that bright green snake of late,
sunbather,
why, I'll strip down to my honest socks
and lay right down beside her.

(from Uncollected Poems)



Fame

The rooster crowing
seems to say
I have no feathers
of my own
for showing.

As if the Sun and he alone
were made for glory.

I pause a moment,
listen,
but I am not swayed.

He tells the same old story:
of light that curls itself into a ball,
rises early,
circles 'round the world
in no particular hurry,
nestles in the Great Nest of the West
with an exceptional flurry!
Just another kind of rooster, really:
masculine, tobacco-chawing;
spitting shadows at the ground;
jawing.

Like the strutting Sun at noon,
he seems to wait for my applause.

But at the moment
I am feeding half a dozen little chicks;
I think
they mean to follow me around
the long duck pond.

Anyway,
I have a mind for making up
its own Resolve.

It takes a long time growing.

(from Uncollected Poems)