Cloistered

from pools of ink-black
coffee in anonymous
office buildings piercing the
sky, some words are
written during a lunch hour,
then some more, and
some more, savoring of
the street, and music,
and the tenor of the
times and having a
Coke with you I do
not think of statuary,
but of a kiss stolen
in the Cloisters, next
to the quiet tomb of
some great lady, her
solemn face in
perpetual repose, her
husband close by

away from the din of
the city, where the
steel pierces the
clouds, accepts
his kiss, for better
or for worse, as
well him as another

Noontime

the open skies look
down upon the patchwork
of green, brown, black
ribbons of road newly
dug, ever expanding
veins to tap fields thick
with wheat, alfalfa, corn

the bounty of all that
springs up here, the land
arable, the water pure
still, and the song of the
birds clearly
heard, the dawn chorus
a prompting to the day's
labor

the land grown over with
simple spires and towers, pointing
heavenwards, the weathervane
spinning to show what way
the wind goes

and generations are born
and die
and still the lilac by
the dooryard blooms,
redolent of the promise
of spring, and, as we
tend to the land, so
she relinquishes her bounty

Upon Arrival

setting foot upon a
foreign shore, black
clad, starting the
work of taming an
unruly land, resolute, unsparing

the stones dug out for
fences, the land marked
out in acres, trees crowning
mountains, green parapets
in this new Eden of
forbidding landscapes,
jagged jewels yet to
be smoothed

in this ever-expanding
America neon often
lights the way now, in
place of the stars the
pocked the sky, beacons
to a better future, with
bread and land for all,
the story still undone, it
goes on, unstoppable