-At the grave of Albert Pinkham Ryder / Lot 4 / Section V-

So I went along to visit the grave of Albert Pinkham Ryder

which was marked by a heavy looking, but standard-issue stone,

a stone you might pass unnoticed when visiting a cemetery near you;

a non-monumental monument.

––I might have expected a stone of darker granite,

its face blackened, smeared by overcoats of home-cooked varnish,––

riven,–– marked by erratic webs of otherworldly fissures,

all to mirror the surfaces of his pictures.

But in the end it was what it was; a headstone.

––The experience took place years ago at the "Rural Cemetery"

in New Bedford, Massachusetts.

Daylight had faded and October supplied an early moonlight,

graced with sweeping Ryder skies in honor of our company.

 ––An art school upperclassman had asked one of us to attend,

and two others tagged along for the viewing.

I was one of two.

At the gravesite I was one of four;

one of five if Ryder is included in the column of attendees.

date of the experience: 1964

                 “life is too short to learn the names of weeds”

you’ll likely see a thousand poem titles

like the title above popping-up in the next few weeks.

consider this my entry into the fray.

but the line is attributed to a fan of Billy Collins

who sent it to his nightly podcast because recently

Billy had mentioned that he has a friend who

identified the nomenclature of every weed

they came across as they walked along a pleasant

country road somewhere on the outskirts of.. Paris, I think.

the fan, call her Naomi, seemed to be marginally pissed-off,

implying that Collins was taking-up valuable podcast time

simply because his buddy had the doggedness to identify weeds,

intruding on an otherwise pleasant stroll.

as for me, I didn't find the interlude disruptive, and

it was only a small part of a broader discussion, but

Mister Collins liked the metrics of Naomi's line and said so,

further giving his blessing to the world's home-shackled poets

to use the line freely if they were so inclined, opening a pathway

to Naomi's potential litigation against the Collins estate.

 

but that’s all I have on the subject of weeds, except to say

I’ve spoken of them before, limited to their intrusion of

the vegetable garden, their indispensable cover behind the billboards,

and their routinely invasive attitudes,–– all without gracing them with

a proper noun to cozy up to.

                  -the hovering flying saucer from Mars-

and why not Mars?

why finger another planet for the invading

flying saucer from another world, but Mars?

Mars it's always been, so, Mars it is now.

this time the invader is seen from my kitchen window, and

setting the scene, I’ll say it’s early evening, but moonless,

and a soupy fog has settled in.

I can barely make-out the incandescence.

the windows of neighboring houses, once sharply delineated

are now fuzzy little rectangles in amber, glowing with a rarer kind of light.

the streetlight high above them emits a blue, hazy oval shape,

heavily atomized, and I see it as a flying saucer filled with slimy,

big-eyed, green-skinned Martians. how frightening.

I should simply wish it away 

like the kid in the Twilight Zone sending naughty

neighbors into the cornfield,–– forget this nonsense

and return to dishwashing like the other poets on the block.

but I expand the sighting.

the fog is thickens.

the invader's ship is calculated to be hovering very,

very, very far away and the farther away I imagine it,

the bigger the saucer from Mars gets, especially when seen up close.

It's unimaginable.

no stars. no moon. no fuzzy-coated streetlight anymore.

just doom hovering there above the sink between dirty dishes and eternity.

  

                  -end it now and everything’s alright-

my dear

perpetually brick-

headed republican

bloviators,

perpetually lost in the fog

democratic commentators and

perpetually inept

political pollsters;

gather, have lunch,

digest in your own

stale company,

sleep together

in separate beds in

separate states on

separate planets;

synchronize 

the sound machines to

power-on mode,

kick out the jams

and groove to some smooth

Michel Petrucciani licks.

                  -progressive waits-

the tendons of the muscle tighten,

snap to place straight as a plumb-line.

It's a fragile chalk.

earlier in the month I voted by mail-in ballot.

the postoffice is close to the apartment

but not so close for a leisurely walk.

there’s a steep hill to climb, the crazy

virus is dancing in the air clinging to droplets

of anything worth the definition of droplet.

I own more than one mask.

one hangs on a doorknob.

one hangs on the gearshift lever.

one drapes across "The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson".

I wrap another around my ears, press

the nose-fitting to cling and drive to the postoffice.

once inside I hand my ballot to the woman, exhausted

behind the counter who drops it into a large,

canvas container standing by her side, ballot-filled.

when I arrive back home I de-mask,

brew a pot and check my online standing.

one friend has a birthday.

another has lost something somewhere near

the supermarket on the boulevard.

the people take notice.

three friends tapped to "like" my latest poem.

fifty six others didn't responded.

the tendons of the muscle tighten.

returns slowly drip into consciousness

as a form of torture drips upon a forehead in a darkening room,

agonizing the badly flawed process I freely choose to participate in.

 

November 3, 2020

 

  

From the top

At the initial hospital

the angel of odds-making came unto me foretelling:

"Even money:

 Jackie will pick-up on Marilyn's scent."

Later, I'd place my bet as to whether or not

my father drank on the side

the side of the road

on the road to his house.

Meanwhile, the angel of death

has yet to appear at the foot of my bed,

and anyway, my preference

has never been to stay put. 

The atmosphere here

has wiped-out just about everything else.