He Said

He Said

…O blue-winged, shivering one,

                he whispered.

Some days it’s like using a white cane

And seeing mostly shadows

As one gropes for the words that come next!

                                                Charles Simic

                                                The Fly

the trouble

with you people

is you don’t believe

until years

and years

have run                 like              salmon

upstream, who

look at them!

all who some-

                 how and magnificently  

haven’t lost the way

and yet still can’t
and haven't 

for the life in them

memorize

the Alaskan grizzlies
and those paws and maws

or the bald

                eagles

                hawks

                men

the claw and

                gaup
                of open jawed

                mockery

                                of plenty

until dust

until

dry

as tinder

the thin dry line

once raging river water

is at the edge

of the toddler's toe
tapped boat

and the old man

tells him that

when his father told him

of old men

when those old men
knew older old men

who knew old men

you follow?

the salmon run

was an orgy-coral flush

and the amaurotic call
a milty dodge

as frosted

as a Cleopatra goblet

after

her pulverized pearl was

swirled

and given off as small,

as profligate and dissolved 

and her Marcus
Antonius, less

exhausted now

than this river

this little toe

this old throat

all those bones

in the cold going

colder, ground down
in the mouth of cloud
                       and see
how they cluster like snow
dust on stones, or
bunch up
the way soap
bubbles do and cluster

in their oily gloss and
smooch (are you trusting
this, do you
                   believe this?) and give in and are
still, are only
just, just a smidgen

enough, if you don't
take notice, to choke on.