The Coming of the Toads

A Notebook – Since 2007

Category: Poetry

  • To Be Clean

    To be clean,
    I mean
    clean,
    really clean.

    Up to your eyeballs
    in elbow grease –
    not you,
    the house.

    That was my Mom’s
    idea of how to spend
    a day off from school,
    Spring Cleaning.

    To be fair, she outgrew
    the phase, or dove under
    the rising tidal wave.
    The family was still

    relatively small
    then, only 4 or 5
    kids, halfway
    to the later two.

    One day, having heard
    me use a bad word,
    she washed my mouth
    out with a bar of soap.

    I think that must
    have been where
    I got the idea
    for poetry,

    and that poems
    live on the tongue
    like germs.
    Much later,

    I learned not all
    germs are bad,
    and that soap
    is so hyperbolic,

    a usage correction
    tape or fluid,
    and that all words
    play a role,

    and that to be
    clean, really
    clean, is not the same
    as to be in good health.

    All that said,
    some poems are bad,
    like this one, where
    some guy talks about

    his Mom, poor thing,
    struggling to keep
    the house and kids
    clean, and just wait

    until your Father
    gets home. Mama
    don’t allow no
    poems around here.

  • To Be Clear

    no, thing
    naught wight
    if not clear
    to the floor
    who wears
    no ears

    who won’t talk
    but the beer
    makes void
    the crooked path
    down the page
    to the sea

    and to the critic
    a still small voice
    lives in a library
    built of stone
    nothing staged
    untended

    not what
    can’t be
    explained
    in a footnote
    “no symbols
    where none…”

    inflected
    by tense
    mood
    a person’s
    case
    carried.

  • The Oyster and the Crab

    The oyster held a secret the crab could but guess.
    The moon was full, the low tide pool fully exposed.
    The empty blue bucket with orange plastic shovel
    earlier lost in the surf now sat high on the berm.

    The crab crawled from the bucket and paused,
    the human midden not his problem.
    The oyster he picked harbored a pea crab,
    not the prize he was after, but its translucent

    moonish nebula was a surprise, and, his
    hearing aids firmly ensconced, he heard
    the bell of the buoy marking the dive spot,
    but why this crab, the oyster feverly wondered,

    and what did the buoy have to do with oysters,
    and with so many oysters and so much salt
    and the sea always so deep in the ears, why,
    and buried in the midden the answers steamed.




  • Moonglow

    It must have been moonglow
    drop these words down to me
    must have been moonglow
    I’m up in the old oak tree.

    Your supermassive hug
    your stellar eyes of blue
    I can’t get out and away
    I’m disappearing into you.

    It must have been moonglow
    high up in the old oak tree
    that night you said those words
    and held me so close to you.

  • It’s Only a Paper Moon

    The astronauts cardboard cutouts suspended
    by gossamer string theory, the Space Station
    an elaborate Tinkertoy. Night comes when
    you turn their backs to the sun, day when
    they face the solar wind, wait for a swell,
    come about, and paddle into a soft shoulder
    breaking away from a night full of mind
    fulness, full of white paper plates skipping
    across the space of the waters, rising
    with the trough, riding the crest
    parallel to the edge of the universe
    so going nowhere in time or space
    (for the time being)
    and paddle back out to the firmament
    of no land, no waters, no herb or grass
    of any kind, only a dead moon
    giving light to the night below,
    a lesser light, in which the humans
    hold hands, dance in circles, sing songs,
    and paint shadows on their walls.

  • Days of Wine and Roses

    The days
    of wine and roses
    palm trees green
    leaves dangling in bronze breeze sea
    fallen fronds found for tiki faces
    carved with pocket knives
    in soft dry wood
    of branch stalk deep eyes
    and sharp shell teeth
    long slender days
    fat pug noses
    and sunburnt legs
    beaches galore
    nevermore
    a sober sunset for two
    the days
    of wine and roses
    are here.

  • Moon River

    The moon, our moon lit night
    candle brooding sediment
    embraces you in umbrage
    through the trees down
    to the waterline up from
    the riverbank wandering
    through the shallows
    in motion with slow
    crawling eddies around
    emergent rocks and felled
    trees this night a dropped
    stitch in time’s throw,
    that night we lost
    an hour and more.

  • Woodworm

    I would be
    a bird in a tree
    could I sing
    tongue free.

    I might be
    a sea flower
    a bee after me
    a honey bee.

    But a worm in a compost bin
    in this dark quiet soil
    that long handled shovel
    coming for me.

  • Trip to Cold Mountain

    Tried green walks
    but could not find
    Hanshan
    nor make immortal.

    Designations after my name
    meant nothing to most
    and likely little
    to myself.

    Poured electric ink
    from a paper cup
    plucked cast iron strings
    drank elite ales and wines.

    Now my own cold
    personal mountain
    must be drowned
    in fool’s mist.

  • Chary

    Sun blasted yeses across space and time
    and the moon goes down in a mist of no
    earth rolling moving warming ice caps
    melting and the seas rise first a foot toe
    a frozen continent calving crumbling
    a piece at a rhythmic mythic time slow
    so slow lights dim smoke cake rises
    and they learn to go easy the strung horns
    plucked and picked by the breeze afloat
    in cosmic currents first detected in the 60s
    of each receding century shoveled under
    fallen garages leaning walls broken
    foundations sinking into the ocean
    nowhere now to park the rigs the stallions
    of snow unleashed from barns of bane
    from frozen fears offered up to the sun.

  • Christmas Wish List

    To see the Star
    where you are
    near and far.

    “Zat you?
    Santy?”
    “No, not me.”

    A message
    from Mary.

    fir tree shadows
    wet planet
    atmosphere.

    There is no list
    like this
    upon Santa’s
    largesse lap.

    The Star that turns
    Christmas Blue
    the hue of you.

    Blues
    for Christmas.
    Baby, it’s cold.

    the fallen leaves to fly
    back up to the trees!

    plants asleep
    astonishingly
    the cat goes out.

    To hear what
    what does not
    make noise
    silent sphere.

    Wanna rock around
    a well-lit tree
    barefoot with thee.

    Foggy morning snow
    blur of yellow lights
    across the street.

    thru rear windows
    to watch the night.

    and comes back in
    as white as snow
    in the longest night.

    To hold the star
    in your hands
    to warm
    your fingers.

    Christmas, 1969