The Coming of the Toads

A Notebook – Since 2007

Category: Poetry

  • This Train

    This train leaving the state
    carries no saints.

    No matter which way you face
    all headed the same way.

    The porter walks backwards
    to the caboose, and as the train

    slows to round a curve,
    jumps.

    She’ll take her chances improvising
    in a real river.

  • No Word

    It might have been said,
    were there one to say it,
    she was the last human,
    but then she would not
    have been the last one.

    She’d been told to keep
    by the river, the fresh fish
    would grow and multiply.
    The weather returned,
    the goats and chickens.

    She talked to the animals,
    but she found life easier
    if she kept silent, forgot
    words, let go lingo and,
    in the end, was no word.

  • A Flight of Birds

    ~          ~
  ~       ~
    ~   ~
      ~

    “A poem should be wordless   
    As the flight of birds.”

    Ars Poetica
    BY ARCHIBALD MACLEISH

  • On the Whole of Things

    having cut it out [it, all its]
    pleasure now without article
    embellishment whole
    some questions

    consider blue hydrangea
    yesterday transplanted
    from pot to ground
    root, stem, leaf, bud

    in which will we find
    whole plantness
    cup without coffee
    gives us to mark time

    a day without hours
    hours without minutes
    minutes without seconds
    where will we find time

    for whole things
    words opening
    seeds, bulbs
    into whole language

    grown in pots
    root-bound can
    but describe
    like mathematics
    can not be


  • The Drowning Pool

    He jumped in to join the pool
    to savor his father’s tastes
    simple mints and salty beer
    nuts, pickled pig knuckles.

    After the pool emptied
    he reflected sentimentally
    on hairs caught in the trap
    they pulled up with the snake.

  • At the Centinela

    We squiggled and danced around
    and the radio and the romance
    until all the songs blew fuses
    and the whole night crashed down.

    We could hear that dark fall coming
    down in the valley and up on the hill
    whistles and the steel rail humming
    buttered popcorn and bubble water.

    At the Centinela drive-in theatre
    in my ’56 Chevy hoping it would start
    up again when the twiddle ended
    under surveillance during the draft.


  • A ^ for D

    To envision a V
    perceive to verify
    unfold in flight

    and to survive
    a disquisition
    (without dropping out)
    think grapheme

    & other reifications
    the keyboard caret
    for exemplification

    when shifting six
    has exponential
    potential

    for turning things
    upsidedown
    & pointing out

    something needs
    to be inserted
    at this point

    D for dan buoy cork
    with flag to mark
    man overboard.

  • 2 + 2 = 5

    That two plus two equals four
    used to be true, but no more,
    not necessarily, and out the door
    our core of being washed ashore.

    Dostoevsky came close to avoid
    the obvious and said to make five
    you need at least four things,
    the fifth the wit of leadership.

    For the true leader takes 2 fish
    and 2 loaves of bread and convinces
    the constituency they’ve been fed
    the truth, the whole truth, nothing but,

    for what is right might be wrong,
    we hear from the physicists,
    who wander far afield from logic,
    language, and Mother Earth.

    So, if you happen to have two
    apples and two hammers, you
    are missing six of something.
    You are a long ways from home.

    “I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing, but, if we are to give everything its due, twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing, too.”

    “Notes from Underground,” Dostoevsky, 1864.

  • Of an Old Style

    When you need to get close to each season,
    to know which direction our vast Earth spins,
    come sit under the apple tree and reason,
    pink blossoms now against winter winning.
    Life is not much of a competition;
    most creatures make the best of and endure.
    And then there’s this endless repetition
    of flowers come-hither with alarming
    allure. Such is the plan it would appear,
    since the same thing happens every year.


  • Starbucks (sung to the tune of “Skylark”)

    Starbucks, have you any coffee for me,
    can’t you see I am very sleepy,
    won’t you tell me where a barista might be,
    is there a cappuccino and a table,
    an umbrella, and a seat?

    Starbucks, can I sit outside your door,
    on the sidewalk with a napkin and pen,
    writing my poem that no one will read,
    doodling my time away
    to an ambiguous ending.

    And when the barista comes out,
    asking me if I’d like some frothy whipped cream,
    wonderful cream like the fall of moonlight,
    the garden lanterns are lit,
    while a gypsy jazz trio plays
    dans les nuages.

    Starbucks, I don’t know if you have what I need,
    a lonely table under a carob tree,
    where I’ll sit and sip a cold coffee,
    my heart squeezed through a napkin ring,
    wishing for skylark wings to fly away and sing.

    (“Skylark” is a 1942 jazz standard song, lyrics by Johnny Mercer, music by Hoagy Carmichael.)

  • A Sign

    They looked for a sign
    in the skies, the seas
    somewhere, anywhere
    around the universe.

    A sign that might tell
    where to go, how to get
    there, a range, a stage
    or stay the hell put.

    But signs are placed
    not by the gods
    but by you and me
    fools to think we

    know anything about
    directions, instructions
    nods, wags, or winks
    we live on the brink

    where all the signs
    say, “Keep away
    from the Edge!”
    that surrounds us.