WINDWARD

Ancient Polynesians sailed their canoes
thousands of miles into wind, exploring
for new worlds, not fearing distance. They knew
Tāwhiri would caress their backs, soaring
them across gentle seas when they returned.
Playing the odds in their search, they’d follow
birds whose windward flights found land. How I’ve yearned
for such a life, longing to flee hollow
smiles, graced by symbols of sure things as I
sail away and toward. Tell me, love, what you
wish for. Do you long to seek secret isles
where we two can breathe as one? Tell me true.
Would you rather live alone? Bid me sail
without you, my song lost in the wind’s wail?

Roger Armbrust
August 31, 2010

NOBLE SOUL, NEVER SLEEPING

ever guarding our marked yet unseen path,
balancing my will’s churning, weeping search
for peace within this mountain storm’s vast wrath,
let your calm light lead, ease my body’s lurch
at every lightning bolt and thunder crash.
Lift me each time I hide. Return my sight
to your sight. Push me past boulders of rash
actions, my fear-filled responses to night’s
treacherous ghosts. Hold me tight with hope’s taut
rope as we hover on cliff’s edge. Pledge your
everlasting loyalty. How I’ve fought
you in our past lives, my passion’s pleasure
always shoving off your care. Now I yield,
pray to cherish you, all your light’s revealed.

Roger Armbrust
August 31, 2010

FEELING NIGHT’S PULSE

again our eyes turn to stars’ soft rhythm,
rippling leaves responding to barest wind,
crickets’ sly castanets urging schism
through dark fields and forests. Why don’t we mind
brash woodpecker’s syncopated tapping,
stubborn rebel drummer, beak mining dead
oak at midnight? Will our lake’s tongues lapping
thick-lipped shore disturb our sleep, make us dread
growing flood of fireflies at our tent’s screen
curtain, portenders to some massive blaze
turning our woods into burning, pristine
rows of ember and ash? Will smoke’s rash maze
blind our way of escape? Do these extreme
fates await us, love? Do we merely dream?

Roger Armbrust
August 30, 2010

RUBICON

We stand together here, love, just outside
Savignano, among the riverbank’s
deep grass, where red-gray water’s flow collides
with blue sky’s glow, inspiring artist’s thanks
as she paints, balancing her lean easel
on hill-steep shore, a mere five yards from us.
Dark forest’s legion of trees seem to swell
at our backs, reminding us of Caesar’s
historic choice and, yes, our decision
to cross our own doubt-filled, mud-hued shallows,
face pain and former dear ones’ derision,
those wars no match for our own sad, hallowed
search within ourselves—that night we confessed
in whispers: Alea iacta est.

Roger Armbrust
August 29, 2010

LOVE ALWAYS

Your email, anchored by eternity
of these two words, echoes through my being
these days later. Like breeze I quietly
rise, unfold my blinds like leaves, now seeing
flickering dawn singe away lazing dark,
small lasers for slightest instant only
turning true leaves to brief fireflies, lean bark
to long, soft-burning lances. I’m lonely
no more. Looking west, I imagine you,
meditation done, flowing through glowing
day. What words will carry you like light through
your gathering with friends? Somehow knowing
this, I listen closely as you speak, say
the words you say, watching you as we pray.

Roger Armbrust
August 29, 2010

MIDNIGHT MOON, BIRTHDAY MOON

for Catherine, my daughter

Full gleam holding its lace-sculpted shadows,
opal sphere edges past my writing room’s
double windows, light heading north. Now bows
and exits right past my frame, and yet looms
a while on its top ledge as though wanting
to remember this cloudless ebony
stage. Still I, having checked your sky’s daunting
radar view, see what our bright moon’s stony
satellite eye sees: mass of swirling storms
stretching across central Missouri. They’ll
scatter through the day, bring late sunshine’s warm
caress to you, as I would were I well
within reach. Then clear night will hold you soon
within your own midnight moon, birthday moon.

Roger Armbrust
August 21, 2010

MAKING LOVE IN HEAVEN

Sunday morn, clicking on KLRE
my heart falls deep within Parish-Alvars’
harp concerto, floating strings’ reverie
enfolded by violins, sudden stars
enveloping cosmos of my closed eyes,
tingling of my waking skin waking all,
and suddenly my senses realize
what my soul already knows: this long fall
through passionate serenity must be
memory: our making love in heaven
before body-mind flight to gravity
and solid earth’s captivity. Even
Icarus rising recalled this, like me,
before he plunged, smiling, into the sea.

Roger Armbrust
August 15, 2010

LONELY AS SILENT LASER

Lonely as silent laser lost in space.
Spaced as bass guitarist losing his band.
Bands of plasma’s ultraviolet trace,
trace our equator, ionosphere’s wand.
Wand of Merlin’s power, reflect my eye.
Eye children who cower, craving magic.
Magic moon, pour tonight your bright reply.
Reply to stars warning of what’s tragic.
Tragic song from drowning crickets, silence!
Silence swimming through heartless space and time,
time your phases marking music’s absence.
Absence always loving void, help our rhyme
rhyme where black holes swallow eternal light.
Light of laser lost in space, enflame night.

Roger Armbrust
August 12, 2010

UNTILTED SONNET

It stands upright, rectangular as you’d
expect our respectable classic verse
to appear, yet new, like a window viewed
from both inside and out, a widow’s purse,
its leather black etchings on white, its loose
metal latch urging easy opening,
like a poet’s mind or murderer’s noose.
You choose. Say lost beauty of opal rings
glow once again through our imagined lines.
Whisper how love’s exhausted hope revives
within this stretching form which now declines
to remain a square, but most gladly lives,
elongated to fourteen rows of words,
mature enough to be both seen and heard.

Roger Armbrust
August 11, 2010

DIEBENKORN

Play for me in blue, sing to me in blue.
Let me overhear your lovers asking
with blank stares just what you’re trying to do
with your rectangles, squares, multitasking
angles like short airstrips or dead-end streets.
It’s like me smearing makeup on some old
fence, Mathilda might say. A less-discreet
ex-Marine buddy could laugh aloud, scold
you for turning to a faggot’s work. Price
of opening your heart. How they’d change their
tune were your pallet a music sheet, sliced
notes like sculpted aqua stars tossed out there
for all to hear through your trumpet paint brush,
your canvas the air, their eyes now ears, hushed
mouths as you play and sing for them in blue.

Roger Armbrust
August 10, 2010

AQUAMARINE

Vermeer often defied its great expense,
offering pale-bright hue to mere chair back,
sharing value of insignificance,
engraining it deep in off-white walls’ cracks
and tints so subtly only microscopes
discover its minute globes. Consider
his girl with wineglass, how shyly she copes
with her admirer’s urging, edge of her
flecked wooden seat nearly lost from our sight
controlled by dominant white of their cuffs,
collars, flowing table towel. That might
be himself, bored in left corner, sly stuff
of great artists to hide within our view,
fist blocking face, denying light its due.

Roger Armbrust
August 8, 2010

MENDING TORN PAGES

Holding the magnifying glass to each
one, I study both sides' fibrous edges,
feel how they long for each other’s touch, reach
to interlock and meld again, pledges
of union in their jagged smiles, know how
their clipped lips curl if kept apart too long.
I slide them slowly side by side, like brows
of continents, realize longing’s wrong
to seek some perfect fit. Settle for seams
to please the naked eye. Yet under this
tight sight, I survey interlacing streams
and outlets, envision a single kiss.
I always seal them with clear solvents, eye
them under gentle lamplight till they dry.

Roger Armbrust
August 1, 2010