SO I’M SITTING HERE

listening to gracious Cambridge Singers
chorus Shepherds in the Field Abiding
while I’m crying acid rain, bee stingers
assaulting my eyes, my contacts chiding
me for my stubborn vanity. Where are
you? Can you sense great Transiberian
Orchestra escalate Christmas Eve for
Sarajevo toward solar explosion?
Michele McLaughlin’s Winter Solstice cleave
my heart with clever piano keys? Then
Eddie Higgins Trio wrap us in sleeves
of peaceful jazz? Now Mathis mellows in,
imploring all our Christmases be white,
and Amy Grant praying our hearts be light.
How can mine, with you out of touch and sight?

Roger Armbrust
December 29, 2011

I LISTEN TO CAROLS

I listen to carols. I look at you.
This simply helps me loving through dark night.
Nancy’s Carol of the Bells sails me through
your eyes to gray-blue skies glowing starlight.
I listen to carols. I look at you.
Nancy’s Christmas Waltz fills old Santa’s sleigh
with things for you and me, for me a view
of your blessed face. The oh-holy-night way
you look back at me. Your hark-the-herald
smile, touch gentle as Nancy’s White Christmas.
She ballads All Through the Night. How I’ve held
you through visions of light revealing vast
dreams, softly spoken. Christmas white and blue.
I listen to carols. I look at you.

Roger Armbrust
December 27, 2011

CAROLS OF LOVE AND HOPE

Congress and president tighten the rope
while we sing carols of love and hope. Chief
execs lie to us, selling tainted soap,
mortgages and dope. Some smart, smiling thief
sneaks off with our clothes while we sing carols
of love and hope. Our ancient coral reefs
die, bleached and blasted in their coves. Peril
invades all soybeans and corn, makes our brief
lives briefer still. Still we just sing carols
of love and hope. While our aggressive wars
pervade this globe, our media heralds
greed, snubs philosophers for movie stars.
We dance on denial’s steep, slippery slope,
then fall, while we sing carols of love and hope.

Roger Armbrust
December 23, 2011

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SONNET

You came in cold month of mankind’s great hope,
a week early to lead the way, it seems.
You were “delivered,” doctor’s stethoscope
assuring your powerful heartbeat, dreams
in warm womb suddenly disrupted, air
rushing to lungs and blood to carry you
forward to where you stand now, presence rare
as an astronaut’s moonwalk—your blessed view
of being delivered again. As I’ve
been delivered, and others before us,
and others as you read this. We’re alive.
For real. No wonder you love clear focus
of kind signs and Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree.
No wonder you honor nativity.

Roger Armbrust
December 17, 2011

BIRTH SIGNS

Out of close womb into wild world’s focus:
You on this day under two signs, common
Sagittarius and rare Ophiuchus.
The former, an archer—sure-eyed human
with beast’s body, inescapable sense
of fluid motion, psychic fire, turning
hunt into dance of nature’s reverence
for life—arrow flying, passion burning.
The latter, star clusters forming serpent
bearer—grasping snake and kissing its mouth,
free of poison in mind or heart, sole bent
on crushing Scorpio to left foot’s south.
Through flaming night sky, you gallop and glide,
loved by man, blessed by gods, no need to hide.

Roger Armbrust
For your birthday
December 13, 2011

TAKE ME DOWN

Alabama’s harmonizing Take Me
Down and we’re in sync stripping off our clothes
on this space shuttle of a couch, bodies
now colliding like planets at great close
of history. Love, I explore surface
of your shining flesh, eager fingertips
reconnoitering every curve, crevice
as our breathing rhythms one, our pressed lips
flexing, tongues massaging as we orbit
from shy flinch to delirious passion.
What is living but forsaking habit
for plunging in some perilous ocean
toward dissolving, feeling our lost bodies
form again, joy igniting in our eyes?

Roger Armbrust
December 9, 2011

ANGEL AURORA

Is this not great Gabriel descended
from heaven to view earth in purest air,
spirit and light cast in vast hues, blended
emerald and scarlet shimmering there
above us—massive feathered wing, raining
gown falling toward Norway’s snow-glazed torso?
He hovers in silence, glow explaining
all we need see of living, or more so
afterlife. Love, listen how we chorus,
you and I, hypnotized by his curtained
corona sequined with stars. Before us
this celestial messenger makes certain
we understand what our world’s never known
before, what we must share after he’s flown.

Roger Armbrust
December 5, 2011

CIRRUS

for Liberty

My friend David posted this four-color
photo: early sky with frills of charcoal
clouds surrounding a fiery-pink, fuller
cirrus center-frame, a form someone calls
angel’s wings. Its hue inspires a red sky
at morning quote. Another happy voice
offers how it’s God’s handiwork. But I
stay silent, concealing my spirit’s choice:
a woman’s radiant torso, legs spread
not at ready, but more in afterglow,
as if all life’s her consummated bed
there on high. This happens over Pangburn,
a small town with perfect ironic name
blending love’s deep pain, its passionate flame.

Roger Armbrust
December 3, 2011

SONNY

for Raymond Englerth

When Olive Kelly sang to me at dawn
back in ’93, we two watching sky
melt to liquid flame over Lough Mahon,
her Rebel throat quivering, I’d swear I
heard those grand windows shattering along
South Ring Road, or perhaps I simply sensed
her ripping my heart apart. Her sad song
burns through me these years later, recompense
for my abandoning her crystal eyes
catching sunrise, for choosing my Pyrrhic
independence to lie here old and wise,
so to speak, hearing her haunting lyric:
Nights are so long and the silence goes on
I’m feeling so tired, I’m not all that strong

Roger Armbrust
December 2, 2011