IF YOU COULD SEE

If you could see your beauty through my eyes
you’d greet each creature who approached with smile
so gentle none would fear you—your soft, wise
voice causing every beast to pause a while,
silently rejoice at your offered hand,
bow humbled head and feel your healing touch.
If you could see how your posture commands
the crowded room, sacred light, or how much
aura surrounds your motion, then you’d sense
Chopin’s joy at composing sonatas
steeped in genius and filled with dissonance
igniting art. Or Schumann’s cantata
sculpted from Thomas Moore, his angel’s vice
exacting a tear to gain paradise.

Roger Armbrust
January 30, 2012

SYNTHESIS

Interweaving our moist bodies as one,
we shape something new: perhaps lace of flesh,
perhaps chemical elements’ union
redefining organic—cells enmeshed,
revolutionary biology
poets of later eras will record,
sensing how our tongues shun psychology,
spirits rely most on unspoken words
as our substance conceives to Beethoven’s
nocturne. What do our half-opened mouths voice
so far from language? If ever heaven
were a higher stage of truth, make our choice
composed of calm and passion. Make it here
where our inflected forms meld, free from fear.

Roger Armbrust
January 26, 2012

ETTA

Now you listen to me for a minute.
I don’t know how many people love you.
Probably equals those millions of notes
you entranced us with as you danced from blues
and doo-wop to rock to soul to gospel
into jazz and beyond. How you caressed
each of us, alone in dark, casting spells,
forming memories and, yes, hope. You dressed
in silk and curled blond hair, rocking the house,
turning our heads and hearts. But your ballads,
most of all, mellow yet wrenching, meld us
even now into one spirit. You died
today. Fought booze and junk, won halls of fame.
We’re so sad you left, but so glad you came.

Roger Armbrust
January 20, 2012

4:44 a.m.

and 44 degrees and fog outside
my writing-room windows. Old ghosts, you know,
sleeping in oaks like lean gray wolves who hide
from hunters in me who hide from them. No
sleep for hunters, though, in our dark retreat
lighted only by far lace of streetlights’
longing beams, ghosts’ firefly eyes flurried fleet
as thin waterfalls within those far lights
at night, and haunting glow of this absurd
monitor before me realizing
itself reflecting my psyche in words
blinking across space. Your analyzing
them right now won’t help me. You’re here alone
touching their curled bones. I’m already gone.

Roger Armbrust
January 20, 2012

ACHE

A harsh flash of lightning gashing the nuts,
burning like army ants through the groin,
slashing with a jagged blade in the gut
after slicing up my intense loin.
A brutal battalion attacks my head
shouting aspirin will never relieve
the wild hound’s growling gnaw. And how I dread
those howling sirens refusing to leave
my moss-plugged ears. For longer than a year
now I’ve suffered this persistent pattern
of selfish longing and deep-seated fear
tempered by the one feeling that matters:
gratitude rising from prayer; your spirit’s
essence seems to appear while I’m kneeling,
asking for your happiness and healing.

Roger Armbrust
January 19, 2012

DYING SLOWLY

Great Anna understood dying slowly.
Knowing her rooms were bugged, she’d host a friend
at the dining table, talking lowly
of weather and music, even pretend
to toast the Party with vodka. Then hand
a poem to read in silence, careful
so paper didn’t rustle. Her command
of false banter would rule while the fearful
trusted one memorized each secret verse.
Don’t you love to run through snow? Anna’d ask.
I really can’t think of anything worse
than life without winter. The guest’s mute task
complete, he’d nod. Here, light your pipe, she’d say,
as she burned her lyric in the ashtray.

Roger Armbrust
January 16, 2012

CONSCIOUS

I awake and welcome you in silence,
your sacred form lying still beside me,
sculpture worthy of Michelangelo’s
divine touch. Yet I know not even he
could recreate blessed flesh of you, softest
shadowed recess of your clavicle, sweet
valley home to my first kiss. Your firm breast
lifts slight as earth to my lips’ caress, greets
my tongue tip with your deepest breath’s response,
your body encapsulated in calm
trust. My passioned dreams used to reside once
in prayer for your presence, tempered by balm
of reality—conscious of fate’s clues,
and of your everlasting right to choose.

Roger Armbrust
January 15, 2012

HALF MOON

It suddenly glows in my left window.
Do you see its form wherever you are?
Its bright face graced with such subtle shadow.
Strange how I can’t observe a single star
anywhere through that distant dark. How it
recalls that instant sparkle bordering
your eye’s pupil and iris, fond of wit
I found—reflex to your wit—endearing
us to each other like moon to night sky.
Have you ever wondered why the goddess
Zirna hangs a half moon round her neck? Why
Selene’s crown was half moon, and she dressed
in those half-moon veils? It must be that same
spiritual light I sense, hearing your name.

Roger Armbrust
January 15, 2012

WE ARE HUMMING GRIEG

as we lounge among Mount Floyen’s trees, love,
looking down on Bergen’s inlet, the sun
drifting like a blazing krone from above
into the bay’s glaze of dark wine. Someone’s
cued the town’s lighting director, her art
vying with arriving stars. You recall
our touring fjords at dawn, want to start
again at daybreak, challenge de syv djell.
I laugh, then fall into your North Sea eyes,
fathomless in their joy. Just what lyric
pieces would he compose, do you surmise,
were he gazing as I at Homeric
wonder of your face? Make me a Viking,
perhaps, or an adoring mountain king?

Roger Armbrust
January 12, 2012

SEED

Embryonic self clothed in protective
coat, key to evolution of us all,
keep faith in your vital process. You give
us life and knowledge both: bold, silent call
of our creed to continue. Your concrete
image of nutrient cache instructs us
to germs of how to sustain, to complete
each physical nurture. Who among us
doesn’t owe you? Yet we humans connive
to control, even own you. Teach us with
each ripened ovule just how we should live:
sow soul, propagate truth, creative myth,
permeate our great earth with love, disperse
to all deep wisdom of our universe.

Roger Armbrust
January 10, 2012

GIFT

I’ve named a star after you. No not through
some registry, but for care of heaven
and you. I’ve named it in my heart. Its hue
of blue-white glows in your clear eyes even
from across the room, more luminous than
closer stars. It already answers to
Bellatrix, Gamma Orionis; can
match your iris with its blush of gray-blue
when you wear certain sweaters. Third brightest
star in Orion, it forms the hunter’s
left shoulder, that place I feel your head rest
even though you’re not here. It seems you’re there,
celestial navigation’s source, guide true
as honor, new name known just to us two.

Roger Armbrust
January 9, 2012

LET ME TELL

how I would romance you on far Saturn,
inviting you to view night sky while I
sing of the rock giant’s sixty-two moons
in orbit above us as if some sly
invisible juggler had frozen her
myriad orbs in space, pretending they’re
the gods’ shining eyes gazing in laughter
down at us, blessing us, celestial care
leading us somehow to blaze. I’d create
stories of how tiger stripes on tiny
Enceladus fade, then form anew, fate
determined by the big cat’s green-fire eyes
staring from earth toward heaven. How Rhea’s
magic power can’t match yours, or my praise.

Roger Armbrust
January 5, 2012

RUNAWAY

I’m watching her run away down the street
through fog swirling and falling fast from quick
punches of sudden rain, running from sweet
phrases I’m still singing to her, a trick
of nature as my voice chases after
her, its volume rising, nearly catching
her raised arms, clinched fists, yet I hear laughter
cloaking her in surround sound, feet flashing
through cruel puddles, splashes slashing off
her soles, spraying bright droplets reflecting
past offenses, lost chances, kisses soft
as swirling fog, her gaunt form deflecting
off a light pole, now flopping, lying still.
My mind’s mob screams Don’t help her! But I will.

Roger Armbrust
January 3, 2012

FIRST SONNET

I give you my first sonnet of the year
because I write it to you. Consider
Giacomo da Lentini, creator
of the very first. He wrote it for her
in the thirteenth century: soft urgings
for his scornful muse to stop, reject pride
and accept his verse. That’s not you. I sing
of your eyes and smile because they sing, glide
through me like lyrics of sacred hymns, ring
even more holy because of words I
hear you share. I sing because the meaning
of sonnet is song. Watching, I wonder
if you sense your humor’s charm, or ponder
who sees your gentle presence as splendor.

Roger Armbrust
January 1, 2012