RAIN 2:08 A.M.

Lying quiet in dark, I’d swear I hear

Hemingway hammer on his Corona

manual; rapid clicks push Macomber

into bush, or drunk Cohn to Pamplona

where he’ll pound teenage Romero almost

at speed of those off-white keys. Now quiet.

Now softer tapping, and James Dickey’s lost

at one of his four portables, poet

morphing to lustful lover watching for

Doris Holbrook tracing Cherrylog Road.

What choice for me now as their metaphors

urge me to find my own? Sharp rhythms goad

me off mattress to keyboard. I expose

my senses to their ghosts’ striking echoes.

Roger Armbrust

September 8, 2012

ANTHROPOLOGY

Study how the child offers a flower

then takes it back, sincere in both actions;

the ancient ones’ Norte Chico tower

in Peru, how carvings seek reactions

to adoring nature. Survey Monte

Alban’s site plan, its palace and ball court.

What do you know now? What does the past say?

Excavate your values. Tell me what sort

of language you speak, how its images

connect us, lace our intimate fiber

as the Washoe weaved baskets for ages

by Lake Tahoe. How now by the Tiber

they still speak of Caesar. How in all lands

we seem to signal care with open hands.

Roger Armbrust

September 6, 2012

HEART MOUNTAIN, 1943

Done for the day with plowing through sagebrush,

he rubs his blistered poet’s hands and looks

out past barbed wire and guard tower, all hushed

but for prairie wind. Feels he’d write a book,

if they’d let him—ode to that far klippe,

comparing it to cliffs near where they lived

in LA before troops loaded them up

like lettuce, shipped them here by train. He’ll give

the officers freedom’s inked snarl next week

when forced to fill out the loyalty form,

their plan to draft young male citizens, seek

to cart them to war, plucked from their stuffed dorms.

When asked, Do you swear allegiance to the fight?

his pen will slash, Do you give me back my rights?

Roger Armbrust

September 5, 2012

RADIANCE

The subject for tonight is radiance,

she said, the way stark ribbons of moonlight

seem to ignite leaves, invite streams to dance

along those hillsides encased in granite

and sage. It’s radiance, she said, warming

the earth, embracing human skin longing

for human embrace; radiance charming

the reluctant wind, luring it to sing

ancient hymns, lyrics guiding us to keep

faith despite visions we can’t understand.

It’s radiance urging life to flow deep

in oceans, cells to form, combine, demand

structure. She grew silent, stared out, breathless sighs

her close, night rapt in radiance of her eyes.

Roger Armbrust

September 1, 2012