NIGHT’S RAINDROPS ON WINDOWPANES

Streetlights ignite crystals to jeweled stars.

Tilt your head slightly and constellations

appear and disappear: high-heeled slipper

shimmers, transposes to twirling baton

to anteater to Hermes fastening

his flaming sandal. Look left and you’ll see

glazed galaxies glisten, fascinating

as reading bright future in fantasy

of new love’s eyes. A lone passing car light

imitates Halley’s comet flashing Morse

code through centuries of searching vast night.

A single melting planet, its slow course

a growing glow, predicts what dawn will bring,

shouldering through thick clouds as it's rising.

Roger Armbrust

October 14, 2012

ANATOMY

It is perhaps how I separate you

from crowds surrounding us in selected

rows. Or how I trace serene attitude

of your hand, your gentle grace reflected

by resting it on couch’s crown like swan’s

wing curled in sleep. Or how I focus eyes

on your eyes as you focus on stark dawn

of honest words. Or how your smile implies

you’re pleased to see me. I dissect every

motion, every pause. That’s what poets do.

I do it because cosmos cleverly

unites our essence in such subtle views,

I might miss you. Like my briefest acclaim:

Your cheek. My shoulder. Your soft voice. My name.

Roger Armbrust

October 10, 2012

DIVING AND GAZING

An insatiable curiosity

about the world at large speaks continents

of grace, open mind, pure velocity

of thought and feeling. What brings contentment

to the falling skydiver just might please

the poet gazing at distant body

hurtling in air toward him, sudden release

of soft parachute now floating steady

as a jellyfish in ocean, tulip

in full bloom, or his late aunt’s umbrella

protecting his small-boy frame from rain, tips

of his fingers tense as a novella’s

climax as he reaches toward the diver

and clear beauty her landing delivers.

Roger Armbrust

October 1, 2012  

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