October through a giant copper beech

The day approacheth, just a few weeks from now - I must be leaving ye old Providence, heading west to Minneapolis.  Walking around this windy overcast morning - gray skies, gray hair, gray world - thinking of the bark on a great gray beech tree, & the gray stone of churchyards, & the grey-eyed wisdom of Athena-Sophia (you might say)... all these sempiternal things (you might say)... & of Jasper Johns' gray series, & of the strange old gray painter crouched in a gray streetcorner, in Antonioni's Ravenna film, Deserto Rosso (was it Dante?)... & so all these grays blended on this gray day, as I remembered Edwin Honig, who had so much to do with my poetry life here in Providence... & Edwin's terrific short poem "November through a Giant Copper Beech" (you can find it in at least one of the editions of the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry).

Edwin's poem is about passing things, & things that are steadfast through time...

I got into a college (Brown) on the strength of some high school poems.  & stuck around here, writing on & off, for 45 years.  I just learned a few days ago that a poem of mine has been accepted for publication in that venerable American institution, Poetry magazine.  So maybe something at least has come of it all - so many wayward years in Roger's city-state, his "refuge for troubled conscience"!

PUMPKIN MAN

                                   in memory E.H.

This windy gray October day,

fat robin camouflaged

(hoodie?) in dogwood’s

rusty green... & then the great gray

beech I passed this morning (Slater

& Lincoln).  Elephantine,

primordial, in motion

still (old pre-Socratic critter)...

Edwin’s tree, his 100-branching

crown – the graying King

of Gray, still whistling

to Even Dove, down never-dying

Dolphin Way (led by leaping sparks

into Ravenna).  O patient

rude dream-sponge – intent

to wrestle safety shroud across stark

span! – your International Pumpkin Man

lit from within (warm

orange flame)... No harm

shall come to thee, my child – listen!

In a corner of a lumber yard

one sharp-eyed old saint

(framed by gray paint

cans, wagon) waves palm upward

toward the dark sheep-door, just

over his shoulder – where

one candle shivers fire.

An endless jet, he whispers.  Trust.

10.9.15

Beech tree on Slater Ave., Providence