New, Tender, Quick

Rot-Orange II (Red-Orange II) ink/oil pastel on paper 20 x 20 cm

NEW, TENDER, QUICK

The rich complain about cooking odors/ dysfunctional

         mothers looking like gothic statues  

in an East German church/ hay rick, manure

        ditches, skin head revelry/ where the rich

                    would never go/ destined to concern

ourselves with issues trivial at best/ we read

          Elizabeth Bishop anyway, “my outlook

is pessimistic. I think we are still barbarians/ barbarians

             who commit a hundred indecencies everyday of our lives…”/

trying to stay positive, still it seems you

      are not only watching TV/ you’re on it/ handcuffed and walking

into the county courthouse/ some deputy’s wind breaker

thrown over your head/ cooking odors from a food stand/

            life tastes pretty good as you raise taco to mouth/ smells,

well, interesting as you rise past the doorways of drinking associates

   and mere neighbors, radio noise, animal habits, fugitive states of mind

no one will ever capture, cowering in the manure ditch,

hay rick/ utterly trivial/ stubbornly ourselves/ “…but I think we should

be gay in spite of it, sometimes even giddy—to make life endurable

    and to keep ourselves “new, tender, quick,” (George Herbert).”/ whiff

of hot dogs from the river’s edge, black lab rolling in the sand/

                                     two boys and three girls emerge

        from brown water/ giddy yet watchful/ light in their hair.