© 2011 L. Ward Abel

Tetrad

I.

If words meant something

they would have solved

everything by now

would have discovered

through a process of

collaboration

solutions

in this place

finitia.

We hurdle

on,

we gleam

but we have

only so much time

here

in this spot

at this moment

mass and motion.

There are only

a few words

we can use.

Maybe language

is in its

infancy

it hasn’t flowered.

Maybe there is

one word yet

that one word

we wait for

to ease

give peace

meaning

greenery to concrete.

Maybe

I’ll write it

in the next

stanza

or I’ll sing it

and everything will

agree

for once.

All living things

will realize

a key has opened

the new door.

So there may

be hope

after all.

I may be on the dock

for leaving

or arriving

at a sun-speckled place.

Breezes off the bay,

sun and air

filling the preacher’s eye.

But words fail.

Halted.

II.

There is some significance

to the color

green.

It seems to

protect,

the same

parachute

that sheltered

Emerson or Thoreau

on hotter days.

It is not asylum

not a cradle

not somewhere to be buried

but a presence,

membranous

flexible paper thin veined

set aside

seldom referred to

accessed

only when we realize

it is there,

a source

an end, a means

a song

a transformance

if allowed,

a quiet

if received,

not a way

or politics

no symbol, nothing

to watch for

to await.

Something

but not,

a narrow wheel

of sky

truth.

Green.

III.

The dark corners

of my

father’s mind

cry from another room

but soft

like paint

like oil

fresh from years

of edges.

And Degas painted

his father

hunched over

with black browns

slight

orange white,

did his father

know the palette?

In the painting

the old man is distant,

like my father,

regretful, receiving

but not hearing

Señor Pagans’

guitar playing

there right beside him

from this vantage

maybe deceptively.

He looks like he tires.

Does he fear

the end

of the universe?  My father’s

heart is strong

but not like you think,

his connection

remains but not emotion

for open spaces

not beating pumping

for a future, now

just maintenance

in his undershirt.

My guitar is not near

him, my songs

elude him, my poems

never existed

to him.

Under three large oaks

he pets his dog

George

and marvels

at the ordinary,

but he grieves.

Where is his

piano?  Does he

dream

of flying?  How much

is left of

him?

The now-dead

painter could ask

such things

of his own father too

without words

only cadmium

and linseed and

horse tail.  Lights

convey

but only so

slim or no

green,

life, tenuous,

short,

a deep piled

sweaty red couch

out in sun.

It smells

of concoction.

I could cry

at this.

I could just

cry

at this.

IV.

There was an Egyptian

figure

in the museum

restored

cracked, his nose

missing.

The veins in that marble

went diagonal

through

his flank and back.

My own grain

cuts

at angles, like

wood that’s been left

to dry in the open

for a hundred

thousand

millennia.

But it’s only me,

a song

of pine

magnolia

water and grass

flowered greening

unlike the Roman head,

again without

his nose and dead.

What am I missing?

Words?  Notes?  Color?

Even bones

become dirt later on,

so all I can ever be

is now within my power.

In this northern city

the sea

just beyond

churches once beacons

ring out in ravines.

Here I sweat

in twenty languages

with empty pockets.

The radio blares

from a passing car.

It’s my own voice

broadcast

bounced back to me

in this my burden

my middle way.

(Boston, MA, July 2010)

All work is property of L. Ward Abel.

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