POST SOLSTICE

Posted on May 12, 2022 by bobjanisdillon

We’re on the winning side now, my champions,
destined for increase, strength, rude health, and laurels.
Sure, the car might not start, and the temperature
might keep us down for a day, or longer,
yes, the wicked one, or even the cops,
may lay in wait, but no matter. Without fail
more light is coming into this world of ours.
The game is done, bet on black, or ride on red,
it’s all good, good green, from now on, bursting
into every pocket, straining at the seams.
Sit back and accept your due recompense
for hanging around past the finish pole.
We’ve well and truly won. Were we to rot,
At this point, victory would rise from the spot.

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Hallelujah

Posted on May 12, 2022 by bobjanisdillon

Sing, choirs of angels, sing in exultation,
sing all the residents on all floors of the accountancy firm,
sing junkies, sing outcasts, sing church choirs who can’t carry a tune,
sing lovers of misery and hopeless pedants of time.

Sing for the holy child, and students of life with calloused hands
from the fishing nets, sing hosanna for the thief on the left,
and the right one, too while you’re at it.
Ring out praises for Muhammad Ali and St. Pete,
sing for Mary, unrepentant carrier of God.

Let the earth shake with fervent witness
to the supernova that burns in the chest of woman,
that roils in the breast of man.

Sing and behold: there is a call, interwoven
into the atom’s hurly burly, heard in the friction
by the tramline wires, there is a call jutting out
with every lap of the wave again the shore,
and there is a response, one that we bear,
one that we bare, so sing it out now.

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the miracle

Posted on May 12, 2022 by bobjanisdillon

Though not
by any stretch
or leap
a “by the book”
Orthodox
Christian
(if anything,
a “beside the book”
semi-literary
heathen),
on their two main points
of
Christmas
incarnational
theology,
I am basically in complete
fundamental
agreement.

The first
is that the miracle
has already
happened.

I mean,
on Mars
they’re looking
intently
at rocks.
Rocks!
Nothing
wrong
with rocks.
But here on earth,
well –
need I go on.

And then the second
theological postulate
of Christmas,
and also
the days to come,
is that the miracle
is happening
now
and
is about to happen
finally
and very soon,
winging its way
here
like a thief
in the night,
or like the
indeterminate
and unmistakable
condensation
of air
into
a snowflake,
a protostar,
or a word of some kind.



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Bethlehem and Matamoros

Posted on May 12, 2022 by bobjanisdillon

Bethlehem’s only one city, you know.
The other day in Matamoros,
a Mom, originally from Guatamela,
gave birth on the banks of the river.
This really happened, you can read about it.
Asylum seekers lay her down in the Rio Grande mud,
and whispered soothing words to her.
Tranquila. Madre. Esta bien.
And there in the refugee camp,
with the ambulance still on the way,
it was accomplished. Every birth,

I think, and especially some,
ought to be recorded, noted somehow, the heroic timbre
of the thing sung in verse.
Even bad verse. Speak to me, son of man,
of the next little one coming in the night,
and don’t leave out any figure on the sidelines,
who is bringing the gift of themselves,
who is embellishing necessity with kindness.

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Santa update

Posted on May 12, 2022 by bobjanisdillon

Here’s the good news: Santa is not feeling under the weather.
Really, there’s not much weather to be under. The Arctic Circle
is strangely warm, today, the air lingers around like a shiftless,
antiseptic winter doldrum in Florida. Santa, who reads the news,
is thinking of the polar bears. The woolly blighters
are not without their own agency for trouble;
back in the day they ate a stray elf or two. Now,
they’re hardly heard from. Santa misses the drama,
just as he misses the toys with the large springs,
Jacks in boxes, cup and ball. Granted, the PS5 is pretty cool.

Santa is fine, yes, and Covid free – though sometimes he worries
about the potential spread, unique to his position. A mask,
to him, is NBD, he’s worn every outfit known to man. But could he
catch it, anyway? Santa’s not so sure. Getting the vaccine,
as a supernatural being, was not a problem. AARP, NHS,
KGB, FBI – if you can spell it, Santa can get it, and the associated perks.
He gobbles them up like cookies. But they aren’t quite the same.

Santa watches his carbon footprint, there in the snow, of course.
But mostly he just makes toys. He’s aware – well aware –
there are bigger issues happening in the world today, grown up issues,
and he is, for all the twinkle in his eye, a guy who’s been around.
At times he, too, feels useless, a toy. But all he can really do
is a little something for the children. Cigarette out,
back to the workshop, where he’ll tinker for dear life,
his own, and the ones for whom, if he could, he’d build the world.

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Summer poems are prolix

Posted on May 12, 2022 by bobjanisdillon

Summer poems are prolix, extending tendrils
of metaphor and alliterative allusion; opulently
they reach out to the reader,
to the supposed reader, to the deferential target –
to anyone, really – and, carelessly, indulgently,
to no one at all.

Late summer poems get down,
a bit, to business. They live
the ripeness of the hour, and speak
the word attuned to it.

And then we come to Fall –
a tumbling
of pretense,
a crispness,
a look,
a stop.
And then a look again.

A shortening, then,
as the elegant
whiteness of the page
and behind it, the dark and perfect
eye of the mind,
gently draw in the ear, to be heard.

And then, for a gorgeous little while,
it is winter,
silent
&

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battery run

Posted on May 12, 2022 by bobjanisdillon

In New England, in December, the sun sets
at precisely four twenty-something each day (there
must be some who commemorate
it in that way, and good for them, but I don’t), while
the sunrise gets later and later –
past the sixth hour, into the seventh,
the morning darkness
encroaching like a burglar into the day.

It was just before five a.m. when the smoke alarm went off.

It was the batteries, I figured out, and then a bleary later,
I figured out which smoke alarm it was. Or carbon monoxide
alarm, more precisely, which is my excuse for why
it took me so long to find it, behind the couch.

It was just the right degree of cold
to enjoy my Salvation Army coat, and the gas station
is not far. Blessing abounds.

I am often up early, before the dawn,
as were my ancestors before me: a few birds twitter
in the distance, and the human generations too,
out from the caves, foraging for the day’s prosperity.

The Chestnut Market
glows warmly with all sorts of promise,
a man of gentle bearing is stocking the shelves,
and there is coffee, already loaded in urns. Kings
never had it this good.

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red leaves on the path

Posted on May 12, 2022 by bobjanisdillon

If you have ever seen
the ripples unfurl from a pebble
cast into the water,
then you understand the whole story:

How the Great Mother,
after the explosion,
in her wisdom placed
the center of the universe
in each one of us.

So if you would know
yourself,
make yourself
small enough
to see
your center
in anything
else.

A billion red leaves have gathered
of the winter floor.
Every
single
brilliant
leaf
the North Star,
Lucifer,
a fallen angel
for whom the Tinkerer herself
would upset the whole
mechanics of the universe
just to get a little closer
for a kiss

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winter blues

Posted on May 12, 2022 by bobjanisdillon

The winter blues are a fine color,
the color of Charlie Parker and the sky,
the sound of fresh snow coming down
to tuck in the soul for rest, or maybe dreaming.

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Before the Angels Appeared

Posted on May 12, 2022 by bobjanisdillon

That day
Like all days
There was the sound of the creek in the lower corner of the field,
The tempo of the hooves, growing faster
With the slope of the hill,
The susurrus of wool and flesh,
Accompanied by the chirp of the sunbird,
And the bleat of the flock itself,
Insistent and casual.

There was the shade in the midst of the sun beating down,
The scrub bed carrying on for miles,
Until it met the blue sky in the far distance,
And also a valley of grass as soft as the eyes of an old friend.

Then the sky darkened,
in the East and in the West,
As the lambs arranged the world through shuffles and coos
And the mothers hustled to the call.

Gradually, over time,
a silence crescendoed amongst the flock,
The nighttime hush, and there was,
As there always is,
An expectant sense, and peace.

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