three poems  The ineffable steals rides in used cars

 

Resistance at Winter Park    The Appearance of Disorder at Cape May  Callahan Dancing

 

for other poems, go to

 

21 March 2004 Richard P. Richter 

 

 

 

 

 

resistance

.

Resistance at Winter Park

Before spring, the ground, hard and dark,

is telling stories of loss and lack and death.

Images of ancient powers climb

upward in your consciousness, as if

old tales about the violence of gods

were based on fact.

 

And you assume as fact

that those who made them up in fear and dread

were longing for a peace that had no end.

 

For you, too, live a tale of longingness.

 

Foot-thick chunks of ice have lodged above

the creek, thrown by floods of days before,

resembling messages—for your eyes only—

white signals of emergency from There,

wherever it is, and signed by Whom, whomever.

 

As always in lengthening winter, ghost-like trees

appear to speak, repeating themselves as if

they thought you had not heard before, echoes

in the webs of barest blackened branches:

“Look out,” they seem to say, “green is a slut.”

 

You stop your ears then, turn your eyes away.

You stare through winter’s lure, the melancholy

of the Park, the soft and easy entry

into narratives with dreadful ends.

 

Ice to mud, trees to sails for warm winds.

 

 

Resistance at Winter Park

The Appearance of Disorder at Cape May 

Callahan Dancing

21 March 2004 Richard P. Richter

 

 

cape

.

The Appearance of Disorder at Cape May

 Here in Cape May, the flower beds flaunt

a degree of disorder, almost by ordinance.

Moss grows between dry-laid brick

on driveways, softening the designs.

 

At Higbee Beach, beyond the Point,

bared breasts silently ride

on lapping waters of the Delaware’s mouth.

Nude, the bathers want direct

engagement with the sun and water.

 

Driftwood silvering in the air

stares back at you the way the women

stare, showing their firm endowments

like wild she-dogs of the waves.

 

A black lab keeps you at a distance

from a male pair up the sand,

their buttocks and balls taking sun

in ludicrous conspiracy

with the other parts of porcine bodies.

 

You tread a line of blue-black shells,

tossed to the upper limit of tide.

Their sound of crunching under foot

syncopates with bay waves breaking.

 

Ahead, at Sunset Beach, the concrete

hull weathers while the flag waves,

red, white, and blue on blue.

People play in bathing suits

and sweatshirts, streaks of orange and green

against the neutral tones of sand.

 

 

Resistance at Winter Park

The Appearance of Disorder at Cape May 

Callahan Dancing

21 March 2004 Richard P. Richter

 

 

dancing

.

Callahan Dancing

His long hiatus ran beyond the longest

Calendar.  And then the stopping stopped:

Callahan began to dance again,

Replicating fevers first revealed

When time, like butterflies on blooms, was free.

 

O Callahan, you dizzy dervish, you—

Now the shape of arms and legs becomes

So blurred we cannot tell if you are squat

And fat or tall and lean.  You are; and you

Are not what we could see when you were still.

 

You are, perhaps, the dance you—daring—do.

Your probables blend into certainties,

Emergent patterns capturing your whir.

O seize us in a self-defining dance—

Show us we, too, conquer circumstance.

 

 

Resistance at Winter Park

The Appearance of Disorder at Cape May 

Callahan Dancing

21 March 2004 Richard P. Richter