Life

All work is copyrighted by Steven V. Hight.

Blue Note

It’s pain at the level
of a low hum,
a background murmur
with nothing to drown it,
a headache without
the courage to throb,
not white noise,
but gray.

April 24, 2007

How Can Something so Wrong Still Be so Perfectly Legal?

The plaintive cry of a lonely puppy
carries on the wind and fills my heart
with sadness unmitigated
by any ability to help.

A box, a blanket,
and a twelve-by-six cage
are all he has in the world,
save the hope, unanswered,
that the love denied him by those inside
will come his way someday.

April 24, 2007

Bittersweet Spring

Fragrant white apple blossoms
shimmer in the sunlit breeze
like millions of tiny butterflies
have convened a congress in the trees.

Gusty grows the western wind
and petals flutter to the ground
to swirl like snowflakes blizzard-tossed
and die en masse without a sound.

April 18, 2007

Comfort and Joy

There is perhaps
no joy as simple
as that of petting
an old, gray dog.

April 17, 2007

Adding My Tears to Yours

It seems to me
there ought to be
something
I should say
about the latest set
of bloody beheadings
of little girls in Indonesia;

about the still-wet soldiers
shredded by the shrapnel
of roadside bombs in Baghdad;

about murderous madmen
who seek their twisted justice
by shooting random schoolchildren
in globally random cities;

about the drunken driver
whose failed suicide
selfishly succeeded in snuffing out
the too-brief lives
of the starry-eyed lovers
home for a break from their studies;

about the deluded dictators
and homicidal régimes
who fill the world’s graves
and roadside ditches
with the rotting results
of their successes;

about the faithful few
who carry out the orders
of sick, deranged deities
to slaughter the innocent
and themselves alike
at markets and restaurants,
weddings and playgrounds,
hotels and hospitals,
bus stops and boarding schools,
with bombs filled with nails
and canisters of chlorine
to maximize the mayhem
and multiply the murders.

It seems to me there ought to be
something,
something that I should say
about this,
about all this,
about the rapists and murderers
and butchers and bombers,
and about the atrocities they commit
each and every day.

But the sad, defeated despair
and the angry, helpless hatred,
which burn behind my eyes
and make me clench my jaw,
merge into a red-gray mist
that descends over me
to blot out elegant thought
and blind me to the brilliant words
I wish I could say,
leaving me with nothing to give
but dried-out tears
and futile curses at God’s indifference
and Man’s innate savagery.

April 16, 2007

Tunnel Hill

Hardly half a memory,
a few shacks down in a hollow,
silver-gray and empty,
a store, a warehouse, abandoned,
a sign, a gate, hanging askew,
silent, unused rails
slipping through an unguarded crossing,
and, to the right of the road,
a high, stone wall
encased in shrouding green honeysuckle,
tendrils both climbing and crumbling,
roots both binding and breaking,
white-and-yellow flowers perfuming the air
with the scent of Heaven.

April 9, 2007

Eleventh Hour

The uninvited guest
settles in,
grows more comfortable,
makes itself at home,
and demands its squatters’ rights.

It takes its pound of flesh
in ounces,
here and there,
a sliver, a spoonful,
perhaps a drop or two,
and leaves nothing in return,

brushing the crumbs off its lap
onto the floor,
grinding them into the rug
without the least little
concern.

April 4, 2007

Hot Tomatoes

They toss a pizza pie
like a bouncer tosses a drunk,
arms moving like battleships
crashing through rough seas,
their tribal totem tattoos
waving secret semaphores,
that proclaim their chosen identities
and hide the little girls within.

April 1, 2007

Hailstones Fall

Hailstones Fall
in a rolling white cascade
and tumble in sheets
across the neighbors’ rooftops,
bouncing and scattering
from shingle to shingle
like thousands of marbles
in a seaside game of plinko.

March 28, 2007

The Village Idiot

The Village Idiot greets all strangers
and loves them all like brothers.
He shakes every hand, kisses every cheek,
and offers a hug to every body.
The Village Idiot laughs at his own jokes
and happily answers his own questions.
He’ll talk about family if someone will listen,
and talk to the air when he’s all alone.
The Village Idiot hides his pain
and buries his troubles and sorrows,
and reveals to the world what the rest of us fear:
a face full of joy and love.

March 27, 2007

Greening Time

The Greening Time is here again,
and with it comes the joy
that comes with first crocus-bloom,
that grows with each budding leaf,
that bathes in the fresh rains of spring.

March 21, 2007

Black Holes

It is said that someday
       maybe
our solar system —
our Earth and our Moon,
our pasts and our futures,
our triumphs and our tragedies —
that maybe someday
all these things
will be swallowed
by a passing black hole.
Given this,
why carry one around
with you?

March 11, 2007

Thoughts on Colorado National Monument

Today I saw the monument —
       crusty south rim of the valley,
       craggy, mottled, pockmarked beauty,
       pulsing, swollen, living, breathing,
       purple-red like healing tissue.

Today I saw the monument —
       scars and crags and tumbling down rock,
       bristling black with scruffy beardwork,
       howling breath and thunderous heartbeat,
       all joints and knobs reclining giant.

Today I saw the monument —
       sunshine baking hard the red rocks,
       grasses browning in the cooling night,
       gently covered in a snowy quilt,
       rising waking with sun’s return.

February 26, 2007

SnowMass

It snowed tonight
and it was beautiful
to watch
as uncounted millions
uncountable billions
of fluttering flakes fell —
unique each one
but drafted shaped created
to the same master plan
buoyed for a time
by random wafting winds
but compelled
by all of Nature’s laws
to nevertheless fall
and end their dazzling dance
in a mass grave.

February 23, 2007

Memories of a Romp

Fido’s happy pawprints
preserved in drying mud
like fossilized impacts
of child-drawn daisies.

February 22, 2007

Dropping Trade Barriers

Four seeds
float in my chili,
just under the surface,
bound together
by the viscid, pulpy
remains
of a pepper
a migrant
plucked from a vine
last week
in California.

February 15, 2007

Adrift Alone Online

The Web is an empty beach
strewn with shattered shells,
crushed, worthless, unappealing,
constantly rearranged
by unending tides
that wash up more
while burying others.

Only sometimes,
occasionally,
as if by design,
and not by random accident,
a perfect conch will appear
amid the billions of broken
bits.

February 2, 2007

First Notice

My time,
my time to waste,
my time to shine,
my time to choose,
my time to play,
as if I own it,
own my time,
my time to own.

But I just rent it,
I rent my time from Heaven,
like a tenant rents his land
from the manor,
and like that tenant,
when I can no longer pay,
I will be evicted.

January 19, 2007

The Air Cuts

Still as though ghost-halo frozen,
microcrystalline lance-prick needles
and fairy-made water-glass scalpels
savagely shred at my sensitive tissues.

December 5, 2006

Full Moon Over a Snowy Field

Full moon over a snowy field
on a frigid, frosty silent night:
lighting up the landscape, Luna
etching landmarks sharp with shadow.

Moonlight bouncing back to space,
blanching starlight with its power;
chilling rays that crisp the air
and rob it of all love for life.

Jasper moving, fluid shadow
scorns the cold, ignores the moon.
Joyous, bounding like a puppy,
crunching snow with shaggy feet.

December 4, 2006

Epitaph

Consume my heart with desire,
consume my mind with lust,
consume my body with fire,
then mix my ashes with dust.

October 17, 2006

The Boy on the Beach

The boy on the beach doesn’t play,
nor does he smile.
He does not run or jump,
nor does he stretch out his arms
to soar like an albatross
over the breaking surf.
He finds no shells or brightly-colored stones,
nor does he find any joy
to animate his heart
and send laughter up to the sky
to challenge the cries of the gulls.

The boy on the beach merely stands,
gray as the lead-colored sea,
sullen as this winter’s day,
in cold-water-soaked shoes
at tide’s crashing edge,
staring out across the thieving deep,
waiting for someone
who may never return.

October 23, 2006

Cheerup Chirrup

What solace do we seek to find
in the still quiet of the night?
What remedy to what ailment
expect we to emerge
from the inky-silent depths?

My eyes read no answer in the hazy stars
too distant and small for myopic focus
to bring into clear perspective,
save for a confirmation of the
great expanse’s awe-inspiring unknowability.

And the only answer to cross my ears
is torn from the sobbing carapaces
of the midnight chorus,
whose clicking chirping mating cries
must surely stem from a lonely lust
very much like our own.

July 2006

Stray

A spaniel stands at the door,
black and tan and spotted,
hair tangled and matted.
He’s graying at the chops,
at his muzzle,
and brown stains leach from his eyes
like oil seeps from an old pickup.
He wears no collar,
dangles no badge to show he is loved.
The smells of coffeecake and company —
the sounds of country music and nice people talking —
have brought him,
and he wags his old tail stump
happily
as he waits eagerly at the door.
Perhaps he thinks he’s home.
Perhaps the acrid, oily coffee smell,
the sweet cake and ham,
the old Freddy Fender song on the radio,
remind him of someplace he once lived,
someplace he felt safe and loved and happy,
someplace warm, and out of the rain,
someplace where the soft yips
that escaped from his dreams
did not give him away to danger.
But this is not that place,
and when I approach the door to pet him,
he flees,
back into his own loneliness.

April 4, 2006

Flicker

The flicker in flight
flashes
a burnished bronze
benediction,
a rusty red
revelation
of muted majesty
in motion.

March 29, 2006

A Poem About Trains

How many poems,
       how many songs,
have been written about trains?

How much ink,
       how many words,
have been spread
       across how many pages?

How many adjectives,
       how many superlatives,
how many inadequate verbs,
       have been employed
by how many writers and poets?

How many would-be Guthries
       have attempted to describe
the mournful, plaintive,
       hopeless, lost,
       sorrowful, soulful,
       crying and wailing
of the horn that blows in passing?

The shattering, thunderous
       crunch
of coupling and decoupling?

The rumbling, rhythmic,
       clackety-clack
of heavy iron wheels
       marching in lockstep
over heavy iron rails
       and nautically creaking timbers,
spewing sparks and coke and gravel
       from highways that recede into memory
and proceed past distant horizons?

How many hobos have felt the thrill?
How many cameras have tried to capture?
How many pens have scratched and scrawled?

How many heads
       through how many dreams
have marveled and slumbered,
       risen and fallen
to cadences both mechanical
       and natural,
like the hoofbeats of ten thousand horses
       over plains of deckplate steel,
fading into the night
       like light fades into dark,
never a moment when one becomes the other.

February 23, 2006

Sally and the Gang

At first I think it’s western swing
I can almost hear in the background,
over the rush and roar of young teens
crowding the tables by the front window,
enjoying the January sunshine
that fuels their afterschool ebullience,
but I suss it’s Celtic rock —
guitars in place of pipes
and synthesizers for accordions —
and my toes tap to the upbeat rhythms
that celebrate the joyless lives
of Irishmen
living in dark poverty
under the yoke of ever-present Catholicism,
whose weight will eventually break their backs,
making the peasantry more compact
to better fit the ubiquitous graves
that dot the Emerald Isle —
while the young teens,
joyously celebrating their American youth,
cram their noisy mouths
with pizza.

January 31, 2006

Haiku

Sun, rain, earth, flower:
       a garden sings a love song
to those who listen.

January 14, 2006

At a Graveside I Cried

At a graveside I cried today,
on my knees,
before a stone,
that shown
white
among the trees
that guard the site
where hundreds of memories
have come to rest
among the stones
and crumbling bones
of children and husbands and wives
whose lives have sung
songs like yours,
songs like mine,
their last notes whispering
in the crackling leaves
and silent rustling
of moss in the wind.

January 4, 2006

Creole

Mulatto beauty dancing in the night,
love’s fusion burning in her heart —
two worlds joined
by God and Nature,
inseparable and at peace —

while children play with guns
in the bleeding streets of Palestine.

March 16, 2001

Foundling

You were found,
lost and wandering,
rooting through garbage,
seeking confirmation,
lacking a home and love.
You were brought to a cage,
your freedom in question,
to await affirmation
or death.

March 6, 2001

Et Cetera, Et Cetera, Ad Sepulcrum

She cranks the lever,
turns the wheel,
fills the mold,

connects the wire,
turns the bolt,
closes the circuit,

answers the phone,
types the memo,
nods and smiles,

scrubs the pot,
accepts the insult,
spreads her legs,

as she has always done,
as she shall always do,

an ellipsis
of sameness and sorrows
to last through the end
of her days.

February 13, 2001

Melting Army Men

We set the stage for battle,
my brother and I,
on the patio,
one hot summer,
for parents away for the day,
a tableau of death,
simulated,
plastic,
unauthorized,
with tanks and Jeeps and bridges
and little cardboard buildings
made from shoe boxes and oatmeal cartons,
with rocks and dirt and Tupperware
and little squeeze tubes
of Halloween vampire blood,
with firecrackers and roll caps and lighter fluid,
and little green Army men,
the plastic kind
sold in bags of one hundred.

With hammer and chisel and vampire blood,
we maimed and mutilated,
creating a diorama of carnage and death
suitable only for children
(tragic little beasts that we were).
And in one of those rare instances of
not brotherly love
but mischievous cooperation,
we set aside our own private war
to take up arms against the opposing forces
waiting helpless at our feet.

With demented little grins on our faces,
we let our matches
and watched the Army men burn.

February 10, 2001

Solitary Refinement

People are best experienced indirectly,
as art.
They should be viewed as photographs,
mysterious, unknowable moments
frozen in time,
or as paintings,
subjective impressions of subjective realities.
They should be looked up to as statues
cast and chiseled
in stronger stuff
than fragile flesh,
or as towering giants on the silver screen,
two-dimensional but awesome.
They should be read about
as characters in novels
or the subjects of biography
wherein the truth is measured out sparingly
and lies take the place of messy details.

February 4, 2001

The Greatest Generation

They lined up for work
Alphabetically:
CCC … TVA … WPA …
They built our bridges
And our monuments.
They made bombs;
They made bombers;
And they made their graves
On foreign lands,
And in foreign seas.

They scrimped, they saved;
They bought their homes
And saw our parents
To adulthood,
Through college,
Through marriage,
And through divorce.

They survived the hippies.
They voted for Nixon.

And now they wait,
Expectantly,
Their pasts looming
Ever larger behind them,
Their futures dwindling
To points just ahead,
In a world
Of daytime television,
Half-smoked cigarettes,
Nescafé,
And Cremora.

July 27, 2000

Glory

The darkening sky swirls
in a flowing cloud
of pale, silvery light,
shed by the community
of endless dancers
who waltz overhead
and grace the night,
as they have ever done,
timelessly,
granting Heaven the glory
of their perfectly timed movements
and their perfect, shimmering
radiance.

2000

Longing for God

Sometimes I wish
I were like the others

with their silent, suffering devotion
and fervent, shouted prayers,
with their mumbled intonations
and their whirling dervish dances,
with their stony meditations
and their songs of joyous rapture.

Sometimes I wish
I were like the others,
possessed,
as they are,
of their undying,
unshakable faith.

Sometimes I wish
I were possessed
of the unwavering conviction
of the zealot,
the unquestionable knowledge
of the saved,
or the quiet, contemplative faith
of the Sunday School teacher.

Sometimes I wish
I were possessed
of these things.

But most times
I know
such faith
would make me
less than I am,
not more.

1999

The Lie

In the soft, timid breezes
       of this long Indian summer,
The dying leaves flutter
       like a virgin’s eyelashes
And descend from the willows
       like a gentle, golden rain,
Backlit by the curious sunshine
       that keeps the ice at bay
And tells green buds the lie
       that winter is now at rest
       and we stand at the doorstep of spring.

1999

Full Moon at Perigee, On the Winter’s Solstice

Silver-white light,
no trace of yellow,
gleams off surviving patches of snow,
glitters off ice crystals on rooftops,
glows off the undersides of fallen leaves
as yet un-raked.

All is grey and black and white,
but bright, and shadows clear —
distinct black holes of grotesque shape
cut patterns in the grass,
sharp and glistening,
glinting with bleeding moonlight,
gory with silver and grey,
the ghostly shroud of light
draped over the village
as at a wake,
as at a viewing,
so all may see and know,
remember and mourn.

1999

On the Origin of Beaches by Natural Selection

I am a small island
of me,
set adrift in worldly waters.
My rocky shores are washed
by crashing, thunderous waves
of nature, culture, and technology —
of nature, nurture, and identity —
which grind and wear at me
inexorably.

Destined I am
to grind to sand
and wash away in the waters,
but for now
I stand,
only lightly touched,
not free,
but me.

1999

Pounding Podunk

Here in Podunk
I stand out
among the rednecks
and puritans,
gun nuts
and fundamentalists,
drunks
and mormons,
illiterati
and adventists,
trailer trash
and jehovah’s witnesses
like a piece of shiny
aluminum foil
stands out
on a roadbed:

When the trucks
aren’t running me flat,
the crows want to use me
to line their nests.

1999

Notice Board

No mere trivialities
these
postings
leaves of the human tree
fluttering
in the breeze of an opened door
impaled and crucified
with parti-colored
pushpins
pull-down dates
stamped
in blood-
red ink
fading to pink
in the sun
on the yellowing paper
alongside the greying
words.

1999

Poem for the Distant Dead

I know few dead people,
but I know many of the living
who have stopped,
memories of them fading
like old photographs
buried in a box.

1998

Chessmen and Teahouse Poets

Untrimmed goatees
and unshorn locks
frame the underfed faces
of the word men,
their bright, intense eyes
obscured
by low-slung, socialist caps,
as they brood over their chess sets,
contemplate the distant horizons
of their teacups,
and agonize
over the tragedy of existence.

The word men
pay no special attention
to the silent, nodding women
sitting at table with them,
in their comfortable clothing,
under their sensible hair,
clutching their treasured notebooks.

The word men
take little notice
of the women
or of the intelligence,
laughter,
and hidden tears
in their clear, open eyes.

The word men
fail to see
the women
or their sturdy,
unmade,
beautiful faces.

They are the word men.
They are the poets.
Love is something they write about,
not do.

1998

The Final Harvest

We step gingerly
through the blighted orchard,
to avoid the still-damp cow pies,
and stretch to pluck
the sweet, sun-ripened bounty
from the lowest branches
of its twisted, ancient trees.

Soon our bags are packed to bursting,
and we,
clutching our delicious burdens,
move on,
escorted by clouds of silent fruit flies
who swarm
and curse us for our theft.

1998

Hiking with Friends at McDonald Creek

We stumbled over red rocks,
tumbled into each others’ arms,
and mumbled
nothing,
but shouted out our joy
at being here,
with each other,
in this place,
weaving acquaintances
into friendships,
as we pulled closer
against the weight of time
and redstone walls,
which,
when they blinked and missed us,
humbled us
with our own puny transience.

1998

Pleiades

A puff of light
blooming
in the corner of my eye.

1998

Areté (Manly Virtue)

His two living legs
       were torn from his trunk,
like an axe tears away
       the lower limbs
              of a rootless tree.
       Shredded, rent, splintered,
bone and blood and flesh
were forced
       through a thoughtless mangle.

He was just a man;
       he was just a boy,
indistinguishable from himself,
       lying in the mud and blood and filth.

He saw visions of his mother,
       and in the outpouring of his blood,
              he heard her cries of anguish.

He saw visions of his God,
       and in the crash and din of battle,
              he heard His voice speaking:

And the voice spoke as two,
       saying: I will take this pain away.
       This is my gift to you.
       and saying also: Embrace this pain.
       It is my gift to you.

And God’s two voices screamed in his ears,
       like the shrill whistle of a falling shell,
       like the irregular heartbeat of exploding ordinance,
drowning out his mother’s sobs,
numbing him to all other sounds,
       all other voices,
              all other fears.

                     *        *        *

              The man was carried away,
on a blanket stretched over two tent poles,
       to the places
the boy
       used to play.

The boy was left to lie
       and die
       in the mud and rain and bitter red hail,
                     forgotten
on some forgotten field,
              in some forgotten war.

1998

Jasper: Dreaming

He lies there viciously,
dozing belly upward,
eyes rolled back,
one lip slack,
making dreamy little doggy noises —
not quite a yelp,
not yet a bark —
as he chases
some uncaught kitty cat
through the vast backyards
of his dreamy little doggy mind.

1998

Redlands

Midnight,
the yapping cries
of victorious coyotes
echo off the redstone walls
and allow us to feel more
primitive,

as we shut off
our humming VCRs,
log off
our glowing computers,
recharge
our electric toothbrushes,
and crawl
back into the warmth and safety
of our fluffy, quilted
wombs.

1998

Self-Evident Truths

There is a little American
in us all,
a warp and weft
of false assumptions,
unfounded beliefs,
and untested notions
woven into
a red, white, and blue blanket
of fragile,
individual
faith,
which we wrap
carelessly
about our shoulders —

and when enough threads
are yanked,
the whole thing
will unravel,

leaving us
exposed

to the cold.

1998

The Filigree Crown

(for Stephanie)

The hairbrush
should weigh
much more than it does,
shrouded as it is
in a tracery
of fine, blonde
spider’s silk.
The webbing catches
and holds
the morning sunlight,
as it resists removal
from the brush’s bristles.
Nearly weightless,
it descends
in a smooth glide
to the trash can,
where it rests
with the discarded tissues,
cotton swabs,
and dental floss —
a small monument
to a little girl’s rush
to leave the nest.

1997

Tin Cans and Severed String

       I

It’s been a disembodied voice kind of day.
A sort of get up too early for work
and talk to strangers kind of day.
An advanced carpal-tunnel, progressive hearing-loss kind of day.
Tinny distant wind-tunnel road-noise pay-phone voices
inquiring requesting demanding complaining
in degrees of attentiveness, courtesy, indifference,
secret despair,
hope, longing, joy
untold . . . unshared . . . unknown.
And me.
Occasionally communicating with the strangers
calling to make withdrawals from the phone bank,
but mostly not.
Just spreading words
like manure on a field,
no backward glances to see what grew.

       II

A call to my beloved,
trapped at work,
the distant echo of her voice on the line
emphasizing the hazards
of our occupational separation.
Only our voices can touch.
Then a long-distance call
to my father,
half-asleep and grunting silence,
after which I sit alone in equal silence,
staring idly at the receiver
so cold in my hand.

       III

Shaky hands and fluttery stomach,
I dial up an uncle I despise and love and pity —
a stranger of former intimacy.
I do not identify myself, but only inquire
and hang up,
reassured by the chill dial tone
that marks the severed connection.
How do I talk to the sodomite,
a man forty years my senior,
who deflowered me as a mere boy?
How do I talk to my Greek uncle
after fifteen years of denial and reconstruction?
I sit and shake in the darkness.
The nausea and panic soon pass.

        IV

Last call.
To the son nearly lost,
more than half a continent away
and seven years removed.
To hear his maturing voice is sleepy elation
nestled in a sea-urchin’s shell of sorrow and regret,
as old errors and misjudgements and fresh pain
flood to the surface
and wash me away
to where even the darkness cannot help,
to a place too empty for tears.

No wonder I hate Alexander Graham Bell.

1997

Shackles of a Life

I see wire baskets like cages,
Uncomfortable chairs with manacled legs,
And a coke machine.
An antique wringer in a decrepit wash tub
Squats in the corner
Like some ancient gargoyle.
Sodden clothes — socks and underwear —
Hang themselves from the rack . . .
Their suicides go unnoticed and unsung.
The faucets are dripping,
The telephone defunct,
And the tile is cracked and dirty.
The numbing throb of the washers
And noisy heat of the dryers
Provide a mindless rhythm
For soulless elevator music.
In come the cowboys (!)
Wearing their white hats,
Workmen in their soiled denims,
And tired women with their squalling children,
Herded, cattle-like, by the signs:
“Four Quarters Only,”
“Do Not Overload Washers,”
“No Alcoholic Beverages . . .”
We are all drinking,
But it’s only dime-machine coffee
In wild-card poker cups.
I look at the hole card:
It’s a royal flush . . .

1992