The snow trail is white

With trampled snow

It is long.

The snow trail is cold

The snow trail is dark

The snow trail is lonely

The snow trail winds

From my front door

To the rear door of the classroom building

It winds beneath trees and around bushes

Through a primeval forest

Spotted with squirrel burrows

And the urine-stains of foxes

I take this trail everyday

Going from where I want to be

To where I need to be

Everyday I start off 

In hope and expectation

Of what the other end will bring

Everyday I return in frustration

At what the trail brought to me

The snow trail winds

 Twisting through my life

From day to day

 And month to month

It interconnects the moments

 The dreams

The days and nights

Snow trail begins in the darkness

And ends at the dawn

It traverses the margins of this earth

Following the shadows cast down in the snow

By a low circling sun

Guarded by the Raven

Tended by the Moose Mother

And her newborn calf

The trickster raven

Black and gray

Off set against the white snow

It crosses my path once again

And flies directly overhead

I here it calling plaintively

In the snow silence

From the tall alpha tree

There does not seem to be another soul

For some distance around

He talks in guttural sounds

That eerily penetrate the still forest

A few clumps of snow fall from the branches above

From whence there is a sudden movement

From its flight

It swoops down low overhead

Harbinger of some future fate

As he leads me down the trail

I know not what its interests are

Nor its sadness

I only feel a shiver

Of the cold

Running down my spine

As hurriedly I turn

And trudge ahead

The phone rang early

Waking us up

My mom had called

To tell us that terrorists

Were attacking America

We rushed sleepy eyed

Downstairs

And tuned in the Television

To see a smoking skyscraper

In Manhattan

Time froze that morning

It stayed still forever

The day was as if a dream

Somehow everything

Had suddenly changed

It was all different now

And would never be the same

Ever again

Thoughts about the loss of innocence

And the education of children

In the crueler ways of the world

The tide had suddenly gone out

And there would be no more returning

To the way it was before

It rained in September

It woke us up early in the morning

And consumed the air waves

It rained so hard that day

There was nothing left over

But rubble, broken bodies and bits and pieces

Of paper fluttering in the smoke

It rained cats and dogs

And people and firemen and tears and blood

It rained businessmen and secretaries

It rained passengers and airplanes

It rained policemen and pilots

It rained even more paper and people

It rained over the cars

Over the streets

And the rain

Falling like steel and concrete hail

Shattered windows and lives and spirits

It rained ceaselessly

And it rained thereafter

Day after day

And all that rain

Fell complete on one small spot

In downtown Manhattan

But from that spot

It quickly became a torrential flood

That engulfed the entire earth

Academic gatekeeper

Sits within her office

Waiting for the next naïve student

To stumble through the threshold

Her lair is a simple chair

In front of her well ordered desk

Her hair is hung in grey curls

Like hydra's head of snakes

She seems permanently seated

Behind her executive desk

Her dwelling place and the center of her existence

Her secretary feeds her coffee and pastries on demand

Authoritative maxims and commands

Roll dryly from her tongue

And, pressed between thin lips

Manage to eject out like smoke rings

The young student is an innocent sacrifice

Unwitting of the ways of the world

But a youth full of dreams and desires

Dashed like pumpkins on the road

His intelligence turned upon itself

He casts for some larger reason in her words

All quite rational and sensible sounding

And yet completely off the mark

The

Cost

Of 9-11

At least it

Seems to me

Was something lost

No amount of money can buy

Something hallowed beyond value

Buried in the dust of ground zero

Spread over Manhattan Island

Like an unnatural cloud

Call it our innocence

And leave it at that

Or call it simply

Liberty

It was a price too dear

That no politician can pay

That no party or lobby can buy

No administrator can mandate

Innocence lost

Like a child

Come of age

The forest trees are my friends

The Spruce, the Birch, the Alder

They talk to me plaintively in the wind

Standing together and stretching from afar

As I walk down snow-covered trail

Hoping to spy a bear, a moose or night denizen

Seeking a way out of my existential travail

I cannot say that of the human race I am a citizen

The dog knows things the master forgot

And natural death knows no bounded cruelty

Suffering comes and goes in a day

And lasts a lifetime

Snow Trail

The trail of snow

Winds compacted and white

From our front door

Down the steps

Through the trees

And across the Road

And then along the snow-bound way

Behind the campus

Every day I beat the path

Back and forth to my classes

And I mark its gradual shifts and twists

With my unsteady footfalls in the ice

In darkness and cold I make my way

And this trail that I have made

And Christianed with my scent

I know not its end nor its beginning

As it winds back and forth

Between the many periods of my life

Paper Professor

I met the professor upon the elevator

A young and somewhat fine featured man

He told me he was going to the sixth floor

Without inquiring whether I was the elevator person.

The professor dropped his papers in the corridor

They fell willy-nilly to the tile floor in a disheveled pile

He looked irritated and slightly embarrassed

Perhaps he expected me to pick them up as well.

Mother Mary

Mother Mary

Makes her living

Lying upon her back

Up and down the stairs

Her children bounce about

Like elastic basket balls

Banging against the thin dry walls

The different men quietly come and go

And come again

In the afternoon

And the state and the corporation and the village

Make sure that Mary's children

Have a new truck to ride in

So proud she is in her roost

Her crucifix hangs upon both doors

And a special teacher to give them

A little extra attention

As I contemplate the possibility

Of immaculate conception

Recollections

2003