On the Yahara

"In all these rotten shops, in all this broken furniture
and wrinkled ties and baseball trophies and coffee pots
I have never seen a postwar Philco
with the automatic eye
nor heard Ravel's 'Bolero' the way I did
in 1945..."  – Gerald Stern, from "The Dancing"



A Time To Come


The molecules have shifted now, here in the Midwest,
here in a city that is known for its motion forward,
and fledgling industry which surely models for ages to come,
in along this pocket of five lakes,
normally, in July, at least, so beautiful that the mystery
of its native origin takes no imagination whatsoever,
shifts to the permanent drapery of thick cloud;
and our eye knows it deserves better as it wakes up,
it's partner, the first five fingers,
slip along the rod the brown curtain to see if it possible
sun, your mind's winter god, has awoken
from its time under the Boy tree of the horizon,
or if instead the fires of Galapagos
and the dwindling centuries old ice at top of Greenland
has been pierced to slow your favorite patterns
of jet stream;
plight, you know, will come by a love of your earth;
a love swells up but you wonder if its the sign of the dead.
You turn the soft jazz on in the walls,
cuddle of a cup of wake up,
forget about the hemisphere for a minute.