Road Reflections
Before Christmas Coffee 2011 Dad, you should have heard them scream! In owl silence, in the softening, shy light I pull over and creak open my driver’s door. Waiting To Fly at Walden North like these lucky loons town criering tonight, The Blues in Duluth Where would you be if you were Thomas The Train Engine
Can you see the balding grandpa cork-wheeling Sit and gawk or stand up, stretch, and talk with your friends Bare-footed, a baby or a knight or a lady, can you taste Sweating It Out in Tempe 5 P.M. . . . Wisconsin . . . woods lake . . . late July . . . Some say it’s spring memories that winter well. Others guess that anything raised inside survives. Of course, there is something to be said about one poet’s garden grown songs. Cross-cultivated among rows of varying climates, Zimmy’s birthday strums up from a day in May marked on my calendar. His words and music, reach my ears that listen beyond the last fence. Like tomatoes, I too silently sing along. across the stems of ears toward a cactus sun? How does it stop and turn over acres of cool, dark air between our gates? Double-plowed grasses that sprout through the garden’s frosty real estate know. His bounty feeds below the topsoil. he was one note playing against the roar of the world. Like tomatoes, his music and words can be harvested. So, some days, I try. Transcendence Time to rustle up a little cash, partner! You read about it in Forbes and The Economist! The West ain’t been this affordable since Geronimo was cuttin’ hair for free! You just have to sit a little while on your private, cacti patch, partner. While you’re waitin’: Shop Scottsdale! Soak up the sun! Play eco-friendly, desert courses warning: “Rattlesnake X-ing.” Ride scenic trails that ain’t branded with billboards! When you wanna put on the feed bag, just mosey along to any five-star, Valley of the Sun, casino, buffet line! Think you could get to likin' that? I DO! Dude! Invest TODAY! in AZ. BONNAZA LAND PARCELS! Faster than a maniac can take his machine gun pistol Then you can stop bloggin’ and cryin’ and start writin’ your transcendent ticket With all candor, brother, corrallin’ the “here and now” writin’ market, lettin’ the headlines fence you in, “Topical literature” ain’t makin’ anybody’s best sellers list! It won’t let you roll with any mega-sellin’- Book-of-the-Millennium authors . . . I know. Didn’t you learn nothin’ from Shakespeare? T.S. Eliot? and all that chic lit. hittin’ the jackpot all over Hollywood? Remember, partner: Foam in the water trough only lasts as long as the next thirsty horse! Ready to quit your job? Ready to make six figures a month workin’ from the comfort and privacy of your own home? Then, right now, partner, let your creative writin’ transcend to the mother lode of: money making, online, marketing platforms! Wireless, surround sound, home security! Armor-piercing ammo! OUR OPERATORS ARE STANDING BY! OUR OPERATORS ARE STANDING BY! OUR OPERATORS ARE STANDING BY! Life on Earth of breakfast grammar. Isolated subjects dive into the day, get wet, and calmly bob and roll into each other before leaping over the downtown, bank clock into the afternoon. Seagulls with black ice eyes along Lake Superior’s south shore. The last of its light lets the longhaired waves tow it deep into worlds floating around twin ports dry docked in time. The moonrise dream talks through sky high windows Grain dust resettles on the neighbors’ windshields. I turn on the outside light and wait for the night to tremble with stars, to shake warm with your eyes. Badgers Never Forget
© December 18, 2011 William Tecku
I slouch back to my church for Christmas.
The midnight show is the one to catch!
A camel-faced usher shepherds me
to an open seat.
Face front! Front face!
No one ever turns around.
All the action is up front, Romanesque.
In the present, the past re-gifts the future.
What else, Christmas after Christmas, keeps slouchers,
like us, coming back for less?
The night is wide, wider than the whole, wide world
at midnight on Christmas Eve.
Senorous is the offline night.
Prophetically come the "Coming Attractions."
Halleluiah! for the "Feature Attraction."
Popcorn warm, the protagonist or the plot
or the punch lines punch our tickets
beyond the angel-white lines
of our parking lot lives.
The dialogues are faithful to the monologues
blessed by montages of images, ACTIONS!
SOUNDS! RINGING! in our minds' eyes
louder than any Salvation Army bell ringer.
Hiking back to the back parking lot,
I overhear the myrrh ask the frankincense,
"What did you think of the movie?"
On the Scottsdale, Arizona Trail
© November 28, 2011 William Tecku
Making tracks across Scottsdale's Artwalk,
set up in tented rows and long tables
to snare tourists hunting for turquoise jewelry,
feathered errings, homemade avacado oil, hand-carved,
lilac, wine bottle corks, and photographs of sunsets
slingshot through tall cacti stands
or weathered wagon wheels,
an artist tells me he is Apache
and always paints an animals' eyes first.
His smiling wife moves his "sold" moonrise and wolf painting
behind their table, tells me that after he painted it
he said he'd never sign it.
"I signed it when I sold it!" he laughs.
I laugh with him.
The dusk lopes around us.
Canal water snakes under Scottsdale Road.
Its dark stream mirrors craters and dry seas
orbiting above us, echoes moon-eyed wolf eyes
unblinking, teeth white.
An All-American Family?
© November 15, 2011 William Tecku
It was a bad dream.
I was lucky it wasn't me
crucified with them on Calvary!
Son, the world is full of hate,
but grandpa said, "Play it safe.
Good Samaritans show up anyway."
Dad, you should have heard them scream!
It was a bad dream.
I was lucky I wasn't one
beheaded by the Inquisition!
Son, the world is full of hate,
but grandma said, "Play it safe.
Good Samaritans show up anyway."
Mom, you should have heard them scream!
It was a bad dream.
Good thing no one snitched.
Salem would have burned me as a witch!
Honey, the world is full of hate,
but grandpa said, "Play it safe.
Good Samaritans show up anyway."
Mom, you should have heard them scream!
It was a bad dream.
Good thing the cavalry saved me,
and I wasn't an Indian at Wounded Knee!
Honey,the world is full of hate,
but grandma said, "Play it safe.
Good Samaritans show up anyway."
Dad, you should have heard us scream!
It was a bad dream.
I saw our family lynched
down South and in Germany!
Son, . . .
Mom, you should have heard us kids scream!
It was a bad dream.
When you and Dad looked the other way
you dug our graves!
Honey, . . .
Lumbering South
© August 7, 2011 William Tecku
Lumbering south, passed the perils
of the Poplar Golf Course,
my Chevy pickup plods
graying, blacktop roads
where white-tailed deer
and Lake Superior-sloughing rivers
out dream all who meander here.
of near nightfall, threading through tall canyons
of roadside poplars, pines, and stands after stands
after stands of choiring soft and hard woods,
I crank down my window and breathe
the sweet, wet-tree-heavy air.
The moon downshifts across the tree-topped sky.
© August 10, 2011 William Tecku
Or so the six loons on the lake do fly sdrawkcab
unlike the gossiping, Canadian geese below our deck,
in their deifinu, scrambled wings lift-offs,
but like su loons, beatific, on or above the "Loony Tunes" world:
. . . you/working/all/day so you, tomorrow, can land
on top of the hill that nests above Lake Superior
. . . and me/and/my/limbs ingswasniahc and hauling limbs
all day because /beneathallthis/
I’m a pretty grounded guy circling countless tree rings
waiting like geese for the first snow to nest/ylf with you,
waiting to hear you, up close, call us loons closer;
but, unlike the birds lifting off . . . eth. . . lake . . .
ya done got yourself grounded by the market,
as if either of us could “time” the market,
as if either of us could “time” tomorrow
flapping faster than /beneathallthis/ flapping-
one-hundred-heartbeats-a-minute-across-the-lake-
lifting-circling-lifting-circling-lifting-off-until
they lift the world off their backs
as we birds
will.
Spinning My Wheels
© October 5, 2011 William Tecku
"What do you think I am? A PRETZEL?" she shouted
then threw my pillow smack back into my face.
A long night was inevitable, so I crawled out of bed
and tiptoed toward the guest bedroom.
"Where are you going?" she moaned in a way
that tracked me down the hall like her perfume,
like a flypaper valentine.
"A moving target's hard to hit,"
I shot back coolly enough
to wake up the cat.
I don't know why I dreamed about our first,
cross country trip with the kids.
I saw myself using a screwdriver
to jump start our old Dodge.
A storm was chasing us down the road
to Lake Superior.
We were all singing that 60s jingle,
"See the USA in a Chevrolet!
America's the greatest land of all!"
© August 14, 2011 William Tecku
and you could not toot?
You'd be way, way, way north
down the road of the blues.
Yeah, you betcha, you'd be in Duluth!
Like at the bottom of the very bottom of an inland sea
where ghost sailors whisper, “Oh, say, can you see . . .”
can you see the silver-haired grandma tapping her toes
to Super Chicken and the Fighting Cocks
as she changes her grandson’s diaper
on the hill in front of you?
Can you see the lift-bridge-looking, show-stealing stage sitting
grand and commanding as a dry docked ship?
across the soft, green, O.K.-ed-for-croquet-playing lawn?
Can you hear the bands alternating sets
between the two stages?
Can you feel the laughter, the love, born of the blues,
flowing in all ages all around you?
between sets.
Leave your canvas lawn chair
and walk to the white tent
where blues tunes play up close,
a few dance steps from your bayside hill spot.
the summer-sweet brew of the blues drinkin’ you?
Smokin’ axes, horns, pianos, drums, moanin’ voices groove
our black and white realities into the midnight-at-noon
color of the blues.
A 1,000-foot long great lakes ship plays its riffs
as it cakewalks the waves under the lift bridge
and into Lake Superior.
We float away the day where Thomas might be
if he could not toot or where we would be if our ears
did not open the music in us
until we saw ourselves blowin' in the blues
and the blues blowin' in Duluth!
from It's Only a Dry Heat © 2011 William Tecku
In and out of combat, you remember:
Courage like cowardice
only kills the living.
A long-legged lady behind big,
breast-round, black sunglasses
slinks from her silver limo.
Your freshly paved, hotel parking lot,
above yesteryear's Pima and Apache battlefield,
is pierced by her arrowhead-sharp, red high heels.
At the door to your room, she maps out
how far her French nails will carry her
when the action gets hand-to-hand.
You fumble for your plastic key
and consider the body count
in your war against death.
Military straight, bright yellow, parking lot lines
file across fresh tar that oozes and enfolds
like a licking tongue when you touch it.
Her tete a tete with your tinkling TV
runs you through the gauntlet of doubt.
Still sweating from her few seconds
of Tempe's, summer morning heat,
she accepts the shade of your hands.
Her designer sunglasses are the last things to fly off.
Armies of muscles advance a mutual campaign
until, at last, open hands wave like white flags
from both sides of the bed.
Again, amigo, it don't go how you guessed it would go.
It goes how you learned in your marching days:
In surrender comes victory!
Below your high-dollar hotel room,
Pima and Apache ghosts
rally from their paved-over battlefield.
In dead silence, they whoop and dance
the sweet spoils of your peace.
Through the stucco walls
you feel the tomahawk sun
scalp your sleep.
Gone Fishin'
© July 26, 2011 William Tecku
Sun . . . smiles . . . into . . moonstruck, still water.
High school kids . . . smiling . . . kayak sandy shores
and fish for sunfish like the lake’s, three loons.
Standing shoulder to shoulder, pines crowd the lake
dozing as small as its smallest bluegill’s dream.
A wily looking, white haired man floats on his back
by his weathered dock.
His eyes swim the sky.
Why does he hold his beer bottle above the water?
the kids wanna know.
No mosquitoes out now!
Now, the lily-pad-plush shallows whisper like your eyes
when you dream deeper than the deep, dark green middle
of this lake that you let hook you
for reasons only wily bass,
who bite on words,
know.
The Lake Superior Trail
from Overtime © 1985 William Tecku
Some roads sing north to Lake Superior.
Some begin by strumming onto Highway 35 North
from Minneapolis.
The tune isn't much to talk about.
You just have to sing along with it
even as it chants back to you
as it did to those who first winged it up here,
with eyes scouting for hungry hawks, owls, and eagles.
They feather danced their way over waves
of white pines.
They shouldered the air.
They rainbowed the rivers
until they saw the earth sail into the sky,
and a cold wind came off what was
(even to these first, singing south-to-north only for a song)
a great lake, as it came across to them,
as it comes across to us from the Chippewa
moving for reasons like or because of our own.
They settled near Superior
before it was mapped
by missionaries,
by guns,
by money.
They slept within sight of the lake's dream-hungry shores.
The Gitchi Gummi paddled through their visions.
They fished. They hunted. They warmed themselves
by the light of their stories.
They did not curse the sun or spear the snow.
They sent runners to the soft South who spoke,
"All paths this way lead to us . . . food and safe . . .
. . . shelter and peace . . .
Come with the sun setting against the left face.
Soon . . . our campfires . . .
. . . soon . . . us to you."
Dylan
from Overtime © 1985 and Keystones © 2003 William Tecku
From my office windows facing east,
tomato plants stare down a late spring frost.
In and out of growing season, I wonder:
What feeds and doesn’t blow away?
first heard on Minnesota’s Iron Range,
What chlorophyll bends his voice
A long time before ripening under his stage name,
from It's Only a Dry Heat © 2011 William Tecku
off safety, some savvy, high-end, land developer
will come along and pay you TOP DOLLAR!
for your, shovel-ready land!
about “current events”
to the mother lode!
just shortchanges your writer’s potential!
from Keystones © 2003 and It's Only a Dry Heat
© 2011 William Tecku
The morning sun sleep talks its way
through the top windows
of the grain elevator next door.
Sunlight yawns through glass, through rust holes
in parked cars, through green leaves blowing brown
in the grain dust air.
Down the street, dawn portages into syllables
Dry gears of routine smoke.
slowly circle the hot, elevator roof.
The sunset slingshots through every sandcastle
© July 16, 2011 William Tecku
Was it last winter when Wisconsin's governor
and his statehouse minions
declared war on our state workers?
Was it tears-in-eyes, icicles-in-beards cold then,
when snow stopped snowplows in their tracks?
Did Badgers, for weeks, rally for workers' rights
inside and outside the "people's house"?
Chants of WHOSE HOUSE? OUR HOUSE!
WHOSE HOUSE? OUR HOUSE!
volleyed around the capitol square
and echoed up to Lady Forward's ears.
Now, summer sails Eden green across Wisconsin.
Below Madison's Children's Museum,
sunlight and shade splash across the crowded square
like the black and white splotches of hide on any Holstein.
On a wide landing, leading up to the capitol,
a women's dance troupe leaps, spins, steps feather-footed,
sways like the tall, hard wood trees waltzing with the wind.
Heat and humidity barbeque the isthmus.
Sweat trickles our memories back six months
when family farmers rendezvoused here
for workers' rights.
To help us haul away the gov's manure,
their tractor convoy rolled around the capitol.
In solidarity, we wildly cheered them
like when our Badgers take the field!
Beatific shouts spread like Wisconsin butter
across the hot headlines:
THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE!
THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE!
Today, under summer's maddening sun and moaning moon,
we remember last winter's wolves,
who "legally" sank their rabid teeth into our front doors
then told us they were just being good neighbors;
who passed laws that pissed on us
then told us it was only raining.
At recall, ballot boxes we will plow under these rapscallions
and the weeds they tried to sell us as alfalfa hay.
Atop our towering, capitol dome,
gleaming golden in her gown,
Lady Forward looks out, gathers us in her eyes like trilliums,
and whispers: Badgers never forget!
Badgers . . . never . . . forget!!
It's Only a Dry Heat
from It's Only a Dry Heat © 2011 William Tecku
It's only a dry heat in hell.
It's the law.
A state senator from hell
does not sweat
when he writes a bill
that profiles nonwhites.
A governor from hell
does not perspire
when she signs his bill,
that is supported
by her, two U.S. senators,
her tough-as-coffin-nails
county sheriff,
and every dog catcher
barking to be elected
in the happiest of trigger-happy places.
At their rallies and photo ops
they kowtow to Klondike Cleopatra
and the crosshairs she puts on people,
like Representative Gabrielle Giffords,
who refuse to toast
her cup of tea,
who refuse to march
toward her mirages.
See the Grand Canyon
before you die.
Like the heat,
it's the law
in hell.
It's Hard to Imagine
from It's Only a Dry Heat © 2011 William Tecku
John Lennon's "Imagine"?
I knew it before I first heard it.
Imagine that.
I learned those lyrics the hard way on that day
in November '63 when our principal announced
that President Kennedy had been shot and killed.
Our teacher walked over to the long wall
of half-frosted windows.
She just stood there and looked out and looked out.
The last bell RANG!
Our talkative bus driver didn't say a word that afternoon.
He mostly stared straight ahead at the plowed roads.
We sat in our seats as quiet as if our priest
was riding with us and saying mass.
After I did my chores, I ran like a spooked deer
through the woods behind the barn to the top of the hill.
Twenty feet up in the tangled limbs of our oldest, oak tree
I felt relieved to see that our fields
and the neighbors' fields
still folded into each other, still unrolled for miles
into horizons of silver silos and herds of Herefords.
As I chewed my cud, the whole sky dropped down
and turned into the color of my milking bucket.
Snowflakes whispered to the fish
feeding under the lake ice.
It's fifty winters since I've climbed that tree.
Gunshot headlines again hang corpse-like in the air.
I never learned why some ice never melts.
It's hard to imagine.
Loquacious Lake Superior
from It's Only a Dry Heat © 2011 William Tecku
Winter in New Hampshire
from It's Only a Dry Heat © 2011 William Tecku
Yeah, you’ve read J. D.?
He died today.
Ya think it’s gonna snow?
It’s as cold as confusion.
The sky is gray.
They say while the sun was shinning
J. D. made his hay.
What he caught in the rye sure did pay!
He said it helped him hide
from the spotlight’s blaze,
its glowing heart of snow.
It’s as cold as a frozen rope,
and wildcards still beat treys.
Once J.D. caught his readers’ eyes
they couldn’t look away.
Like Holden, like summer snowmen,
he had to fade.
Someone once told me I should read him
for some reason
in another icicle season
that didn’t pay.
Bookmark it, baby.
J. D. died today.
Waking Up in the Old Sod
from St. Francis Strikes Oil! © 2009 William Tecku
Who else, one-half flying and one-half landed, is waking up
in the Old Sod this morning?
“Caw! caw!” answer some crows,
just off my resort room’s deck.
As aggressive as yesteryear’s invading infantries,
they advance in their feeding
across the song green grass
only dreamers
harvest best.
In a glen asleep, cool, and wet with dew,
I sow words as fading stars
plow back into the sky.
Halfway up the far hill, a handful of golfers stretch
and joke as they prepare to take on a challenging course
and wage war within themselves.
Speculators more distant than this spectator,
amour themselves with clever cons and contracts
to better milk more of the surrounding farm land from the farmers.
Their high-rolling, market-myopic eyes
fly spreadsheets and plot maps
“as straight as the crow flies”
to the bottom line.
Like golf, it’s only a gentleman’s game.
Smiling, smiling, smiling, and calculating,
they surrender no mulligans.
I sip my first cup of Irish breakfast tea
and taste my own culpability.
Tan and white beef cattle and sheep graze fields
that corral my heart.
They keep their heads lowed
like their owners at Mass
a few kilometers away.
Like those of field or faith,
Patrick too knew how peace can come
from chewing one’s cud.
Hedge rows and rock walls etch patchwork hillsides.
These strict stretches of woven greenery and stone and time
also keep a tight rein on the bone marrow-narrow roads
that twist and turn like the history
of their travellers.
Stoic, free, and song green as the stanzas of Yeats,
sunlight strides up sky-to-sea-to-sand-to-sod-to-soul.
The crows and golfers are gone now.
One, young robin claims their ground.
Below the surface, we both find what sustains us.
Like a race horse just before a claiming race,
the morning rears up then settles down
to ride or be ridden
by the race.
Sunshine and showers gallop all day
across this sainted island.
Kathy at Midterm
from Overtime © 1985 William Tecku
After breakfast, before you leave for work,
I hear something coming
as clear and slow
as the morning train.
When you come home,
I see someone with you.
The quiet page of the spare room
is rewritten by a crib.
And we know our child
will soon be born
as a baby is born
with its soul rising
in its face
suckled by tides
by moon-eyed eyes
these harvest days
when burning wood heats the house,
and your womb warms
a new world.
Walking in Space, 2001
from Voices © 2004 William Tecku
I'm taking a long, long walk in space this morning.
There goes New Deli! Here comes the Great Wall of China! "Susan, when you've got a job to do, and you think you might be getting too preoccupied about what might happen to you while you're doing your job, try thinking about a time when you were with some old boyfirend. Then get back to work!" I remember one of my first astronaut trainers calmly told me when someone in the control room heard my voice start to crack up once in the simulator. Now, that I'm in orbit out here working on Alpha, I'd rather try remembering the parts of speech or which mutual fund Louis Rukeyser said had the most balanced tech stock exposure in the long term.
The noun.
Jim and I have so much hardware to install on Space Station Alpha, so much equipment to relocate that Mission Control, a proper noun because, although it's not a particular person, it is a particular place or thing , figures we'll set a record for time on a space walk. "Houston, tell my mom, 'Happy birthday!' Tell her that I'm having the time of my life!" ("Life" is a common noun. A noun is a person, place, thing. or idea.) In the sentence of life, the verb is love.
The adverb.
Ahead 1,000, 000 cows and pigs and sheep are being burned in the fields of Europe because of hoof-and-mouth disease, and, behind me, Wall Street is free falling into a black hole this quarter. I'd just get really depressed if I spent any amount of time thinking about the past when I was with one of my dumb, old boyfriends down there. ("Now" is an adverb. An adverb can modify a verb, an adjective, or another adverb. How? Where? To what extent or when? are questions adverbs answer.)
The adjective.
I don't want to "space out" over what did or did not happen when I was young, I mean younger, and all I heard some star crazy mornings was moon talk. ("Young" is an adjective. An adjective is a word that modifies a noun or a pronoun.)
The verb.
Forget this once-in-a-lifetime, four-months-in-a-space-station mission! Lovers are the ones who are really sitting on top of the world! Because of their altitude, they can more easily cross the Pacific with one look than I can orbiting a heaven above them. (A verb can express action or a state of being. "Are" is a verb of being. "Love" can be understood as a noun or as an action verb.) In the dirt simple sentence of life the verb is love.
The preposition.
The last crew was right. There are so many lights on earth. "Mission Control, confirm that the Baker-Kelly-Joe cable I'm about to plug in is the right one for docking port orifice Paul-Zebra. It just doesn't look like it's going to fit in there." Must be spring break! Not much on those college kids down on Lake Havasu this afternoon! "Roger that Mission Control. People make mistakes, not computers. Affirmative. The cable is fitting into its orifice just fine now." ("Into" is a preposition. A preposition shows the relationship between a noun or a pronoun and another word in the sentence.)
The pronoun.
Wonder if Mom blew out all the candles on her cake today? I remember the time when we put those candles, the kind you can hardly blow out, on her cake. She really laughed when she finally realized what we did. ("We" is a pronoun. Pronouns are words that can take the place of nouns or other pronouns.)
The conjunction.
There's always a storm brewing somewhere over the Atlantic. They've blown up the last one of the Buddhas of Bamiyam. Some of those giant statues of Buddha were carved into cliffs 200 feet high. They were 2,000 years old and the last ones on earth. ("And" is a conjunction. A conjunction is a word that connects words or groups of words.)
The interjection.
The Afghan Muslim sect in power said they had to destroy the Buddha statues because if they weren't religiously good for them, then they couldn't be good for anyone. Oh! It's so good to know that human beings are smarter than computers. ("Oh!" is an interjection. An interjection expresses strong feeling or emotion.)
"Roger that, Jim. We'll just wait awhile in the cargo bay and see if they need us to do anything else on the docking port."
I forget exactly how old the earth is. It has so many candles burning for it. When he turned fifty, Nick said that he was a little happier, that he was getting to be a little more tolerant, was starting to see that each day of life was a gift. We were laughing together an December 29th. Early New Year's Day, they found his body. He would have given anything to see for one second what I saw at work today. "Grief" is a common noun.
"Affirmative. I copy that Mission Control. We are terminating our walk."
Were we really out there for almost nine hours? It's gonna feel so good to get out of this big, old, balloon suit!
"Thanks, Jim. You did a heck of a job yourself!"
Everything is in motion like all the oceans we floated over today. Everything is a still as the sun's song we sing around. In the earth simple, complex, convoluted, capricious, comical, captivating as each newborn's first breath, serendipitous, scintillating, sweet and sour, surreal, symbotic, unshakled sentence of life the verb is love.
The Junkman Cometh
from Overtime © 1985 and It's Only a Dry Heat
© 2011 William Tecku
The 1985 and 2002
National Geographic Woman
from Voices © 2004 William Tecku
"Kodak moment! Kodak moment!"
my cousin's children from Kabul teased me,
when I told them you were coming back,
after seventeen years, to again photograph me.
I have my education, since I was a girl in school,
and, in our tent in the refugee camp
where you took pictures of me.
But, "Kodak moment . . ."
what does this mean?
Why are you again here?
To take pictures of my old woman's face?
Must American magazines have such pictures?
This I have not learned.
I have learned that your smart bombs
are as dumb as the Taliban.
Before you came to my school,
I learned that our eyes
are the window to our souls.
Is this why you say so many
have looked at my face?
What can you do to make my life better?
New clothes? No.
Money? No.
A camera like yours? No.
I have dreamed, during the wars,
that some day I could go to Mecca.
And it would please my family
if you could help our three daughters
complete their education.
These things would please us. Yes.
What is it you ask? Do people here say that my eyes
are as green as the green in paradise? No.
For that you must keep looking.
The Minneapolis Blue Boar
from Voices © 2004 William Tecku
Searching for Intelligent Life
© 2007 William Tecku
Make a Wish
from Keystones © 2003 William Tecku
A Leap of Faith
from Keystones © 2003 William Tecku
Beings breathe IS
in a world of WAS,
whereas mighty MIGHTS are deaf
to NOW's split-second opera
ringing in our inner ears
like a dog whistle.
In a world with lips everywhere pursed with WAS,
WERE, or WILL BE, sentient beings suckle
straight shots of IS, or ARE, or AM
like a last, lone grain of rice
begged into a Buddhist begging bowl
blessed with bounty or bodacious emptiness.
Does IS whistle in the dark?
Does the ear of your eyes dawn here?
The temple bell of my TV
begs me back into my pre-recorded not live,
my pre-recorded not LIVE silence.
Feeding time is over for a moment's mouth.
Today, Yesterday declares war on Tomorrow.
Blessed are the peace makers.
Blessed are the beings who BE.
A Fox Tale (an excerpt from the story)
from Morning Stories © 2004 William Tecku
Spooked by the camera, the deer snapped back their heads in our direction, smartly flagged up their long, trim white tails, and bounded into the woods.
“Those deer always know what’s up. In fact, they usually know what’s up even before it goes down. I mean they knew we’d be here this time of year and we wouldn’t be a threat to them out of season,” I explained to Mike as we sat back down to our game. He started eyeing my queen again, and, at last, decided to move a knight in her direction.
“Dad, animals live and die according to what their instincts tell them. Intuitions, premonitions – that’s stuff none of those animals out there have. I had all that in psychology last semester. Even people might not have much real psychic ability,” he told me in a voice that said he was the teacher and I was the student for a change.
I let my queen side step his attack before I countered, “I’m pretty sure, buddy, that some of those animals out there have a lot more on the ball than we give ’em credit for.” Then I thought of you – you old fox! You knew the moonlight would paw through the dark green underbrush along the river until it finally camouflaged your fiery fur all the way down to its roots. Like a chess master who anticipates move after move after move after move before he moves again, you already knew that once you moved to bed down in your den last night, the moon would rise higher and countermove you one star space at a time, three spaces forward, west across the moving sky board, and funnel its fur soft light, white as a white chess queen’s eyes, down through pine top winds, down the trunks of white pines thick as a black bear’s chest and black as the hairs that run up your short legs.
Twice you circle-walked your thin, two-foot, eight-inch long body, crouching lower and lower with each turn to the right, until your bed of brown pine needles brushed up against your belly and you curled yourself into a ball of fur one-half your daylight size. Before you flicked your bushy, white-tipped tail across your nose you knew the heat lightning that worked down river as a caboose for the coal train last night would move south five star spaces and the owl-eyed air, the star-watered waves, the whippoorwill’s calls would only reach your open ears six or seven more times before your eyes would close slower than a rusty, old leg trap and you would begin fox-trotting into a dream where you would track down one slow-footed rabbit after another, after another, after . . .
Before your blood percolated sideways out of your half-shut mouth and ran twice your length down the black top road above the Eau Claire River bridge, before the last thing your scouting eyes would see would be a rabbit running for its life up the gully just across the road from where an air-colored car or truck would stop you in your tracks, you knew I would come lumbering along in my jalopy around sunrise on my way back from the bait shop where I would have made my best move of the day: a new open-face reel for my son, so we could fish together. You foresaw that my next moves, upon seeing you stretched out in the middle of the road, would be to straddle my tires over you and pump my soft brakes until I could stop on the hillside, back down the hill, pull up my parking brake, leave the motor running and my door open, run back down the hill and lift you off of the road as quickly and carefully as I lifted my son and daughter into their mother’s arms on their first mornings on life’s road.
Moves before moves before moves before moves before moves before moves before moonsets ago you knew I would be surprised by the warm feel of your fur, your cat-like lightness, the limpness of your carcass before the caterpillar crawl of rigor mortis began in you, your full of summer, fall-colored coat that would, with all of its hairs at once, suddenly flare up and open my eyes wider than the road when my face finally arrived less than a rabbit’s length away from you.
Before the sunrise started tracking down the darkness on the west river bank, you knew I would move you into my idling car that held its ground against the gravity of the heavy-hearted hillside skinned open by black top between the freshly-flowered cemetery and the town dump. Before the day dished you up for road kill, you knew I would not let the crows and eagles breakfast on you; yet, for an instant, I would suspect that life’s road still unrolled for you, that a fire still sparked inside you, that I would think you had outfoxed me, that you were stunned but not dead, bloodied and dazed but not . . . that you would scramble up out of my cradling arms and finish your run for that damn rabbit on the other side of the road.
Before Christmas Coffee
from Keystones © 2003 and It's Only a Dry Heat
© 2011 William Tecku
On Donner! On Blitzen! On Donner!
from Voices © 2004 William Tecku
Getting Their Bearings
from Morning Stories © 2004 William Tecku
10:00 A.M.
Wrong turns sprout like spring wild flowers.
He slams on the brakes.
Black and white cows bawl through barbwire.
"Where's the map!" he shouts.
"You took the map! I took the vows!" She snaps back.
They chew their cud.
Gravel spits from their balding back tires.
She puts on her makeup as they cross the St. Croix.
"The church is on the north end of town," he tells her.
"What? You don't trust me?" he teases.
"I do. But I don't trust your sense of direction!" she laughs.
12:00 P.M.
Mirrored in glass, church doors they grin at how good they look,
at how far they have come.
Her parents stand alongside as witnesses.
He fingers his right, vest pocket for her ring.
It finds him.
Steady hands hold homemade vows.
Organ music rises to a vaulted ceiling.
They stroll down a long, tiled aisle
that turns into an untrod road.
They find their way home
in their eyes.
